3 Sided Coin Designs a New Checkout for Urban Company

The Client

UrbanClap, now Urban Company, is a hyperlocal home-services marketplace. It is the fourth most downloaded Apple app in India and has over 10 million downloads in Google’s Play Store.

The Challenge

Urban Company reached out to Bengaluru-based studio 3 Sided Coin to re-design their checkout flow for booking services. Their goals were:

1. Make the check-out quicker and more seamless for users, thereby increasing conversions and number of bookings
2. Increase trust in the brand during the checkout flow

The Process

3 Sided Coin’s process included:

• Immersing themselves in existing quantitative data around the time and number of interactions needed to check out
• Studying qualitative data from user interviews 
• Conducting interviews with the Urban Company product team.

After an in-depth analysis, the 3 Sided Coin team started iterating wireframes (starting with good old pen and paper)

The Solution

After iterating five sets of wireframes, 3 Sided Coin proposed a progressive implementation approach. This meant that the product team could release new features gradually in two phases, with the easiest-to-implement incorporated fastest.

1. Service Provider + Time Slot

A key finding was that after users selected a service provider, they would be informed on the next screen if the time-slot for their service provider was not available. This was a frustrating experience. The solution combines the two screens, so that users are able to see real-time availability of their preferred service providers at a glance. If one provider does not have open slots or has high-demand pricing, it is now very easy to check another service provider’s schedule with minimum effort and no further interaction.

Figuring out how to match users’ requirements with multiple service providers in the most efficient way was a problem quite unique to Urban Company and also the challenge that was the most exciting to solve. Unusually so, this high-priority recommendation was also the easiest to implement.

Tejas Bhatt, Co-founder, 3 Sided Coin

2. Location

Five out of six users had only one address on their account. The decision was taken to pre-select the address for returning users, instead of asking them to fill it in every time. Users are taken directly to the service provider and time-slot screen, skipping the intermediate screen.

3. Payment Method

The last-used method of payment for returning users was also pre-selected, which resulted in another screen being eliminated. If users wished to, they could change method of payment at the end of the checkout flow.

The Results

1. Other than decreasing time to complete a goal, combining the service provider and time-slot screens also introduced a greater degree of transparency into the checkout flow, thereby increasing trust.
2. Throughout the re-designed flow, the options selected by the user are displayed to provide visual reassurance, again an important measure for new users to build trust.
3. Transparency was also increased by showing updated prices prominently during the checkout. If any surge pricing or partial payments are applied, users are informed immediately. There are no unpleasant surprises!

With inputs from Manaal Oomerbhoy, UX & Content Writer, 3 Sided Coin