Mercado Crédito: from MVP to Full-Scale Product — Mercado Libre
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How we iterated the flow of a minimum viable product and took it to a complete experience.
The product
Mercado Crédito (for consumers) is a new online payment method of Mercado Libre that offers financing your purchases without the need of a credit card. The MVP was launched in December 2016, for a small number of users who passed a credit score and have to activate the payment method through an enrollment process with cellphone verification.
The challenge
As we moved from the MVP to a more robust product we needed to keep testing and improving the flow to get ready for a major volume and variety of users enrolling Mercado Crédito.
In May 2017, we started having two big type of users: The ones that needed the enrollment process (auto-enrollment users), and the ones that didn’t (auto-enrollment users); and the challenge of making both understand what is Mercado Crédito, how to use it, how to pay and if they have to activate it; as well as delivering to them the right information at the right moment, making the flow more precise, complete and with less frictions.
That’s the starting point of the analysis of this case.
The situation
At the moment, we had two very similar flows where the only real difference was the cellphone verification process. This process was key for the Collection team, because here they can get a real and validated number and associate it with a person and the account. But also, this was the main pain point of the flow. More than to 20% of the users drop out the enrollment at this stage, so we had to do something about it.
Another important issue was the possibility for the autoenrollment users to arrive to the checkout process and discover the payment option right there without reading any information about it before.
We also detected that users with the payment method activated, but that never used it, were in this kind of limbo in which they didn’t have any active information about Mercado Crédito, and they forgot about it until they found it again at the checkout.
This was the MVP flow (without the collection flow):
With this panorama, we had to rethink the flow and make focus on:
- Landing page
- View item page (VIP)
- Second factor/Cellphone validation process
- Check out (CHO) flow
- Admin (Mercado Libre)
- Drop out users
- Post CHO
The approach
- Make a new cellphone and user validation process with less friction
- Show the right information at the right moment, in each stage of the flow
- Make the user feel that Mercado Credito goes along with him across the flow
To accomplish this, first we did some research: calling users that bought with Mercado Crédito and users that didn’t to understand their experiences, relieving information of Analytics of dropouts and conversion rates, and starting conversations with the Collection team to understand their needs and concerns.
With this stage finished, we started iterating with the Content Management team, the product and business team and the development team. The main goal of having a complete experience that makes the users feel comfortable using Mercado Crédito and understanding always how it works was on track!
The solution
To make the new flow, we focused on two stages: The landing page and the cellphone validation process.
One of the main friction points was this validation process, and starting from the question “Do we really need to ask for this here, and for every user?”. Initially, the answer of the collector team was yes. But with them on board we started to do more research about the other stages in the flow to find the possibilities to adapt one of those to include the validation.
We found that we can develop a logic about the information we ask the users in the CHO flow:
With lower risk users, we can take the information from the shipping step, where we know we have a valid address line, a real contact phone number and a name. And we can trust this information because we know the history and behaviors of this user and the credit score he has. In this case the possibilities of a fake user, a fraud or invalid information are very low.
If the user is a medium-high risk user, we will ask for the second factor verification only at the end of the flow to confirm the purchase. In this context, the motivations of the user to make the process are different, because here he wants a product and it’s almost there to have it; so he’s more likely to complete this step. Also, we are only bothering this kind of user and not all, and just to be clear, he has to do this just in the first purchase with Mercado Crédito.
This was a more user friendly approach to the second factor validation, and the collector team was okay with this solution.
With this and the new landing with favorites and recommendations approved, we have to fill the holes in the intermediate steps:
- At the VIP we included the payment option with a dedicated icon; a modal of brief information about Mercado Crédito in the box of payment options (with the possibility to access the landing page in case the user wanted even more information); and for enrollment users we started to show a suggestion to pay with Mercado Crédito.
- At the CHO, if the enrollment users didn’t change the suggestion of payment, it shows automatically first on the list the option of Mercado Crédito. For the autoenrollment users we included a tooltip to make sure no user faces the payment option without knowing what it is and how it works.
- At the Admin, we added a box of dynamic information with the state of your credit and, if the user never bought with Mercado Crédito, it shows general information about the payment option.
- For the dropout users (at the CHO) that didn’t have Mercado Crédito active, we send an email to remind them that they can finish the purchase with this new payment option.
- Post CHO, we send an email to the first time users with a congrats for starting to use Mercado Crédito, and with all the important information to know for the future after the product arrives.
With this new flow, the user is going to have a complete experience in which will be always knowing what he is doing, what’s the next step and how each stage works.
The results
On the first days of September the new landings pages were live, among with the VIP information, the CHO logic and the dropout emails; and 6 days later we had the first results: Taking the conversion of the previous 6 days as parameter, in the first week the new landings conversion rates improved by 45%.
We are looking forward to have all the aspects of the new flow on to have finals conclusions, but even though we have just begun implementing some of the changes, we are already having great results!
Disclaimer: The remaining stages of the flow are already in development and testing. During this process, we are calling users to find out how the changes are being perceived.
Thank you for reading!
Nicolás Alvarez Quirós
