Increasing customer retention, signups, and revenue in Vagaro's Payment Processing by enabling users to instantly receive their money for a small fee.
ROLE
Design Lead
TIMELINE
Oct 2024 - Dec 2024
OVERVIEW
Businesses have continually vented their frustrations with Vagaro's payment processing due to the long batch times to get their deposits.
To ensure that Vagaro can keep competing with platforms like Square, GlossGenius and increase user satisfaction, we wanted to give businesses the ability for instantly deposit their money for a small fee.
I designed the Instant Payout feature, which upon releasing in Q3 led to an increase in VMS revenue, signups, and user retention.
00 | FEATURES
Receive your money instantly.
Instead of waiting the next business day or even over the weekend, get your deposits within minutes with Vagaro's Instant Payout feature.
Schedule same-day deposits.
Users can schedule same-day deposits throughout the week, at any time of day, depending on their needs.
View all deposits and fees within the deposits report.
Monitor your deposits and fees easily through the deposits report, accessible in both the reports section as well as the Merchant Accounts page.
01 | BACKGROUND
Vagaro is a B2B SaaS platform that offers beauty and wellness businesses to manage their calendar, clients, inventory, and more.
Vagaro also offers a variety of add-on features depending on the business's needs, including credit card processing, which allows users to accept payments securely.
02 | CONTEXT
Credit card processing is Vagaro's number one feature when it comes to business retention.
The data shows that when a business signs up for VMS, they are much more likely to stay with Vagaro than businesses who do not. This means that increases in signups for VMS will lead to increased retention overall.
As such, we started to hone in on opportunities to improve VMS — the most obvious being the ability to instantly deposit your money.
Batch deposit waiting times frustrate existing users.
Users complained about having to wait a business day or even the entire weekend to get their money.
Other competitors already offer the feature.
Around 449 users said they preferred using other platforms, including: Square, GlossGenius, and Stripe because they can get their money faster.
66% of all current users would pay a small fee to use the feature.
In a survey we sent out to all current payment processing users, 66% of them were willing to use Instant Payout even if they had to pay a small fee.
03 | COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
It should feel good to get your money instantly, obviously.
Instant Payout is already a commonly offered feature in most credit card processing softwares. Therefore, I wanted to figure out what worked for other softwares.
The different softwares I looked at include:
Square
Toast
GlossGenius
Venmo
Key takeaways?
Transfer amount is always given highest visual hierarchy.
The fee is often in fine print and sometimes isn't even visible until you start the transfer process.
Mobile experience is integral - softwares will emphasize the ease of use on mobile.
04 | INITIAL DESIGNS
Early on, my focus was on visibility and layout.
Using web traffic data, we identified where in the software Instant Payout would live.
We knew that Instant Payout would be a big incentive and a feature that users would want easy access to. Therefore, I created some quick layouts or cards and banners and determined where in the software it would live.
I iterated on some versions where the user would immediately be able to type in their transfer amount vs. a card that shows the total available transfer amount.
Ultimately, I went with a card layout to better allow the user to see more information before actually initiating the Instant Payout. Additionally, the card also made it easier to understand certain restrictions (e.g. only allowing users to use Instant Payout once per day) later on.
05 | MOBILE DESIGN
Utilizing existing mobile patterns to save space.
I began to realize that having so much content on one screen would mean that the user would have to scroll endlessly to find what they were looking for and ultimately the deposit settings were taking up too much vertical space.
Version 1
Pros:
Saves a lot of space.
Lets user know what deposit type they have.
Cons:
Doesn't let them know their schedule if they have same day enabled.
Might not look clickable at first glance.
Version 2
Pros:
Lets user know what deposit type they have.
Shows schedule if same day is enabled.
Follows a common mobile pattern.
Cons:
Takes up more room than needed.
Table might look clickable.
Version 3
Pros:
Saves the most room.
Follows common mobile pattern.
Cons:
Doesn't show user much information.
Might be too unassuming for a first time user.
Version 4
Pros:
Saves the most room.
Follows common mobile pattern.
Cons:
Doesn't show user much information.
Might be too unassuming for a first time user.
We decided on a mix of Version 2 and 3, where we wouldn't display any information on the weekly schedule but still show the deposit type that's selected.
This helped save vertical space on the page, as well as streamline the process in creating a scheduled deposit.
Clear title and description lets users know what clicking on the card will do.
Showcases the deposit type but still saves room by not showing the weekly schedule.
First time users will see an additional banner that lets them know that same-day deposits are available.
06 | STAKEHOLDER FEEDBACK
Throughout this process, I was constantly reviewing with key stakeholders.
Every week I would review with our CEO and COO to align.
Additionally, the credit card processing team, enterprise sales team, and marketing were several teams that I collaborated with to ensure that they were on board with my designs.
Example: Our COO and CEO didn't like the fee showing up so often on the table. I had wanted to include it to remind the user of the fee associated, but they thought the constant badge was more discouraging.
When you're dealing with people's money, there's always additional things to consider.
As this was the first project I ever worked on that dealt with the Credit Card Processing feature, I made the mistake of consulting our financial risk team too late. They had a lot of insight on cases of fraud and risk that I would never have considered.
From their feedback, I drafted up a flow that would handle cases of fraud.
This resulted in more limitations and edge cases I had to add to the project, such as the case when a Merchant Account gets disabled due to potential fraud.
