Perpay - E-Commerce
Marketplace order tracking and repayment
role & Scope
Product Designer
Solo Project
duration
3 months
skills
Product Design
User Research
Prototyping
Context
Tackling those big purchases through your paycheck
People don’t always have the means to pay for high-cost items in one go.
This is where the Marketplace, Perpay’s ecommerce platform, comes in: users can shop and pay for big-ticket items, such as electronics and appliances, over time through automatic direct deposits taken from each paycheck.
problem
Order statuses were unclear and buried in the app
While the current experience leading up to placing an order on the Marketplace has been fine tuned since the initial launch, tracking that order’s shipping and payment progress hadn’t been updated in quite some time.
As a result, most of the Marketplace's negative feedback was left by users after they've already placed an order, specifically citing a lack of clarity around in-app order and tracking statuses and order payment progress.
Some recent reviews...
I pay extra each week and I have no way of seeing what that extra money is going to, or seeing how many payments I have left on said item
’’
Every item ships separately…
Tracking is nonexistent, packages just appear with no updates
’’
Perpay took their first deduction out of my payroll check but I haven’t gotten any notification stating my products have been shipped
’’
sneak peak
An orders overhaul, complete with shipment and payment tracking
Research
Talking to users firsthand…
In order to get a better sense of user’s pain points and needs with the current experience, I drafted and sent out a survey to two major subgroups of Marketplace users:
Recent Marketplace adopters
with a first order placed within the last 2-3 weeks
Marketplace power users
with 5+ orders and one placed within 3 months
I also gathered customer support signals taken from real user conversations in Perpay’s customer support system to get an unfiltered perspective on customer pain points and to support my findings from the survey.
Report consolidated from customer support signals
After getting feedback from ~345 users on the survey, I then followed up with and conducted phone interviews with 12 users who stated that they experienced a significant setback with an order.
Renactment of me on call with users!
…and becoming a user myself!
While I consolidated my survey findings, I also made my first purchase on the Marketplace in order to experience the lifecycle of an order myself!
Pinpointing gaps in the current experience
After learning more about the current experience firsthand and through some of Perpay's most loyal users, I then made a comprehensive audit of the current orders experience to summarize major problem areas:
Marketplace Dashboard
Only “View all” is clickable
?
60% of surveyed users want to see how much they’ve already paid off - where is it?
Only shows 1 order at a time (this one has multiple products)
Order statuses aren’t specific enough
Orders Page
“Payment Periods” does not actually update
Tracking is an external link that doesn’t show in-app statuses
Price breakdown is hard to scan
No indicator that multiple shipments exist
Orders Page (cont.)
Every order is in an infinite scroll, with no way to sort by status
Tracking Page (web app)
Stacking multiple shipments for an order vertically forces users to scroll and click a lot
Users experience friction when returning back from this external tracking page
Tracking statuses are 4 clicks away & aren’t always up to date
Competitor Analysis
In my analysis of 7+ e-commerce competitor's orders experiences, I found the following user flow structure to be a common thread between them:
Entrance
Where you go to see your orders
Orders Page
Order updates first, past orders in their own section
Order Details
Order #, high-level tracking, and receipt
Tracking Page
Tracking updates, estimated arrival time, and carrier details
Orders and tracking pages in e-commerce experiences can also tend to be overwhelming, bloated, and have a poor sense of information hierarchy. However, a few set the standard for this redesign:
SHOPIFY'S SHOP APP
An ultra-simplified interface, breaking tracking statuses, updates, and order info out into digestible chunks
NARVAR
Clear order statuses at the top, latest updates and history and a troubleshooting CTA below
Defining the scope
Because this project could apply to and encompass a wide range of areas across the platform, I made sure to clearly define the scope and identified areas to prioritize:
In scope:
Marketplace Dashboard components
Orders page (grouping, filtering, hierarchy)
Individual Order Detail pages
Order tracking, including per-shipment states
Out of scope:
Order-related notifications
Financial underwriting-related outcomes
Late payments on orders
Constraints for Consideration
In order to balance an optimal experience for Marketplace users with a technically achievable proof of concept, I make sure to speak with software engineers and PMs to outline key constraints to design around:
Payment progress limitations
Although most users responded that they saw payment progress as "X out of X payments left", the complexity of the Marketplace's backend repayment logic meant that this metric couldn't be stated
External tracking data
Aftership is the main supplier of tracking data on the backend, so tracking updates needed to reflect data points that they provide
Redirecting users for shipment edge cases
Perpay doesn't have control over shipments after they ship and before they arrive, meaning that all post-shipment issues should redirect users to the carrier
Solution
An orders experience with more transparency around each stage of an order’s lifecycle
Some highlights include:
Clear order statuses, straight from the dashboard
Tracking and high level repayment statuses from active orders are now seen immediately accessible from the Marketplace dashboard.
Orders have clear hierarchy, past orders are in their own section
The new orders page organizes them by status, with active shipment statuses living at the top for easy reference. All orders actively in repayment are now given an estimated pay-off date, and past orders is also accessible with sort and filtering features for scalability.
More transparency around shipment and repayment statuses
Users are able to view a more comprehensive breakdown about an order, including a receipt, tracking, and repayment statuses, by clicking further into the orders flow.
Shipment delays and errors are now handled in-app
Delayed reporting of shipment statuses now directs the user to actionable steps rather than leaving users wondering where their shipments are.
What does this solve?
More transparency around users' orders
Updated UI and design system
Increased customer service efficiency
Higher user trust in the product
REFLECTION
Being able to work on a high-visibility e-commerce design overhaul was both incredibly valuable as a designer and also incredibly fun as someone who shops online very frequently! I was able to present this project directly to Marketplace stakeholders at the end of my co-op, and hearing their praise at the end of it made all of the work incredibly work it!
Although I focused on creating a mobile version of this experience due to my co-op wrapping up, I was able to hand my designs off to the design team for handoff. The new experience is expected to go into production in Q1 of 2027!
Want to see more?
[something to reflect on]
