Invest Ottawa is a non-profit organization that facilitates economic growth and job creation in the city of Ottawa. However, the organization faced challenges in communicating the full scope of its offerings and ensuring that potential clients are well informed about how to access and benefit from these services. This communication gap had led to an influx of inquiries, straining the organization's support system, and hindering the efficiency of daily operations.
Create a user-centered digital experience for Invest Ottawa's website that clearly communicates the breadth of resources, program eligibility, and services offered to entrepreneurs. This entails designing an intuitive, informative, and accessible interface that effectively guides users through the information they seek, reducing confusion and the current overload of support queries.
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"No one has a complete understanding of how the product works— it just does."
When I entered the scene in 2020, Shopify Capital had undergone so many team reorgs, that it picked up an impressive amount of metaphorical dust in nearly every corner of the user experience.
Operations and backend engineering had the best technical understanding, but no one could speak directly to the user flow, the various user states, the CMS, money disbursement process, and its respective legal obligations.
By building a better user experience that communicates Invest Ottawa’s mission and service value, trust with new business owners will increase, meet their needs faster, and convert more clients to sign up for services.
My role was central to enhancing the website's user experience and design, focusing on simplifying access to information for entrepreneurs. I analyzed user feedback and site analytics to identify and address areas of confusion.
My work involved redesigning the website's layout and interaction models to make program offerings and eligibility criteria more intuitive and engaging.
By addressing the identified challenges, there was potential not only to reduce the current level of support debt but also to facilitate easier access to vital resources for business owners, convert more clients to sign up for services, and contribute significantly to Ottawa's economic development.
My process started by taking a step back and examining the problem. Instead of tackling it with a solution-focused approach, I ensured that the process was user-outcome orientated. This required me to first understand the disconnect between the website and the current users.
As a product designer, my responsibilities encompassed crafting the interaction and visual design of the KYC process. Our team analyzed the data current of failure/pass rates and worked through some the pain points and needs of our merchants regarding KYC.
The initiative to improve the KYC verification process presented a multifaceted opportunity to enhance the user experience, ensure data accuracy, and boost operational efficiency.
By addressing the challenges of the KYC process, there was a clear path to not only increase verification success rates but also reduce merchant frustration, streamline onboarding, and foster positive perceptions of the platform.
The core issue stemmed from a discrepancy in the business verification process. A notable percentage of merchants were unable to pass the KYC verification due to mismatches between the business type and the full legal business name they provided and the information available in the Secretary of State (SOS) database.
→ 22% of sole proprietor merchants were selecting incorrect business types.
→ Many merchants who had previously onboarded through Shopify Payments, inaccurately identify as sole proprietors.
→ Merchants were submitting personal names instead of their full legal business names.
→ Inconsistencies in the submission of business names, including DBA (Doing Business As) names and incomplete legal names.
The initial KYC application form presented a significant challenge due to its absence of focused guidance. The form's static nature meant it couldn't adapt to the specific needs of different business types, leading to confusion and frequent errors. Without a clear, step-by-step process, merchants struggled to navigate the form, resulting in a high incidence of inaccurate or incomplete submissions.
The initiative to improve the KYC verification process presented a multifaceted opportunity to enhance the user experience, ensure data accuracy, and boost operational efficiency.
By addressing the challenges of the KYC process, there was a clear path to not only increase verification success rates but also reduce merchant frustration, streamline onboarding, and foster positive perceptions of the platform.
The team opted to streamline the merchant onboarding experience by implementing a guided user flow, navigating users through a step-by-step submission of their business details. By doing so, the forced flow aimed to minimize confusion and errors, ensuring that merchants provided the correct information at each step.
In the process of enhancing the KYC application success rates, the team developed a user flow map for each recognized and platform-appropriate business type within the US.
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The team embarked on tedious exploration of low-fidelity designs as a strategic approach to cover all conceivable user scenarios, states, and variants. By crafting sketches, wireframes, and basic interaction flows, this preliminary phase facilitated a deep dive into the myriad complexities and nuances inherent to various business structures and legal requirements across the US.
The development of an embedded document uploader marked a significant advancement in the KYC application process ensuring that merchants could easily provide all necessary documentation for a successful KYC verification. Acknowledging the myriad document types and formats required across different business entities, the tool was engineered to support multiple file formats and offer a user-friendly interface featuring drag-and-drop functionality and real-time upload feedback.
This segment will showcase the unique requirements of sole proprietors, highlighting key updates made to the design to enhance user experience and efficiency. By focusing on this specific user group, I hope to demonstrate the targeted approach taken to address the diverse needs of our merchant base, ensuring that each step of the process is optimized for clarity, convenience, and compliance.
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The revamped KYC application process, significantly improved the verification success rates, aligning closely with the targeted goals and even surpassing initial expectations. This outcome not only enhanced the merchant experience by reducing the complexity and time involved in submitting KYC applications but also bolstered the platform's efficiency and reliability.
As a result, the platform observed a marked decrease in user drop-offs and an increase in successful verifications, demonstrating the profound impact of thoughtful UX design.
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To understand the breakdown in the user flow, I laid out the site map and intended user flow for clients at various stages in their business.
For this case study, I am highlighting the user flow for clients at the ‘ideation’ phase.
Expanding on the sitemap, I combined the sitemap with my findings from my UI and content critique. I’ve found that this approach helps me to understand the breakdown in user outcomes and makes it easier for stakeholders to contextualize the problem. This allowed me to see that the homepage is replete with mixed messaging, confusing colour schemes, and dizzying content hierarchy.
Essentially, Invest Ottawa’s website is trying to do and say too much at once, with no clear direction to inform users to signup to access their services. For a user to get to the form page, it is overwhelmingly long with little incentive to signup.
To gain a greater understanding of Invest Ottawa’s pain points, I turned to other business resource centres for a comparative analysis. This gave me direction on better messaging, content needs, and information architecture.
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Next I looked at our current navigation items, various clientele, programs, resources, etc., and developed a virtual card sorting exercise through Optimal Workshop. This allowed me to see how users group certain information, how this information may relate, and what would make sense to improve Invest Ottawa’s information architecture.
With my new findings, I learned that the biggest issue was the incoherence of the homepage. Not setting a clear direction for users to follow was likely the main culprit for the abundant support debt. I was then able to go back to the original sitemap, suggest changes to the user flow, and reappropriate content to match accordingly.
Using my research and findings, I began to develop wireframes to:
→ Allow users to quickly identify the purpose and value propositions of Invest Ottawa
→ Improve the user experience of signing up for services, and
→ Allow users to quickly find resources through the workshop calendar and resources page.
Through a competitive analysis, I researched many successful companies who have excelled in different areas of event management, onboarding, and content strategy to inform my design decisions.
Once the low-fidelity wireframes had been reviewed, I created high fidelity wireframes to bring the vision to life. I incorporated more colours from Invest Ottawa’s secondary colour palette and leaned towards deep purple to give the company a more mature look and feel.
The homepage represents the top three personas identified, addresses their respective challenges, and explains how Invest Ottawa can provide a solution at each step along the way.
The homepage represents the top three personas identified, addresses their respective challenges, and explains how Invest Ottawa can provide a solution at each step along the way.
Information for events will be displayed with reader accessbility in mind. Only the information that is pertinent to the event will be visible on the main page. Filters include ‘host’, ‘topic’, ‘type’, ‘price’, and ‘date’.
Information for events will be displayed with reader accessbility in mind. Only the information that is pertinent to the event will be visible on the main page. Filters include ‘host’, ‘topic’, ‘type’, ‘price’, and ‘date’.
The first step of the onboarding process explains what users will get in return after providing their information. Next, the users will have one prompt per page with a progress bar to incentivize completion.
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The resource hub is a central resource for all website users. Emphasis has been placed on appropriate categorization, simplification of the UI, and implementation of icons to support navigation.
My process has taught me that defining the problem is more difficult than finding a solution. Steering away from solution-orientated approaches and towards user-focused outcomes, provides solutions that are representative of actual user needs.
Additionally, I’ve learned to approach my work as if I’m wrong. Going into research with the mindset that you know the answer, will prevent you from learning something new, gaining perspective, and perhaps most importantly, building empathy for those you’re trying to help.
My work is representative of an MVP, next steps include usability testing, further discussions with internal stakeholders, enhancing the visual design, and defining success metrics.
This is an iterative project, timeboxed to showcase the power of incorporating UX into the process of design. This will be expanded upon to encompass other strategic objectives of Invest Ottawa.
Our method involved constructing a comprehensive end-to-end flow map of Shopify Capital, requiring collaboration across operations, engineering, UX, sales, and product management teams to piece together a unified understanding of the service.
The user journey mapping exercise was a cornerstone of our research, dissecting the merchant's journey into stages —awareness, consideration, purchase, service, retention and advocacy.
We examined each stage through various lenses, including activities, user goals, actions, touchpoints, emotions, pain points, and opportunities, to paint a detailed picture of the user experience.
From this analysis, we prioritized initiatives using an effort-priority matrix, leading to the identification of two key opportunities.
Tailored offer pages
Customizing pages to better suit merchant needs and preferences.
Self-serve custom funding
Providing users with the tools to tailor funding options to their specific requirements.
By adopting a content-first strategy, we were able to develop modular components that could address the diverse needs of different merchant segments. This flexibility allowed for the easy customization of the experience through the interchange of specific sections to facilitate various experiments.
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The first major experiment focused on enabling merchants to customize their funding options independently. This initiative was pivotal in laying the groundwork for a consistent experimentation culture within Shopify Capital.
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The introduction of the custom offers module led to a noticeable increase in engagement on the Shopify Capital home page. Merchants expressed appreciation for the personalized approach, highlighting its impact on their decision to explore funding options.
Retrospectively, this project highlighted the importance of maintaining a dynamic approach to product management and the crucial role of unified product understanding across teams.
In the fast-paced world of fintech, continuous innovation backed by a collaborative, informed team is indispensable for delivering solutions that resonate with users.
Looking forward, the team plans to continue the experimental approach to refine and enhance the Capital experience. This includes further experiments and adjustments to align with the evolving Polaris guidelines, ensuring that Shopify Capital remains at the forefront of merchant financial services, adaptable and responsive to merchants' needs.
