Gearfire Capital x Acqualify User Workflow Revamp
Gearfire Capital provides a buy now pay later financing service to customers purchasing firearms and outdoors goods on Gearfire eCommerce sites. They partnered up with Acqualify for data processing and the current workflow for the integration between the two is outdated and needs work.
📚 Overview
Team: Stakeholders, Dev Team Lead, UX Designer
My role: UX Designer
Project Duration: 2 months
Metrics: Total sales volume, conversion rate (successful application completion), Cost analysis
〰️ Current Workflow
There are multiple GFC banner ad placed throughout the product listing page that links directly to the Financing Capital workflow. The user is then taken to the 3rd party, Acqualify, to submit an application, which then makes an API call for an instant qualification result. Once the result is in, the user is returned to the Gearfire eCommerce site to finish the checkout flow.
🔮 Business Objective
Increase total sales volume from $500,000 to $3,000,000 using Gearfire Capital
Increase the conversion rate to go over 11%
Vet applications early to save business cost
Why do we need to update the workflow?
Anytime a user starts an application, the site makes an API call and Gearfire is charged a fee for every call regardless of the quality of information entered. However, the rate of completion for the application is very low which means, unless the applicant is actually qualifies for a loan amount and uses the service to complete a purchase order, Gearfire is losing money. So there needs to be a better way to inform the user about the guideline and expectations about using the Gearfire Capital financing option to vet applications early (if they do not qualify) and also increase the conversion rate so more people successfully completes a checkout flow using the buy now pay later function.
Research and Planning
There were some usability heuristics that offered some opportunity for improvement.
Bad visibility of system status - Built trust through open and continuous communication'
Aesthetic and minimalist design
Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors - like notifying the user the reason for not qualifying for the loan.
Competitive Analysis
I also looked at the competitors who have the “buy now pay later” financing model like Afterpay, Paypal, Klarna, and Affirm and found a few design patterns that we can also apply to Gearfire Capital workflow.
Clear UX writing to inform user about the financing process and expectations.
Clear hierarchy of information
Seamless integration between the eCommerce site and the financing product
Clear FAQ
Cohesive application process
Challenges
Gearfire Capital buy now pay later service is only available for purchase price over $500, which is higher than the amount required for the other competitors. That makes it even more important to build credibility and communicate every process with the user to ensure they complete the application. The application asks for the users’ personal information like social security number, phone number and home address. If the user doesn’t believe that their information is safe, it is more likely they will stop the application process half way.
In the current workflow, it’s difficult for the user to find answers to their questions because the financing popup provides little help in providing
Design Process
Information Popup redesign and FAQ revamp
Target 1 : Popup & FAQ
The popup that opens when the user first clicks on the Gearfire Capital’s financing ad banner is hard to read. Even though there are only three colors—black, white, and red, there are too many typography styles and icons, making it distracting and hard to identify call to action button. The FAQ page also has text that looks out of place and provides no way for the user to browse through the questions. The goal for this popup page was to introduce hierarchy. Since the page looks busy and text-heavy, I decided to remove the icons and clearly distinguish heading, subheading, and body text styles for a cleaner look. I also organized the FAQs page with dropdowns to help identifying the questions easier.
Design Proposal for Target 1
For the popup page, I try to clearly set expectations for what to expect when the user submits and application and uses the Gearfire Capital financing loan. I rewrote the tagline to be more informative. Instead of icons, I also added a subheading that reads “how it works.” I also changed the call to action button from “take me to my application” to “see if you qualify” as an additional step to further inform the user about what is going to happen after the user takes an action(click the button).
I changed the FAQ page’s questions to dropdown and used the same typography system to introduce consistency. This way the user does not have to scroll through the endless question and answer text to find the information they need.
Target 2: Application Form
Once the user hits the “See if you qualify” CTA button, they are then taken to the application form where they need to input their personally identifying information such as name, phone number, email, and home address. Typically, the UX principle points to breaking down the form to multiple pages for 3 or more input fields. Single step form is recommended for less than 3 input fields. The application form asks for 4 sets of information: name, number, email, and address. However, stakeholders alerted me that the firearm industry sometimes defy common UX rules as the typical user for a firearm eCommerce store does not respond to design approaches the same as other customers. We decided to run a A/B test for the forms: one multi step form and one single step form.
Design Proposal: Multi-step form
Design Proposal: Single-step form
Design Proposal: You are pre-qualified page
Once the user completes the application form, they get an instant approval notice.
What’s next?
The design was handed off to the dev team and they are running the A/B test with the multi-step and single step forms right now. I am interested in finding out how the user groups from different industry reacts differently to some UX trends. I will come back and update the test result once the data is returned.