Tradesy Earnings & Site Credit

Project Overview

Question: How can we encourage users to participate in both the buying and selling sides of the marketplace?

Opportunity: On average, peer to peer sellers were withdrawing their funds and then spending 25% or more of their earnings on Tradesy within the following 30 days.

Idea: Incentivize sellers to keep their earnings on Tradesy with a new bonus program. Sellers can earn this bonus by converting their earnings into site credit to be spent on Tradesy. The bonus was designed to be a 10% increase on the total earnings converted.

Example: Convert $1,000.00 of available earnings into site credit, and Tradesy will give you an extra $100.00 of site credit.

Feature Location

The natural fit for this feature was the page where users withdraw the earnings from their sales. At the time this section was called “Manage Payouts.”

In order to integrate the new bonus feature into the “Manage Payouts” page, we needed to redesign the page. It hadn’t been updated since Tradesy was launched. We needed to make it mobile friendly, restructure the information of “Site Credit, Pending Earnings, and Available” to accommodate the various interface states that we would display to effectively communicate the parameters of the bonus program.

Design Process

This project had a compressed design process. A competitive audit would be my normal starting place, however this would have taken longer to audit than we had time for. Instead I provided an array design proposals that we could pursue. The proposals ranged in development effort from something that we could add with minimal lift all the way up to a full page redesign. We then consulted with the team to align on what we had time and resources to accomplish.

After our initial design cycle the team agreed that it was important to prioritize clarity of the bonus offer. To accomplish this it was important to restructure and update all the information related to the following areas, Pending Earnings, Available Earnings, and Site Credit.

We continued to refine designs with a few key principles as our guide. 

Clarity of information: Since over 95% of sellers with a sale would eventually move through this flow, it was important to insure the information was easily digestible.

Scanability: We knew there would be a lot of information that would need to be presented. This drove the desire to display the sections in a way that enabled sellers to scan for what information was relevant to their needs.

Responsiveness: This project was only slated to be developed for responsive web. On iOS we utilized a web view. Insuring that the designs adapted easily between all break points was vital to a successful redesign.

Top constraints we needed to design for:

• Bonuses would only be available for a limited time. So we would need to communicate when they are expiring and account for multiple bonuses with various expirations.
• It would not be possible to convert a portion of your available earnings. Users would only be able to convert 100% of their available earnings.
• Once a users available earnings were converted to site credit, it would not be possible to convert the earnings back into available earnings. The team took a lot of care in crafting this messaging. It was a delicate balance. If we over communicated the information it would appear as though we were warning sellers against this action. If we under communicated this information, we might generate an overwhelming number of member care contacts with sellers trying to reverse the action.

Solution

The final solution renamed and organized the three various fund categories into a vertical order. Starting with “Pending Earnings” since it was most often the first place that earnings would show up for users. Followed by “Available Earnings.” This section held the most complexity. We needed to display two options. One for the site credit bonus and another for withdrawing your funds to a bank account. Within both options we choose to display a short break down of what that option meant. We felt strongly that it was important for users to be able to weigh both options without the need to open a modal or expand a section. This did mean that we ended up with a large amount of copy in a small area. The risk is that this generates an bit of an overwhelming experience, however we felt it created clarity and encouraged sellers to review the information carefully before selecting an option.

After sellers pressed/tapped on the “Get Site Credit” button they would see a modal with a overview of the action with a disclaimer under the button explaining the terms of this action.

Finally when they finish converting their funds to site credit, they can see that reflected in the updated dashboard.