Making Bitcoin Useful
ABOUT PURSE
Purse's mission is to make Bitcoin useful.
Amazon and other e-commerce platforms don’t yet accept bitcoin, hampering widespread adoption of the currency. Purse allows Shoppers to purchase goods with bitcoin using Amazon wishlists, and it incentivizes them to do so with discounts ranging from 5-30% (shipping time varies with discount percentage). On the other side of the transaction are Earners who use their excess Amazon credit to purchase goods for shoppers in exchange for bitcoin.
THE PROBLEM
The bounce rate of Purse's homepage was very high. A signup wall separated visitors from the main Purse app, and few were actually signing up. Of those who did sign up and start the order process, many abandoned it early on, so the scope of the project was to reimagine the experience for new shoppers to increase signups and orders. Conducting user research helped reveal 2 root causes of the problem - users found it difficult to understand how Purse works, and they thought the process to place an order was too lengthy and confusing.
A SOLUTION
The focus was on increasing user comprehension of how Purse works and consolidating the process to place an order. We removed the landing page and signup wall, allowing users to immediately start interacting with the Purse marketplace and learn through engagement and also wrote and tested custom copy and graphics to better communicate what Purse does. The flow to place an order was also restructured, reducing the number of necessary redirects to Amazon and including simpler elements and instructions. The designs went live in mid-2017 and saw a significant increase in new user engagement and orders.
MY ROLE
I led this project redesigning the new user shopping experience for Purse’s iOS and responsive web app. I led all major phases of the project, including research, ideation, iteration, validation, and style. I collaborated with a Product Manager and 2 designers and presented to the CEO. This design was shipped in mid 2017, receiving strong positive feedback from users and correlating with an increase in Gross Merchandise Value from new users.
THE PROCESS
Understanding New Users
Conducted user interviews to learn about the needs of new users and observe now they interact with Purse in order to identify areas for improvement in their experience. The board below shows some insights collected from users.
NEW USER FRUSTRATIONS
Talking to new Purse users and being present to observe them interacting with the app helped illuminate the following major pain points of the new user experience:
- Sign Up and Onboarding - A signup wall separated users from the main app, deterring new users who want to interact with the app or better understand its value before committing to signing up.
- Comprehension/Understanding of Purse - New users made loose connection to Amazon and Bitcoin, but still had many basic questions about Purse’s value proposition and business model.
- Name Your Discount Process - The process for Purse's core discount shopping marketplace is lengthy and frustrating for users, involving navigating multiple times between Amazon and Purse, and hard to understand instructions from thumbnail videos in popups.
- Navigation - New users had difficulty navigating through the site, finding Support resources, and locating Purse's core service Name Your Discount.
I made the diagrams below based on observations and comments of new users as they interact with Purse in order to depict how new users tend to flow through the Sign Up and Name Your Discount order processes, with points of frustration shown in red:
A TYPICAL FIRST TIME USER
Based on previous research done on the demographics of Purse users, below are 2 provisional personas we kept in mind during the design process, the Bitcoiner and the Savvy Shopper.
Developing a Concept
ASSUMPTIONS
Interacting with the app before having to Sign Up will help new users learn how to use Purse and understand what its benefits are
If there was more clarity around discounts, new customers would be more willing to purchase on Purse
Shoppers would be more likely to spend on Purse if the process is simple and hassle-free
Users new to Bitcoin would use a site like Purse if they could get a discount
IDEATION
Some of my sketches for the homepage and NYD checkout process are shown below.
CORE CONCEPTS/IDEAS
Encourage users to engage with and learn the Name Your Discount process by allowing them to explore it from the item thumbnails on the Main Page (in the current app they only have the option of Buy Now)
Break the NYD process into smaller chunks and show progress through the process with a bar or some kind of visualization
Provide links to Amazon item pages which open in a new tab when clicked to reduce friction (currently users have to search for the items themselves on Amazon)
Experiment with ways to increase user understanding of Purse and the Name Your Discount process, including tooltips, landing page, and including a footer with link to support center and company info
Have users change wishlist settings before pasting the wishlist link to avoid the frustrating user experience of having to navigate back to Amazon an additional time to change the list settings
VALIDATION & ITERATION
Below are some iterations of the home page. After testing all 3 versions, the last one with a summary of the 3 ways to use Purse along with product thumbnails which lead to the NYD process proved to be the most understandable for users; in the second version, users did not want to paste the wishlist link in the banner without more information and instructions, while in the first version users felt there was too much information and preferred to interact with the marketplace.
Other changes made after validation include replacing most tooltips with fine print after observing that almost none of the users interviewed actually hovered over the tooltips, moving the "How it Works" page to the first step of the Name Your Discount checkout process after observing that users still wanted more information before starting the checkout process, and replacing many text explanations with graphics which proved to boost understanding.
