Every designer’s goal should be to prove how their designs, big or small, contribute as returns for their business. Whether a project is focusing on functionality or delight, this is always our mission because it validates that design can be a differentiator and that we, individually, are experts of that differentiation. The problem is that finding projects that make substantial changes can be quite difficult, especially at established and larger organizations. Even when projects are validated through data and qualitative testing, the outcome may only make a small dent in user behavior and an even smaller increase in the company’s bottom line. But the point of this article is not to explain how to find those projects, we can save that for a different time or you can check out this awesome deck by previous Etsy designer Dan McKinley @ datadriven.club, rather the point is to show how the right small change can make a big impact. I’ll do that with an example from my recent experience working on my company’s payments interface.
I think it’s universal enough to say that users drop-off when they have to pay for things. Better yet, users drop-off when they literally have to do anything, but they especially drop-off at checkout. So whether you’re a designer for a service that includes a checkout or you have ever shopped online, you know that when users have to physically click the pay button there is hesitation, causing people to exit the user journey, even if they’ve already entered in all of their personal information and spent time to get to that point. Essentially, the choice to pay causes major friction, and my company is no exception. So, the opportunity space became making our payment experience more fluid.
Original Payments Flow
For context, my current company is focused on term life insurance. One interesting attribute of the life insurance purchase, that separates it from a standard e-commerce experience, is that the user is not making a one time purchase. Rather, the user is committing to something closer to a subscription model, where they’ll pay a monthly amount, possibly for the next 10 to 30 years. Of course (shameless plug), with Ladder they can cancel anytime or change their coverage mid term, so the commitment is flexible, but there are sunk costs to consider when making those decisions down the line. What I’m trying to say, is that making a purchase in the life insurance journey is mentally harder than buying shoes from eBay or doggy poop bags from Amazon.
“how can we reduce the mental friction to increase overall conversion”
The question became, how can we reduce the mental friction to increase overall conversion, but not lose sight of what is happening at that point in time? No easy task for any designer. So, the only thing that I could do is define a set of constraints to give me further direction, which is something I do on every project in order to provide a better rationale for my end design. I met with my project manager, data analyst, engineers, design team, and customer support team to provide context about the problem space and technical implications we might have. A couple of key insights emerged. First, our current flow (shown above) ranged in length based on the user’s choices, between 3 and 5 steps. Second, the vast majority of users, 6 to 1 to be precise, chose credit card over a bank. Third, while users are more used to entering in a credit card, life insurance is better served by connecting a bank because it is a long term commitment and banks don’t expire.
Payments Exploration
Now I had a much smaller, defined space that I could start iterating in. As I explored different possible design routes it became apparent that we didn’t know how users would act this far down into the life insurance funnel, even with testing. So while many of my ideas had larger design implications, we ended up focusing on smaller changes that we would be able to evaluate post implementation. As I wrapped up this phase in the process, having tested and worked through a number of concepts, I finally landed on the small change that would be built — removing the active decision between credit card and bank, and bringing as much of the UI onto the Ladder site.
Final Payments Flow
Of course, the work required to remove this first bifurcation wasn’t entirely small, it required building a brand new selection page, amongst other technical changes. But all we were doing from the user’s perspective was skipping a step and staying on Ladder pages. A hand full of things were happening in this new experience even with such a small change. First, I rationalized that most people know how they want to pay, so showing more options isn’t necessarily a bad thing, in fact users will actually think less and move faster. Second, by bringing most of the experience onto the Ladder site, there’s greater trust, instead of relying on a Stripe modal. And finally, fewer steps means fewer places to hesitate, and you know what that means. So basically, these kinds of small changes can be powerful, they just have to be meaningful.
“Payment conversion increased by 4%. Even more significant is that 24% more users started picking a bank as their payment method”
The outcome, you may ask. It worked! Duh. No, but seriously, I did my due diligence internally and then made sure the concept was qualitatively flushed out before implementing it. It took work. The important part is that a small user interface update moved the needle. Our goal was to increase conversion by making the experience more fluid, done. Payment conversion increased by 4%. Even more significant is that 24% more users started picking a bank as their payment method, jumping from 6 to 1 all the way to 1 to 1, meaning that now half of all users are NOT paying the 3% credit card fee, effectively increasing the company’s bottom line. And as an indirect impact, overall policy conversion increased by about 1%. All in all, it was a good day to be a designer.
