Amazon (AMZN) has had a strong start to 2023, but it is still seeking ways to improve its bottom line.
For one, the e-commerce company's stock price is up about 45% year-to-date, from $85.82 on Jan. 3 to $120.58 to close out May.
DON'T MISS: Amazon Makes One Shipping Change That Has Some Worried
In its first-quarter earnings call in late April, Amazon reported that worldwide, its net sales were $127.4 billion, up 9% year over year.
Even so, forecasting a difficult ongoing economic environment, the company eliminated 9,000 jobs. These were primarily in its Amazon Web Services, Twitch, devices, advertising and human resources departments.
In addition to cutting labor costs, Amazon has also been finding ways to maximize its shipping revenue. For example, it increased its fee for Amazon Prime, the service customers use, in large part, for delivery deals.
The company also began charging a $1 fee for customers who return items to UPS stores when they have options in the same vicinity to return them to Whole Foods, Amazon Fresh or Kohl's.
Amazon also announced small monetary incentives for its customers who were willing to pick items up from these locations rather than having them delivered to their doors.
Amazon Makes Big Change to Its App
Now, Amazon is testing a redesign for its App customers use to place orders. It hopes the change will make it easier for users to find what they're looking for.
The redesign began to appear for some users 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 lowest end of the screen as users scroll through content.
"The change, which will start to appear today for some users, is meant to put the search box within easy reach even when someone is using a device with one hand," according to GeekWire.
"Amazon says the new configuration is being tested initially with 'select mobile customers' in the U.S. on both iPhone and Android devices, and will be rolled out to additional customers worldwide in the coming months," GeekWire added.
CEO Andy Jassy On the Changing E-Commerce Marketplace
Andy Jassy, Amazon's chief executive officer, discussed how the company is still adjusting to changes in demand brought about by the pandemic and how they continue to affect the business, particularly with regard to speed of delivery.
These are some comments Jassy made on the subject during the Amazon's first-quarter earnings call.
As we shared in the past, given the unexpected surge in demand during the pandemic, we doubled the size of our fulfillment center footprint and largely built the transportation network the size of UPS in a couple of years. This ended up substantially changing the number of nodes and connections in our fulfillment network. And as a result, we spent the last several months not only redesigning dozens of processes to drive better productivity but also rearchitecting our placement approach and larger fulfillment center footprint to move from national fulfillment network in the U.S. to a regional one.
It means we've created eight interconnected regions in geographic areas with each of these regions having broad relevant selection to operate in a largely self-sufficient way while still being able to ship nationally when necessary. We just recently completed this rollout and are quite bullish on the early results. Not surprisingly, shorter travel distances means lower cost to serve and customers getting their orders faster. And while on the topic of delivery speed, we're really excited about our progress in providing customers with more one-day and same-day deliveries and are on track to have our fastest Prime delivery speeds ever in 2023.
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