Small Merchant Checkout
Concept
We made a series of mid-fidelity prototypes for a small business checkout page for a desktop browser user. The small business, Haptic Labs, sells handmade soft goods and sundries. Their website uses Shopify for checkout and e-commerce.
Please find our InVision Prototypes here:
Research Questions
- How much background should be shown during checkout session?
- How can we build trust in a Continuous Authentication interface?
Methodology
Number of Users: 9
To test these prototypes, we conducted a 60 minute interview and Think Aloud, where we asked users to first go through different onboarding scenarios before we asked them to shop online on a small merchant website (Haptic Lab).
We created three different checkout experiences branded differently (Generic Store vs Citibank vs Mastercard) to test how consumer perceptions change.
Our prototypes test 3 various checkout flows with UI widgets that show data collection is happening, to various degrees. We showed these in increasing order of invasiveness, displayed on the home page and would either disappear, or change to a smaller icon when the user began scrolling/browsing the website. We then probed users on their feelings regarding data collection.
Findings
01.Version 2 was the preferred experience for users. Version 1 was the least liked.
02.Show all background information during on-boarding, but none for normal checkout
"I like to see permission and I like to know what it's collecting"
"I'd find it strange if it's collecting data in the background. I won't sign up unless I knew how it was working…"
03.People don't trust small merchants with their information.
"I trust my bank, or Mastercard, but not third parties for payment."
04.Social factors encourage adoption
"If everyone is using it, I'll use it. Because it's indicative of trustworthiness."
05.Friction in the payment process may be preferable
"The fact that it took some time to validate gives me confidence"
"I prefer a little bit of friction. Self control is a huge pain.">
06.Users have multiple cards and have trouble differentiating them
"If you could show a little flag beside the visual of the card, it will help international [citizens] because the last 4-digits [of the credit card number] are very hard to remember"
07.Users share devices and Continuous Authentication systems need to account for that
"If it's a family computer, or multiple users, whose account is [the system] recognizing? Can you differentiate with a PIN or password?"