Micah Bennett
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Payments strategy by design

Payments strategy by design

On Jan 31, 2018, eBay announced it would begin intermediating payments on its Marketplace platform. Five months prior, we started working with the eBay team to inform their ultimate payments strategy.

 
 

CHALLENGE

Using PayPal for payments on eBay has resulted in a disjointed experience and uncaptured revenue opportunity. A legacy of brand association and loyalty stands in the way of a dramatically improved user experience.

SOLUTION

Informed by intensive user research and stakeholder involvement, we determined core value propositions and key features for this high-stakes initiative. We designed a seamless end-to-end payment experience for sellers and buyers, with eBay at the center.

ROLE & DURATION

Lead UX Designer, Researcher 

5 months

CONSTRAINTS & TEAM

Financial Risk & Security

Existing Design System

Leadership: 2 Business Strategists, C-Suite

Peers: 3 Product Managers, 2 Design Directors, 1 Product Designer

 

 

"How do we mitigate risk & prioritize features that are most important to our users?"

 

RISKS

Payments touches every piece of the experience and infrastructure at eBay. We needed to keep the entire system in mind while executing details of individual use cases.

Seller adoption will make or break this initiative. We needed to understand and manage the impact change will have on sellers across segments and geos.

 
 

RESEARCH & STRATEGY

My colleague and I conducted discovery interviews with 25 eBay sellers across the country, observing their accounting and sales processes first hand. I synthesized hundreds of hours of research into a journey map.

As with many large companies, any single user flow was split across many various departments and teams, resulting in a disjointed user experience. The map offered a first-time view of the entire experience and make key insights easily consumable. It became a critical touchpoint for aligning stakeholders and workshopping opportunities; unveiling key value propositions for the new experience.

 
 

“We need a flagship experience so we have a vision for our product, design and engineering teams.”

 

CONCEPTING

Our concepts and research informed C-level strategic decisions and negotiations. Collaborative workshops and four rounds of iterative testing with 48 eBay sellers helped us create an end-state solution that balanced business and seller needs. 

 

USER VALIDATED PROTOTYPES

Migrating existing users was critical to adoption, providing fast & easy enrollment while ensuring users understand what they are signing up for. 

 
 

There is also significant opportunity to provide simple accounting tools for sellers and small businesses that could really uplevel the experience.

 

Results

IMPACT

We designed financial tools for the new payments ecosystem that users can't wait to access. These features are now in development, rolling out to eBay sellers soon. 

 

EXPECTED ADDED REVENUE

$2 billion

OFFICES WITH JOURNEY MAP ON DISPLAY

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