Reframing Merchant Onboarding
The existing experience was organized around the information the businesses needed to collect. I reframed it around the decisions a merchant needed to make.
Due to Non-Disclosure Agreements, some visuals and data have been recreated and kept to a minimum. The designs presented reflect the original problem-solving approach and user experience decisions.
OUTPUT
OUTCOME
OVERVIEW
Redesigning the merchant onboarding process to improve form completion rates.
AP MBS is a merchant onboarding form focused on helping merchants self onboard onto the system. The redesign focused on integrating merchants within the decision-making process by giving them options to personalize payments according to their goals rather than giving them the illusion of only submititng data documents.
The Impact
The updated experience led to improvement in merchant form completion rates and decrease in form abandonment rates. Salespeople handled more tasks around merchant attrition rather than onboarding them onto the system.
"How might we help merchants understand, navigate, and complete onboarding themselves, rather than treating it as paperwork to hand back to sales?"
PROBLEM
The existing onboarding form collected the information the business needed.
Salespeople often complained about incomplete forms and having to complete filling them up for the lead to be considered accepted. For salespeople, they had to further follow up with merchants on their accounts and working on incomplete forms increased their workload.
RESEARCH
Merchants didn't understand the value of completing it themselves.
To better understand where merchants abandoned form filling during the process, I reviewed merchant workflows and conducted interviews with them. The research focused on how merchants scanned information, interpreted business context and navigated the form in everyday contexts.
They handed the process back to salespeople, creating additional follow-up and work.
Through interviews and workflow analysis, I learned how merchants and salespeople navigated the interface and account information. The biggest issue was not workflow friction - but rather minimal perceived value in filling up the form.
Merchants often got bored while navigating the form, believing that they were not a part of the process and handed it over to salespeople. They believed that the system only required them to hand over data and documents that salespeople already had access to.
" After clicking on a few tabs, I understood that all that was required were financial documents from my end that I had already discussed with the salesperson before beginning the onboarding process. I already had the documents saved in a folder which I emailed to the salesperson and asked them to onboard on my behalf."
Interview participant
E-commerce founder
DESIGN PROCESS
Reframing onboarding around the merchant's journey and decisions.
I had to redesign the journey to include the merchant in the decision-making process. My process then shifted to understanding the existing elements in the user journey and the information collected and then look for opportunities to personalize the experience for merchants.
After evaluating the issues and prioritising their impact and effort scale, I submitted the report to the stakeholders and discussed converting issues into immediate tasks.
Information Architecture
To enhance findability, usability, and improve the organization of content.
UI revamp
To improve customer satisfaction and engagement.
REVAMPING THE IA
I reorganized the information, navigation, and process around that new mental model.
I mapped out the entire form and included all data field information that were to be collected from the merchant. It helped me draw insights that determined that these were business-process categories, they mapped closely to the information the organization needed rather than any decisions that merchants needed to make.
SOLUTION
Designing For The Merchant Mental Model
The current IA is a lot more linear and information-centric. It served as my base for card sorting exercise. I collected all data and sorted them into groups. The existing system served almost like a checklist.
I focussed on redesigning the IA to make it more decision-oriented.
"The existing application architecture was organized around the information the business needed to collect. I reframed the experience around the merchant's decisions and onboarding milestones."
IDEATION
Exploring Navigation Structure and Wayfinding interface directions
Through interviews and workflow analysis, I identified recurring patterns in how users interacted with the system.The biggest issue wasn’t financial complexity itself — it was a lack of control in the process.
DESIGNS
Refining the Navigational Experience
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RESULTS
The redesigned experience was associated with improved completion outcomes.
I included the steps such as determining business goals and settlement preferences into the onboarding process, effectively reducing salesperson workflow from 5 days to 1 day.
Merchant form completion rates went up by 24% during the first round of pilot study. Salespeople mentioned lesser abandonment rates and improvement in form completion rates from 2/10 to 6/10.