Key Insights: The Amazon Online Shopping System

Explore key design principles of the Amazon online shopping system to strengthen your object-oriented design skills. Learn to model user roles, manage shopping carts effectively, handle notifications, implement detailed search methods, and design dynamic payment strategies. This lesson prepares you to avoid common pitfalls and confidently present your solution in design interviews.

We'll cover the following...

Common mistakes
Key interview tips
Test your understanding
Related case studies

Great job reaching this stage with your Amazon online shopping system design! This lesson will help you level up by sharing clear, actionable tips to strengthen your design, avoid common pitfalls, and build confidence for tackling tough interview questions.

Common mistakes

Many candidates overlook critical details when designing an online shopping system like Amazon. Here are some frequent mistakes that can undermine an otherwise good solution:

Missing guest user limitations: Often, candidates forget to differentiate guest and authenticated user permissions. For example, allowing guests to place an order violates R2, which restricts guests to only searching for products. Always establish a clear inheritance hierarchy, i.e., model both Guest and AuthenticatedUser as child classes of the Customer abstract class. Then, enforce ...