Defining a seamless migration experience for SMB merchants
Research
B2B
Finance
Context
PayPal created their all-in-one payment solution, Complete Payments, to stay competitive and phase out outdated systems. But adoption of this offering was slow, so they established an internal initiative of migrating more transaction volume onto this latest integration version.
Challenge
Among this target was a potentially difficult to find segment of SMB merchants who likely didn't know what integration they were running, and for whom migrating would involve hiring a developer (a significant investment for a small business).
Strategy
My track of research focused on speaking with freelance developers, to cross-examine from a technically-savvy perspective what merchants were telling us about their integrations and to learn from developers' perspectives what convinces SMBs to migrate.
Project Objective
Establish a foundation for a seamless migration experience with clear value propositions that enable SMB merchants to self-identify, understand the benefits, and take the next step in their migration journey.
Role
Co-lead designer (1 of 3)
Collaborators
PayPal research team
Responsibilities
Develop and run developer track of research
Create content strategy proposal
Key Outcomes
Built a Strong Case for Relevant Merchant Value Props
Built strong evidence for which key benefits actually move the needle for small business clients, boosting PayPal's confidence in speaking to merchants.
Clarified Scope of Migration Problems
Established the degree to which migration support and incentives would need to be tailored to SMB merchants, helping PayPal make business decisions about what resources to allocate for migration.
”From our POV you’re a favorite vendor for your rigorous approach to research”
MAXIMIZING RESOURCES WHILE SEEKING A THEORETICAL USER
A multi-pronged recruitment effort was needed to find the source of the issue
A carefully crafted screener per user segment administered to a broad range of people to mitigate anticipated high disqualification rate
Protocol designed to identify disqualifications quickly and flexibly address participant’s domain expertise
Leveraged multiple recruiting firms and allocated ownership of user segments among the team to cover ground rapidly
Ongoing re-evaluation of methods as research progressed
RAPID DATA CAPTURE & SYNTHESIS
Data capture in stickies and journey creation during interviews greatly accelerated synthesis
Double-sided journey to explore developer / merchant relationship and how devs could potentially play a role in communicating benefits of migration to merchants
Findings were crafted into JTBDs and value props to set direction for ideation
CONCEPT TESTING WITHIN AN EXTREMELY NARROW SURFACE
Research revealed that there were very few surfaces that merchants interacted with where we could reliably get their attention, so ideation had to be limited to that surface
Concepts aimed at how both developers and merchants easily realize the benefits of Complete Payments
Visualizing the relative impact of the concepts on merchants according to developer's feedback, with extremely non-technical ideas scoring highest - our initial theory of the existence of tech-savvy merchant doesn't exist according to developers
A FRAMEWORK FOR MOVING FORWARD
To prepare PayPal to successfully approach small business customers with an migration proposal, I crystallized my learnings into a set of principles alongside a framework for how to put them into action
