Amazon (AMZN) – Get a free reportIt’s had a strong start to 2023, but it’s still looking for ways to improve its bottom line.
For example, the e-commerce company’s share price is up about 45% year-to-date, from $85.82 on Jan. 3 to $120.58 to close in May.
Don’t Miss: Amazon Makes One Shipping Change That Has Some Concerned
On its first-quarter earnings call in late April, Amazon reported that worldwide, it had net sales of $127.4 billion, up 9% year-over-year.
However, anticipating a difficult economic environment, the company cut 9,000 jobs. These were primarily in Amazon Web Services, Twitch, Hardware, Advertising, and Human Resources.
In addition to reducing labor costs, Amazon is also looking for ways to maximize shipping revenue. For example, it has increased its fees on Amazon Prime, the service customers use, in large part, for delivery deals.
The company also began charging customers a $1 fee for returning items to UPS stores when they had options in the same vicinity to return them to Whole Foods, Amazon Fresh, or Kohl’s.
Amazon also announced small financial incentives for its customers who were willing to pick up items from these locations instead of having them delivered to their door.
Amazon is making a big change in its app
Now, Amazon is testing a redesign of its app that customers use to place orders. She hopes the change will make it easier for users to find what they’re looking for.
The redesign started rolling out to some users on June 1. It moves the search box to a fixed location at the bottom of the page.
That is, the search field will remain visible at the bottom end of the screen while users are scrolling through the content.
And according to Jake Wire.
“Amazon says the new configuration is initially being tested with ‘select mobile customers’ in the US on both iPhone and Android devices, and will roll out to additional customers worldwide in the coming months,” GeekWire added.
CEO Andy Jassy on the changing e-commerce market
Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon, discussed how the company is still adjusting to changes in demand brought on by the pandemic and how it continues to impact the business, particularly in terms of delivery speed.
These are some of the comments Jassy made on this topic during Amazon’s first quarter earnings call.
As we have shared in the past, due to the unexpected increase in demand during the pandemic, we doubled the size of our fulfillment center and built the transportation network largely the size of UPS within two years. It ended up changing significantly the number of nodes and connections in our fulfillment network. As a result, we’ve spent the last few months not only redesigning dozens of operations for better productivity but also restructuring our recruiting approach and larger Achievement Center footprint to move from a national achievement network in the US to a regional network.
This means that we have established eight interconnected regions in geographic regions with a suitable broad selection for each of these regions to operate in a largely self-sustaining manner while still being able to ship nationally when necessary. We recently completed this offering and expect a significant uptick in early results. Not surprisingly, shorter travel distances mean lower cost of service and faster delivery of customer orders. And while on the topic of delivery speed, we’re really excited about our progress in providing customers with more single-day, same-day deliveries, and we’re on track to have the fastest Prime delivery speeds in 2023.
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