Simplifying eCommerce Setup

A story of rebuilding trust on a team and thinking beyond the status-quo.

Demonstrated Competencies:

Design Leadership & UX Design

Year Completed:

2013

Objective

To drastically simplify the process of setting up a payment gateway (and later adding products) to the Infusionsoft flagship application to improve 30-day customer retention

Critical Problems to Solve

New customers cannot find where to add/edit their payment gateway; the process of doing so is spread across three different, unconnected sections of the app and takes WAY too long
It’s not possible to add Paypal as a merchant which is the preferred option for the overwhelming majority of the customer base
Once I enter my gateway information, I don’t know if the gateway is actually working or still in “unverified” mode
I want to select the credit cards that I accept so that I can be choiceful about the options I provide and the fees I pay
There is no way to import an existing list of products from solutions that customers are migrating from; a major barrier to successful customer onboarding
Adding and curating product details requires me to visit numerous pages and retain information from section to section
Adding product options/variations is incredibly confusing. The entire interaction doesn’t make sense!

Design Approach

This is project is one of those infamous product development stories about dreaming big, designing something that tested out extremely well only to have it shelved due to shifting resources. While the concept never saw the light of day, it absolutely was an exercise in leadership. Before I joined this particular scrum team, it was rife with conflict and lack of trust. I was asked to join this team to help galvanize the team and “turn the ship” so-to-speak. Plus it was an incredibly fun design challenge! The e-commerce section of the Infusionsoft app was suffering terribly from poor usability and Frankenstein product enhancements that really hobbled the product over time.

My design approach was one of inclusivity, innovation management and conflict resolution. The usability fixes were somewhat at the table stakes-level and I wanted to challenge the team to think bigger and give themselves permission to go beyond the status quo. While it was rocky at first, whiteboard design sessions with the entire scrum team were essential to making sure that everyone had a voice. Discussing the merits of solutions in context of the user, instead of immediately dismissing ideas based on a multitude of factors was essential to getting the team feeling like a team again. We challenged ourselves to play with then-emerging technology concepts like Cards and Content-as-Navigation, Progressive Reveal, and OAuth and Bi-Directional syncing. Pretty soon something special began taking place with the team’s productivity and outlook. Velocities increased, customer support reps were brought in to co-design, and the team dived head-first into negotiating a very lucrative deal with Paypal.

While the full concept never shipped, the material benefits that were created from team unity were nothing short of awesome!