Re-Architecting AWS Marketplace Documentation for Clarity and Usability

Overview

AWS Marketplace documentation serves a broad range of users—sellers, buyers, engineers, and internal support teams—who rely on clear, intuitive guidance to complete essential tasks. Over time, core Marketplace chapters had become fragmented, overly verbose, and misaligned with the real workflows customers followed.

My first major project in this space was a deep information architecture (IA) overhaul of the Machine Learning (ML) Products chapter. The structural issues I uncovered there pointed to a much larger problem: the entire Seller Guide was organized around internal feature silos, not the tasks and workflows sellers were actually performing.

The success of the ML Products redesign—and the clarity it brought to a high-visibility area of the Marketplace Seller Guide—revealed the need for a broader, multi-phase restructuring of the full Seller Guide. I led this effort to rebuild Marketplace documentation around user journeys, task flows, and predictable content structures.

My Role

I owned the planning, information architecture, content restructuring, and writing for both the ML Products chapter overhaul and the broader Seller Guide redesign. This included workflow mapping, content analysis, structural consolidation, developing documentation patterns, validating changes with SMEs, and publishing updated content.

The Problem

ML Products (Early Phase)

The ML Products chapter, which introduces and guides sellers through listing ML offerings, had grown organically and exhibited several issues:

• Content was scattered across eight loosely connected sections
• Critical concepts were buried or duplicated
• The flow did not match how sellers actually list and manage ML products
• Verbose explanations made the content harder to navigate

Resolving these issues required a foundational IA redesign.

During this work, it became clear that:

If one chapter required this level of restructuring to become usable, the overall Seller Guide would benefit from a comprehensive IA overhaul as well.

Seller Guide (Primary Phase)

After analyzing the full Seller Guide, I found more systemic structural challenges:

• Chapters were organized around internal features, not seller workflows
• Registration—the first and most critical step—was unclear and fragmented
• Task prerequisites were inconsistently placed or missing
• Redundant explanations made it difficult for sellers to find authoritative guidance
• Customer support feedback repeatedly pointed to navigation and clarity issues

These problems resulted in unnecessary customer friction and inconsistent user experience.

My Approach

1. Redesign ML Products as a focused IA proof of concept

Before restructuring the full guide, I applied targeted IA improvements to the ML Products chapter:

• Consolidated eight disjointed sections into six workflow-aligned sections
• Reordered content to follow planning → implementing → managing
• Surfaced essential information and removed low-value redundancy
• Rewrote topics to be task-based, succinct, and predictable

This redesign provided immediate clarity and measurable customer benefits, confirming that a similar approach should be applied across the full guide.

2. Analyze the Seller Guide using workflows and customer feedback

I used multiple inputs to identify IA issues in the broader Seller Guide:

• Attended AWS Support training to understand common seller pain points
• Reviewed customer tickets related to onboarding and registration
• Spoke with Marketplace SMEs to confirm gaps in organization and content placement
• Analyzed existing topics to identify redundant structures and unclear sequences
• Used AI-assisted content analysis to extract core concepts and validate groupings

These findings informed a more intuitive and task-centered IA model.

3. Map the complete seller journey

I created an end-to-end seller workflow map that became the backbone of the new IA:

Registration → Product planning and publishing → Pricing fundamentals → Offer creation (private and public offers) → Monitoring and reporting

This clarified content dependencies, exposed misplaced topics, and allowed the entire guide to be rebuilt around how sellers actually think and work.

4. Validate and refine the IA approach

I established recurring discussions with Marketplace stakeholders to review IA decisions, clarify ambiguous areas, and validate the restructured content model. This ensured all changes reflected both user needs and service-specific constraints.

5. Execute the restructure and rewrite content

Seller Guide – Phase 1 (Completed):

• Rewrote and reorganized 10+ topics in the Registration chapter
• Consolidated related content and removed redundancy
• Standardized documentation patterns (prerequisite blocks, task sequences, conceptual intros)
• Restructured cross-links and navigation to reflect the new IA

Seller Guide – Future Phases (Scheduled):

• Offers & Pricing
• Monitoring & Reporting

These phases will continue applying the workflow-aligned IA established during the initial redesign.

The Solution

ML Products Chapter Overhaul – The Catalyst

• Reduced eight disjointed sections into six coherent, workflow-based structures
• Rewrote content for clarity, predictability, and task alignment
• Elevated key concepts to top-level positions
• Eliminated verbose, low-value content and consolidated overlapping areas
• Achieved consistent terminology and documentation patterns

This chapter became the working model for restructuring the broader Seller Guide.

Seller Guide Re-Architecture – Multi-Phase Redesign

• Transitioned from feature-based to task-oriented documentation
• Rebuilt chapter organization to reflect actual seller workflows
• Introduced consistent documentation patterns, including:
  • Hierarchical content ordering
  • Consolidated procedures
  • Clear prerequisite structures
  • Uniform task steps
• Simplified navigation to reduce cognitive load
• Created a maintainable foundation for future Marketplace features

Impact

ML Products IA Impact

• 56,000+ page views after redesign
• Zero support tickets reported on the updated chapter
• Improved clarity in one of the most complex Marketplace listings areas
• Internal teams adopted the new IA as a reference for future content

Seller Guide IA Impact

• Clearer seller onboarding experience
• Reduction in confusion reported by Solutions Architects and Support
• Improved findability of critical seller tasks
• A validated, phased strategy for reorganizing the remaining Marketplace content
• Strong leadership feedback:

Brandi turned an overwhelming problem into a clear, phased strategy. Her work significantly improved the readability and usability of the Marketplace Seller Guide.

Skills & Tools Used

• Information architecture
• Task-oriented documentation
• Workflow mapping
• Content restructuring
• Documentation pattern design
• Structural analysis and consolidation
• SME collaboration and review cycles
• AI-assisted content analysis
• Cloud service domain expertise (Marketplace, ML listings)