The issue with withdrawing balance on Mercari

When a user made a sale on Mercari, the earnings becomes their ‘balance’ on the platform. Users then withdraw their balance to their bank account. When user withdraws balance to their bank account, Mercari pays a payment processing fee to the bank. In order to save on payment processing cost, we want users to keep their balance within Mercari. Then user can use their balance to make a purchase on Mercari. (which is good for a C2C marketplace because a user becomes more valuable to use when they’re both a buyer and a seller.)

Growth loops: Why balance is important for the ecosystem

Having balance in the same ecosystem can motivate users to be invested in the platform. This is because the balance can be a trigger for them to either buy items or increase their sales to get more balance. This becomes a reward for users (purchasing items using balance or seeing balance grow). And if you do this again and again, it feeds into users’ investment of the product.

Identify areas to surface balance, with buy intention in mind

From the very beginning working on this project, I was aware that when users withdraw balance from Mercari to their bank account, Mercari absorbs the transaction fee. If we highlighted balance where users have a weaker buy intent, it might trigger more balance transfers = more money lost on Mercari. Because of that, finding the right balance to surface information became the crucial first step (pun intended).

To better identify potential surfacing areas, I mapped out a flow that focuses on buy intention.

Explorations

After mapping out the flow, I started exploring some initial concepts to further present balance. With back and forth feedback from designers and PM, I’ve decided to focus on the item detail page touchpoint because the timing is most appropriate to make informed purchasing decision.

I further explored the banner design and came up with two variants. A static component that directly lists out final price a user would pay using balance (and coupon if applicable), an expandable component that provides breakdown of discount items used upon clicking.

Multivariant testing result

With the two designs and the control group, we quickly launched a multivariant testing to all users with balance to better understand how they like the information to be presented. 33% of balance holders will see original screen, 33% of users will see V1, and the rest 33% will see V2. Partnered with a business analyst, PM and I closely monitored the data for one week.

The data suggested having the breakdown of balance and subtotal was especially useful, urging users to use their balance more.

Design for importance

And we hide the rest.
Expandable component enables sharing only necessary information upfront. While clicking, users can still access the breakdown of their discounts.

Design for clear pricing

Previously, the price information on the item detail page was messy, contributing to heavy cognitive load. Part of the project effort was to improve the information architecture. Here are the major revamp of the pricing section:

• Consolidated similar content and removed the noise

• Aligned visual and content between app and web

Design for transparency

When it comes to pricing, users care about transparency just as much as the final price. When the component is open, it shows all the breakdown for users. On Mercari, there are several price reduction mechanisms: balance, coupon, and credits. By being transparent of what method is taken into calculation, it helps user set better pricing expectation and feel more confident of their purchasing decision.

Scenario mapping for developers

Partnering with a content designer, we mapped out copy variants for different scenarios. This was especially helpful for engineers to work on surfacing balance copy and logic.