Neutral - Carbon Credits

Context
Carbon Credits is the first step in a user's journey with Neutral. It's how they fill up their wallet to offset their purchases in the future. Neutral has been featured in articles on FastCompany, TechCrunch, and was a Product Hunt 2021 Golden Kitty Awards Finalist.
Overview
For this project, I was responsible for conducting user research and competitor analysis. I re-designed the feature based on this research and previous user feedback after the first iteration.
Role
Product Design, Interaction Design, Visual Design, Brand Design
tools
Figma, Adobe Ilustrator, Miro
timeline
1 week
team
2 Product Designers
2 Product Manager
2 Developers
2 Marketing + Business Analysts
Challenge
Neutral users struggled to understand the first step of their journey - filling their wallet with credits
Neutral's current credit loading system left users overwhelmed with information, and confused about what their call to action was, resulting in a lack of paid conversion, and user retention.
Solution
A redesign that simplified steps, and made information easier to grasp
After reviewing user feedback, and conducting an audit of our current product, we redesigned the carbon credits feature. The new design separated the old design into multiple steps that focused on one piece of information at a time.
Current Version
Redesign
Impact

10%

Increase in paid conversion rates

260+

purchases offset with Neutral

$17.90

average wallet size
Problem discovery
Why aren’t people filling up their wallets?
To gain a better understanding of why users were not paying to offset or using their credits, we interviewed 15 users to gain feedback about the current version.
Narrowing it down
Our user interviews helped us find the main pain points of using the payment page. We narrowed it down to 3 insights apparent on the current design.
Defining the problem
How might we simplify the payment process, without sacrificing necessary information?
Learning from others
To understand how to guide users through the payment process, I examined existing products with paid business models and popular e-commerce stores. This allowed me to see how they presented information and steps to users.
  • Each product provided a clear explanation of what the user was buying or joining before asking for payment.
  • Signifiers were used to indicate how many steps the user would need to complete.
Breaking it down
Once I had realized that process could be split and broken up into steps, I redesigned the structure to separate information into new pages
Selection
Users can select the amount they want to add to their wallet. This step provides a clearer focus on what a carbon credit is and why users need them to offset their products.
Payment
After selecting an amount and comprehending what they are paying for, users can then fill in their payment information.
Review
As a summary of the two previous steps, the review page helps users remember the workflow they just went through and feel like they've finished a full task once they hit "finish".
Final product
Fill up your wallet with carbon credits, and start offsetting right away!
Next steps
Iterating, Iterating, Iterating
After shipping we were able to increase our conversion rates, and the size of a wallet indicated that people intended to use the product long term. Going forward, I would love to get user feedback on the changes again and see if there are any more areas of improvement that can be made for this iteration.
Final thoughts
User Testing
Our team prioritized improving and shipping this feature right away, as it was a major obstacle in converting users to paid accounts. If we had more time, I would have liked to conduct user testing with the same people we interviewed to gauge their initial reactions and see if there were any changes in feedback.
Convenience ≠ the shortest route
Knowing that people weren't interested in browsers extensions that hindered their shopping experience, we felt pressure to shorten and speed up the payment process. However, by condensing it into one page, we sacrificed simplicity and readability, ultimately ruining the convenience of the process in the first place.