Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Rebecca Allen. They travel through memory lane by talking about the restructuring of Amazon’s catalog using Base 36, the complications of recycling ISBNs that led to the creation of Amazon’s Standard Identification Number (ASIN), how the Title Authority feature helped customers find books through associations, the seemingly impossible to accomplish Used Books category, and so much more. Rebecca Allen is a former Software Engineer at …
Customer Obsession
How Amazon Used Imagination and Technology to Invent for Customers | Maryam Mohit
Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Maryam Mohit. They talk about the different iterations of the early Amazon website that massively improved customer experience. Key improvements included navigation, browse, adding search to the homepage, personalizing the website, adding electronic gift certificates, expanding to new categories and much more. It was all made possible by listening to customers and translating their confusion and input into innovative product …
How Amazon Built its Associates Affiliate Marketing and Got Big Fast | Shawn Haynes
Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Shawn Haynes. They discuss how the Amazon Associates team built and grew the affiliate marketing program. Shawn grew the team from several hundred initial affiliate marketing websites to more than 500,000 by the time he moved on. He shares how the learnings from early Associates economics, such as focusing on cost per new customer rather than margin on individual sales, helped inform the Premium Associates and Megadeals that Amazon …
Building the Amazon Website in the Late 90s | Alex Edelman
Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Alex Edelman. They talk about how an English Major from the University of Pennsylvania joined Amazon as the company’s first dedicated “HTML Wizard”, why the V3 project (in 1997) was mainly about obsession over Customer Experience, the thrilling yet exhausting experience during Launch Nights, and how a boating accident led to shared Ownership through pager rotation. Alex Edelman is an internet veteran. He was Amazon.com's first web …
[Read more...] about Building the Amazon Website in the Late 90s | Alex Edelman
Refining Amazon’s Search Engine | Dwayne Bowman and Ruben Ortega
Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Dwayne Bowman and Ruben Ortega. They discuss the birth of Bowtega Box (image below), maintaining the balance between adding new features and continuous upscaling and customer support, and redesigning and refining Amazon's Search functionality. Ruben is the former director of Amazon's Mechanical Turk and CTO of A9.com (Amazon’s innovative search subsidiary), and was responsible for its early scaling and technical success. …
[Read more...] about Refining Amazon’s Search Engine | Dwayne Bowman and Ruben Ortega