Delivering a scalable marketplace for paypal gift card consumers

Background & Opportunity

Back in 2013, the gift card industry was a $5 Billion global business and while there were existing online marketplaces, they fell short in consumer protection and digital features. PayPal saw an opportunity to provide convenience for consumers and fraud-protection for merchants & brands. And by acting as merchant-of-record with 11% gross of sale profit, there was a significant commercial opportunity in this rapidly accelerating eCommerce space.

There was user research conducted a year before on consumer’s gift card use and attitudes, with about 8 participants. The insights ranged from digital shopping and gifting experience; to the ability to store all gift cards in a digital wallet; to having smart reminders and location-driven alerts on where consumers can use gift cards. The 2nd and 3rd pain points were too grand to tackle and the objective remained building first a digital marketplace for consumers to purchase and send gift cards.

The iTunes Retail Group was the first strategic partner, looking to provide a wider distribution channels for iTunes Gift Cards.

CHallenge & approach

I saw the challenge as mainly providing simplicity and speed in the shopping and checkout experience as well as identifying opportunities to delight in the redemption and fulfilment aspects of the gift card checkout experience.

At the onset, I approached the solution as mirroring the real-world mental model of purchasing gift cards in-store with a straightforward checkout experience.

as lead product designer

• Research

• Interaction Design

• Prototyping

• Workshop Facilitation

UX TEAM & stakeholders

• CONTENT DESIGN · Idayu Rahman

• VISUAL DESIGN · Jeremie Lim

• UX RESEARCH · Anup Nair

• PRODUCT / SOLUTIONS: Joel Yarbrough · Sam Kwong · Heung Keung Chai 

• TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING: Vincent Serpoul et al ···

• PRODUCTION OPS · Mack Kock Kit

Rapid Prototyping for Stakeholder Buy In

My involvement started as a casual challenge from our Strategic Partnerships Lead, where I volunteered as I could relate to the multi-market benefit of the solution. I naively thought that it would finally allow non-local PayPal accounts to purchase in certain markets. In the end, PayPal’s market-specific rules still applied but it was still a solution worth solving for particular use cases of expatriates needing to buy gift cards.

In an initial meeting with the iTunes Retail Group, I participated by presenting a prototype of the concept as understood to be the minimum viable product at launch. This proved to be a catalyst in getting buy-in not just externally but internally as well, among the business and technology groups of PayPal.

AMOUNT SELECTION SIMPLIFICATION

A new requirement arrived that allowed for custom amounts for consumers when selecting a denomination for certain gift cards. We approached the solution progressively with UI engineering having strong opinions about a sequential approach: either choose a fixed amount or choose an option to then enter a custom amount. By white-boarding together, we arrived at a consensus, and one that I was aiming for, which is the simplification of the selected amount component to allow for both fixed as well as custom amounts without having to resort to creating new components.

A HYBRID FIXED AMOUNT HIGHLIGHT AND CUSTOM AMOUNT FIELD

In the new interaction pattern, we removed the swiping across card art as we learned that with other brands there were no assets differentiating across denominations. The screen capture shows the switch between fixed amount selection and the freedom to enter custom amounts.

When deciding what to buy as a gift, consumers were not beholden to mental models based on their relationship to the recipient or of certain occassions. Rather, they already had strong preconceived ideas of what categories or brands to browse for.

WHat went well

• A rapid prototyping approach can act as catalyst in stakeholder discussions and enables everyone to align on the north star.

• Engaging the technology team early in the product design process enabled them to have ownership in the user experience of the platform.

shortcomings

• My design team and the Product Owner sometimes did not see eye-to-eye on the priorities for the platform as it became a choice between scale (rapid expansion) vs. user experience.

• My design team did not push hard enough for initiatives such as UX metrics and experimentation.