Rethinking Venmo Payment
Overview
In order to expand the payment options on our gambling website in the US, Venmo will now be added as a payment option for deposits and withdrawals. This is a key feature in order to expand our presence in the United States.
If a familiar payment option such as Venmo is not offered, there is a risk that customers decide to go to a competitor if they were to offer it.
We also deliver an improved version of the payment receipt as a part of this project.
My Role
Lead Designer (Research, Visual Design, Prototyping, User testing)
Team
Designers
Product Owner
Web Developer
Timeline
2023
Platform
Mobile Web & Desktop
Highlights.
Making payments using Venmo a smooth and enjoyable experience.
Design Process.
Our guide throughout the project.
A non-linear process
The process is non-linear; that means that we just don't go forward. We do several rounds of design iterations. When we in testing learn new things, we go back and ideate new solutions that we prototype.
Empathize.
Researching our users' needs.
Unmoderated interviews
We conducted unmoderated interviews in order to get any understanding of how Venmo is perceived among players and what information is important to show.
17
Number of participants
21-64
Age
Research questions
Explain to us when and why you use Venmo?
Explain to us what would be the benefits of using Venmo as a deposit/withdrawal method for gambling?
Imagine that you have made a deposit to your favourite gambling app using Venmo. Which of the following is most important to help you identify that the gambling app is actually connected to your Venmo account: - You Venmo username (@example123) - Your name - Your email - Your phone number
Do you perceive Venmo as secure and trustworthy? Why, Why not?
Voice of the customer
I use it all the time for peer-to-peer payments and for other sorts of payments and I consider very secure.
I love using Venmo and if, if there was a gambling website that, allowed me to deposit and withdraw using Venmo, I would definitely use.
Probably the username because they only like one username.
Your username is unique to you.
What does the users tell us?
Finding 1
The majority of the participants perceive Venmo as being trustworthy and reliable.
Finding 2
The most important thing to display is the Venmo user name.
Customer contacts
Looking at the reasons why our customers contact our support with payment-related inquiries could give us an idea of some pain points that our customers have. From this we could draw some valuable conclusions.
83.5%
Number of customer contacts related to the status of the withdrawal.
What does the customer contacts tell us?
Finding
The wast majority of the customer contacts are related to that the customer does not know the status of their withdrawal. They contact support before the money has been payed out to their account. We need to improve our communication around this.
User survey
Since we know that the status of the withdrawal is a pain point for the customer, we launched a survey to get an understanding of what information is important to show on the payment receipt.
20
Number of participants
The importance of information on the receipt
We asked the participants of the interview how important they think the following information is on a receipt on a gambling app/website.
Survey results
95.0%
Finds the amount important.
90.0%
Finds the status of the withdrawal important.
25.0%
Finds animations important.
20.0%
Finds graphics/images important.
What does the survey answers tell us?
Finding 1
We need to highlight the withdrawal amount very clearly to the customer.
Finding 2
Highlighting the withdrawal time and status clearly will help the customers find this important information instead of contacting customer support.
Finding 3
Animations and graphics are not something most participants expected; this will therefore not be included in the first release.
Define.
Stating our users' needs and problems.
Creating personas
In order to help us better understand your users' needs, behaviours, goals and challenges it is essential to define personas for each user segment.
Creating empathy maps
In order to paint a picture of how the users interact with out app we created an empathy map for each persona. This gave us a good indication of what the user segments say, think, do and feel.
The 5 W:s
Who are experiencing the problem?
The user groups represented by our personas.
What is the problem?
Hard to keep track of the money when withdrawing.
When does the problem occur?
After the customers have withdrawn their money.
When the customers are using a payment method to withdraw their money.
Why does it matter?
Users are contacting customer support in order to understand when they will receive their money. Every customer contact costs the company money.
Problem statement
Which all of this in mind we formulated a problem statement that we could take with us when started the ideation.
User
+
Need
+
Goal
Ideate.
Generate a range of creative ideas.
Crazy-8 brainstorming
With our findings from the Empathize phase and the problem statement created in the Define phase in mind, I and the team started brainstorming solutions for how the Venmo payment receipt could look like.
In previous phases, we learned that most of the customer contacts are related to customers not knowing the status of their payment.
We also learned that it is important that the receipt show the withdrawal amount and the status of the withdrawal, while having lots of graphics and animations is less important.
Prototype.
Build real representations of the ideas to get quick feedback.
Wireframes & Lo-fi Prototype
After we concluded the empathize, define, and ideation phases, we created wireframes and a prototype to user-test the concept. In previous phases, we learned that it is the most important thing to show the users Venmo ID on the payment page. We also learned that on the receipt page, it is important to clearly show the amount as well as the status and the time the payment takes.
Testing.
Collecting feedback from users.
User testing
We did a round of testing using our prototype we made from the wireframes. We did this on purpose in order to get quick user feedback before committing too much time to our concept. We wanted to see if the customers perceived the flow of completing a Venmo payment logical and understandable.
10
Number of participants
23-60
Age
Research questions
How would do do to make a deposit of $25.00 deposit using Venmo.
Can you make another deposit of $50.00 using the same payment method?
Show is how you would do in order to remove your Venmo user details from the site?
Voice of the customer
I would say that originally it was pretty great. It's very straightforward and very simple.
I should be able to just remove an account that I don't want linked to anything without having to go through customer support.
Test results
100.0%
Understood how to remove the Venmo account from the gambling site.
70.0%
Would like the possibly to remove the Venmo account without contacting customer support.
What does the user testing tell us?
Finding 1
We need to highlight the withdrawal amount very clearly to the customer.
Finding 2
Highlighting the withdrawal time and status clearly will help the customers find this important information instead of contacting customer support.
Finding 3
Animations and graphics is not something most participants expected, this will therefor not be included in the first release.
FInal Designs.
Reflection.
Key takeaways and next steps.
Conclusion
The final visual designs were handed over to the developers together with detailed UI specifications, specifying colors, fonts, and spacing for all elements. During the development process, we had regular sessions with the development team constantly keeping them informed about what we were working on.
We put lots of emphasis on communication in order to avoid misunderstandings and save time during the development process. This worked very well.Together with the Venmo deposit and Venmo withdrawal method, we also delivered the new and improved payment receipts.
We had to take into account both the successful payment scenario and the scenario when the payment is pending. We did that using different colors and also a progress bar showing the state of the payment. Both the Venmo payment method and the redesigned receipt are currently being released in the United States.
Learnings
During this project, I learnt the importance of having close collaboration with developers. We saved lots of time by working closely and giving them constant feedback during the development process.
I also learn the importance of doing proper user research. In order to make the right design decision early on, we needed to know what the customers wanted. If we made the wrong decisions, we would have to go back and change them later on, and that would cost both time and money.
