Bread: checkout redesign
Buy now, pay later meets credit card, plus a checkout conversion redesign.
Bread, a merchant-first pay-over-time solution, allowed online retail stores to quickly add merchant-branded buy now, pay later options to their checkout experiences. I worked on the consumer-facing checkout experience that was embedded in online retail checkout flows.
The company was undergoing an overhaul to create Bread 2.0. The business wanted to take this opportunity to optimize our checkout experience for our Bread Direct merchants and business partnerships.
Lead designer for the project, owning all of UX research, design, and usability testing.
Designing a scalable solution that provides a range of white-labeling customizations from Bread Direct to Enterprise. Emerging partners want divergent experiences and capabilities, which impede scalability.
Standardize our flows and merchant customization offerings in order to scale more efficiently.
A cleaner & more engaging UI to improve the user experience, elicit trust, & demonstrate to merchants the value Bread puts into research, design & engineering.
Improve conversion through a more clear, transparent and efficient application process.
Improve SMB merchant sales by showcasing the most seamless, user-friendly checkout flow. Improve Enterprise sales by showcasing the most customizable checkout flow that builds upon their brand.
Design audit
I uncovered all the different screens, flows, edge cases, and inconsistencies within our current experience. I presented it all on a wall so we could see the state of checkout in one view.
Data & demographics
We analyzed our checkout conversion funnel, Looker data (element clicks, rage clicks, etc.), results from previous A/B tests, and what we knew about our customer base. Detailed funnel data is under NDA.
- Ages 25–64
- 64% shop on a mobile device
- Most applicants fall in FICO buckets under 500
- Most checkout customers: 700–799 (~6,000), 780+ (~3,000), 660–669 (~2,800)
- 200–300 customer care contacts a month about application questions
User research
I conducted all the user research for this project, which included:
- 33 user interviews (non-Bread users, Bread users and Bread abandoned users)
- Multiple rounds of usability testing to get feedback on our current flow, competitor flows, and early concepts
- Taking part in interviewing some of our merchants
- Surveying around 200 customers
Research findings
- It's easy & transparent
- Trust is key
- People don't know what Bread is
- Our user flows need work
- More context is needed
Archetypes
Based on the user research I was able to create “Pay Over Time” archetypes (I went for a “The Big Short” theme).
Journey maps
White-labeling vs customization
The company always referred to its product as a white-labeled solution, but this was never true. The customer will find out who the financing provider is post-checkout, and this is a source of confusion for users. I pushed for a new strategy that was based on tiered customization vs white-labeling.
Final designs
After multiple rounds of testing where we found that copy was the main aspect that needed iteration to provide clarity to the user and elicit trust, we landed on the below MVP screens. This was a very de-scoped MVP experience. Nothing was final, and there was a lot to continue to iterate on.
Deceivingly simple
What looks like a simple application is actually quite complex. Returning user edge cases, 17 versions of our terms screen, and multiple reasons for a user to get stopped or denied had to be architected into the flow.
