Online payments have grown in importance day-by-day for the past few years and have had a significant impact on people in their daily lives, simplifying things in the field of online transactions.
PayPal has remained at the forefront of the digital payment revolution for more than 20 years, growing into a two-sided network that connects merchants and consumers in more than 200 markets around the world. By leveraging technology to make financial services and commerce more convenient, affordable and secure, the PayPal platform is empowering people and businesses to join and thrive in the global economy.
Founded in 1999, it merged with Elon Musk's X.com in 2000, and is one of the most popular internet money exchange services.
Redesign the PayPal's website to enhance and improve the on-line presence of PayPal for the millennial
UI Designer, User Research, Style Tile, Persona, Business model, SWOT analysis, Wireframing, Prototyping, Visual Design
Adobe XD, Figma, Quip, Miro, Photoshop
4 weeks
Category: Financial services, Digital payment platform
Attributes: processing of payments, transactions thereby connecting millions of customers & merchants worldwide.
Competitor: Skrill, Stripe, payoneer, square, transferWise, ClearXchange, Pay, pay, shopify payments, paytm
Special Trait: digital wallet, a pioneer in digital and mobile payments platform
Audience: Consumers and merchants
Channels: marketing campaigns, social media, print ad. PayPal’s referrals through email, blogs (signup and referral bonuses)viral campaign
1. To make the movement and management of money as simple, secure and affordable as possible.
2. The core values are Inclusion, Innovation, Collaboration and Wellness.
3. To work together as one global team with PayPal's customers at the centre of everything they do – and to take care of themselves, each other and their communities.
To evaluate PayPal's products and design decisions, I used the SWOT framework to identify both internal (strengths and weaknesses) and external factors (opportunities and threats).
- Global Presence: PayPal has a presence in over 202 countries which make it the largest player in the electronics/mobile payment industry.
-Large Customer Base: It has one of the largest user base in the industry, operated in 25 different currencies. This makes PayPal a widely accepted and trusted brand.
-Offers multiple services: PayPal has a wide services base which includes: PayPal, PayFlow Payment gateway, online invoicing, virtual terminal, digital selling options, BillmeLater.
-Secured Technology: PayPal has strong security mechanism. the power to sell products and services cross-border with great ease.
-Ease of Use: PayPal is easy to use for the customers as well as the merchants. A merchant can easily set up PayPal
-Broad range of partners and alliances with growth in pandemic
- High Exposure to frauds: An electronic payments system requires a very strong technical support and protection system
-High Processing fees: PayPal has high processing fees over transactions, cards, Chargebacks and Card authorization.
-Multiple complains of undue freezing of accounts & payment transactions: PayPal has been accused of Withheld funds, freezing and termination of PayPal accounts. This affects the .
-Dependent on connectivity: PayPal is dependent on internet connectivity as well as digital literacy. This becomes a constraint in growth over emerging and lesser developed countries.
-Lack of efficient and satisfactory communication
-PROHIBITED IN SOME COUNTRIES: There’re countries like Pakistan, Sri-Lanka, and other developing countries that have restrictions
- Emerging markets of developing Economies: E.g: India is moving towards a cashless/less cash economy, Hence, a huge opportunity
- CRYPTOCURRENCY/Digital currency and technological advancement: Many online businesses and freelancers are using digital cryptocurrency to perform various functions.
- Huge internet user base with higher spending power
- Tie-ups with business: PayPal can tie-up with various B2C businesses in including itself in options of payment and thus increasing its customer base and money transfers.
- Reimagine the logged in consumer experience by leveraging the power of the digital wallet & PayPal's expansive payment programs.
- Power up the personalization/ more customization of the experience and offer financial flexibility
- Regional laws and issues/Stringent economic policies: In countries such as China, Japan and Taiwan there are strict economic policies which constraints itself to set up in such countries.
- High Competition: PayPal has to face major global competition from platforms such as WePay, Google Wallet etc. and local competitors such as Paytm.
- CYBERCRIME, Hacking and Fraud threats: PayPal faces a high threat of hackers and frauds and this becomes a huge threat considering the scale at which PayPal and the whole industry works.
-Banking services like Net banking and IMPS are services which are taking over the potential of Paypal. Similarly there are other intermediaries which allow direct transaction with banks.
Profile: Millennials
Demography: Young consumers ages 24 to 41
- Millennials- the target audience, in view of their ease with technology, their openness to change and their willingness to embrace innovations more quickly and enthusiastically than other demographics.
- Paypal is available to a percentage of millennials comparable to the most widely used tool: the traditional current bank account. The pervasive use of PayPal, available to 77% of the sample, is somewhat surprising, proving that it has in fact become a “mass” payment tool. Millennials are generally more comfortable with cross-border shopping
-Amongst all the new payment tools, PayPal is the most popular
- Paypal is the most well known innovative tool and 95% of millennials consider it useful. On the other hand, limited enthusiasm is noted for the use of smartphones as a payment tool, chosen primarily for small amounts.
- Security is the most crucial factor in choosing a new payment tool, followed by simplicity, affordability, spending controllability and, to a lesser extent, universal usability.
Based on my secondary research, I created a persona that represents the type of customer that PayPal caters to and visualized various aspects of their behaviour, core needs and frustrations.
TYPE: Verdana Bold Italic | Sans Serif | small-regular+big 16px weight:400
COLOURS: Blue primary colour + neutrals | monochromatic
COMPOSITION: Static composition
IMAGES: Digital illustrations
“This project aims to enhance and improve the on-line presence of PayPal for the millennial”
VISUAL DESIGN PRINCIPLES : Balance, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Movement
VISUAL MEANING: Calm, Trustworthy colours, clean & organized, sharp and modern, yet friendly and approachable.overlapping double P and transparent effect to emphasize human connection. Bold word-mark, strong monogram, vibrant colours and a dynamic angle graphic that increases user perceptions of trust and innovation. user perceptions of trust, youthfulness, innovation and energy. italics in logo reflects a forward thinking spirit
To plan the base layout of the website, I began to sketch the low-fidelity wireframes and turn them into mid-fidelity wireframes using Adobe XD
Based on the defined visual meaning and attributes, I created a Style Tile consisting of fonts, colors and interface elements that communicate the essence of a visual brand for the website.
Following several rounds of iterations, I was able to gather valuable feedback that I incorporated into the final designs.
Below is a comparison of my proposed solutions to the current PayPal's website.
I was inspired by PayPal’s italic logo, which reflects its ‘forward thinking spirit’.
So, I began incorporating the same spirit into the visual design for the redesigned PayPal website.
Layout:
Utilized dynamic angled images in an alternate order to communicate trust, innovation and forward thinking.
Typography:
For the heading, choose Avenir Next Bold Italic font since it looks modern, youthful, and approachable.
Colours:
The choice of primary blue and secondary orange signify friendliness, reliability, and youth. In keeping with current trends of UI, I incorporated multicolor gradients and 3D illustrations to replace traditional images on the website.
Information Hierarchy:
In order to surface the hidden information, I used informational hierarchy to display hidden info upfront for the user to discover.(eg: product family)
Following multiple rounds of iterative design, I translated my low-fidelity prototype to a high-fidelity interactive prototype in Adobe XD
At first, being a millenial myself, I knew making a finance website fun for millennials would be challenging. However, despite my nervousness, I knew this was a great opportunity to sharpen my UI skills.
The newly re-designed UI makes navigating through items faster, easier & fun to use.
Using the visual hierarchy and clear interface makes it a pleasure to interact with. Furthermore, users would be visual and functionally happy with the use of trendy graphics of the categories that expresses the visual meaning with no effort.
I learned how a fun story can be told visually by using clear UI, dynamic angled graphics, and visual hierarchy following design thinking process. This experience has been very meaningful to me and has given me more confidence to express visually and effectively.