Amazon Swipe To Place Order

✋ What is it?

This is a solution found in the Amazon mobile apps. When users select the "Buy Now" option when placing an order, the app presents an intermediate screen that summarizes the selection and asks the user for a swipe interaction to finalize the order.

🤲 How does this interaction or solution work?

When browsing products on Amazon, users have two options to initiate the ordering process. The first option is adding the product to the shopping cart and continue browsing.

The second option is using the 'Buy Now' option which basically is a flow that skips the cart and takes the user directly to the checkout page.

When users select this option from the mobile app, the app shows a toggle menu with a summary of the order, address, credit card and shipping preferences.

Below this summary, there's a prompt that invites the user to swipe to the right to finalize the process of placing an order. This interaction allows the users to confirm that they indeed want to place the order with the details provided before.

🙌 How does this interaction or solution work?

Increasing Friction and Aggregating Actions.

Amazon and several other apps have to deal with flows where users get confronted with a decision that has a broader impact than other navigational or input decisions.
Some examples of those types of decisions are things like placing an order, charging a credit card, canceling a service, removing a resource or doing a CRUD action that is hard (or impossible) to undo.

In this particular case, Amazon users need to confirm that they want to place the order for a product. This decision has some implications several implications for both Amazon and the user (charging credit cards, generating a fulfillment request, updating inventories, etc.)

By adding the small impedance of a swipe interaction, Amazon can ensure that users are acting in a meaningful way when placing an order and prevent orders placed by mistake.

Another important angle of this solution is that it allows Amazon to aggregate two different actions (placing the order and prompting the user to confirm that the order details are correct.)