{"id":6464,"date":"2017-10-05T08:44:44","date_gmt":"2017-10-05T08:44:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.instamojo.com\/blog\/?p=6464"},"modified":"2021-06-10T16:28:42","modified_gmt":"2021-06-10T10:58:42","slug":"designing-online-payments-indian-businesses-part","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.instamojo.com\/blog\/designing-online-payments-indian-businesses-part\/","title":{"rendered":"Designing Online Payments for Indian Businesses – PART I"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In the past, a simple computer would need an entire room. Today, you can wear 100 times that power on your wrist. Thanks to technology and the disruption it brings, computers have evolved from enterprise undertakings to consumer products.<\/p>\n

Back in 2012, when\u00a0Instamojo\u00a0started, online payments & e-commerce infrastructure were still enterprise services\/departments. They were beyond the financial and technical reach of micro, small, and medium-sized businesses.<\/p>\n

If you wanted to get an online payment gateway<\/a>, you\u2019d need to negotiate with the banks & gateways. You would need a team of engineers to integrate with terrible APIs. None of them would even talk to you\u00a0unless you commit to lakhs worth of transactions a month. Only big companies could afford to give their customers an option to pay online.<\/p>\n

There were no wallets, no Digital India, and our government wasn\u2019t launching a new payments app every month. Most businesses relied on cash & cheques. NEFT was a city-folk thing. Even PayTM was a mere recharge website.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"online<\/div>\n<\/div>
Today\u2019s Popular Fin-tech startups, back in\u00a02012<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Instamojo started with an aim to simplify payments and e-commerce. We wanted to make payments as simple as sharing a link.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Upload your file, put a price, and you will get a link. Put that link in your email, blog, SMS, practically anywhere. Your customers can click & pay. You\u2019d get the money directly in your bank account. It was that simple! There was no paperwork involved anywhere in the process.<\/p>\n

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Instamojo, Early\u00a02012<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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At that point, people compared our product to\u00a0Gumroad\u00a0& PayPal. We admired both. Gumroad did the same thing \u2014 sell digital files. PayPal was the king of online payments back in the day.<\/p>\n

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But over the years we learned, what works for the western audiences doesn\u2019t necessarily work for the Indian audience. The demographic, abilities, tech, language, mental models, regulations \u2014 everything changes.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

We gradually expanded beyond payments for digital files and now we manage more than just payments for over\u00a0300k businesses\u00a0(at the time of writing). Each day our customers teach us how to make our product and business better. While most learnings are domain specific; some had a\u00a0big impact, three stand out the most:<\/p>\n

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  1. Language & Mental Models<\/li>\n
  2. Structuring the product to keep it lean, and future safe.<\/li>\n
  3. Usability vs. Aesthetics, priorities for a young startup.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Mind Your\u00a0Language<\/h3>\n

    In early versions of the product, you\u2019d create an\u00a0\u2018Offer\u2019<\/em>\u00a0to sell on Instamojo. The\u00a0Offer<\/em>\u00a0could be a digital file, event ticket, or a service. You\u2019d get a link for your offer to share with your customers. Your customers could pay with their cards or net-banking.<\/p>\n

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    <\/canvas>\"payment<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

    We were careless with words, but our early adopters were forgiving. Most were looking for a solution like Instamojo desperately and were happy that we existed. But we hit a ceiling when we tried to reach beyond the tech-savvy audience and grow our user base to beyond 20,000 merchants.<\/p>\n

    For some we worked out fine, but a lot of people were expecting us to bring them customers. They were comparing us to Amazon & Flipkart. We weren\u2019t that. We made several attempts to fix our \u2018pitch\u2019 \u2014 \u201cYour customers\u201d, \u201cturn your audience to customers\u201d, etc. Nothing changed.<\/p>\n

    After talking to several existing & potential customers, we realized:<\/h3>\n
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    1. People who were using us said that they were using Instamojo to \u2018collect payments\u2019.<\/li>\n
    2. People who mistook us for a marketplace like Amazon or Flipkart. They were unhappy that we were not bringing them \u2018sales\u2019 and not \u2018selling\u2019 their products.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      \u201cSell\u201d<\/em>\u00a0&\u00a0\u201cPayment\u201d<\/em>\u00a0have different meanings. Words are important.<\/p>\n

      You\u2019re not going to be present in-person to explain what your product does; words do it for you. From landing pages to forms & buttons, words tell the user what\u2019s going on. Words tell the user what the product is about and what it can do.<\/p>\n

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      Words tell the user what the product is about and what it can do.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

      Our iterations with functional copy worked the best. After several iterations over the months, this is what Instamojo looked like:<\/p>\n

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      <\/canvas>\"sell<\/div>\n<\/div>
      \u2018Offers\u2019 changed to \u2018Payment\u00a0Links\u2019<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

      Offers<\/em>\u00a0became\u00a0\u2018Payment Links\u2019<\/em>. You create & share\u00a0\u2018Payment Links\u2019<\/em>\u00a0to collect payments. Simple! Yet took us over 20,000 customers and 2 years to reach here.<\/p>\n

      This was a small change in the product and a big paradigm shift that altered our customers\u2019 experience. How do we know? We never again had to explain why we were not bringing them sales and why there wasn\u2019t a \u2018Search\u2019 option on Instamojo. No one asked anymore.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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      <\/canvas>\"payment<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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      It changed how we pitched our product, and what people expected of it. Today, our customers teach us how Payment Links can be used. \ud83d\ude4f \u2764\ufe0f<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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      Another lesson on the importance of words & language came after we made a small addition to our\u00a0dashboard. We added a unit to display aggregate sales and transaction numbers with the title \u2018Last 30 days\u2019.<\/p>\n

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      <\/canvas>\"payment<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

      We deployed the change at night, next morning there was a barrage of customer emails and calls asking if we were shutting down Instamojo or their account with Instamojo. \ud83d\ude31<\/p>\n

      \u201cWhy last 30 days?! What happened?\u201d<\/p>\n

      \u2018Last 30 days\u2019. Last has a lot of meanings and the customer is always right.<\/p>\n

      A small change deployed under a minute made the problem go away. We changed it to \u2018Past 30 days\u2019, the confused emails and phone calls stopped. Words are design.<\/p>\n

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      <\/canvas>\"instamojo<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

      Rest two are choices that, in retrospect, worked well for the product. You\u2019d notice that the earlier versions of Instamojo looked right out of Web 1.0 world. It looks empty and unpolished as compared to how it looks now:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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      Instamojo Web Product & Aesthetics over the\u00a0years<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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      It\u2019s was a conscious choice to keep it empty & looking\u00a0 the way it did.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

      The choices weren\u2019t based on what looked good or what was trendy. They were based on priorities, costs, and resources at hand. It helped us ship & evolve fast, and maintain the product with low time & effort.<\/p>\n

      Structuring the\u00a0Product<\/h3>\n

      There\u2019s often a temptation to fill up your new product to make it look more \u2018mature\u2019 and avoid the \u2018emptiness\u2019. You try to fill up the empty space with features and complexity that your product doesn\u2019t even need.<\/p>\n

      Most of the decisions at this point are made on big assumptions with almost no data. Every item in navigation, every \u201csegment\u201d or \u201cvertical\u201d a product has is a decision that brings, even more, decisions with it.<\/p>\n

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      Keep it so simple that you\u2019re almost ashamed.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

      Products are like trees. They don\u2019t grow in a day or a year. They are constantly evolving to respond to their environment & interactions. If you fluff-it up today, there won\u2019t be any room left when the real growth comes.<\/p>\n

      You will have a lot of paradigm shifts as you design your product, layer-by-layer, over the years. Keep a lot of room for errors. It\u2019s easier to iterate and completely change a simple product. This emptiness is your margin-of-safety, the more the better.<\/p>\n

      During 5 years of evolving our product, we\u2019ve had no problems adding more verticals to our product. The product is still evolving today without any notable issues in this regard.<\/p>\n

      Usability & Aesthetics<\/h3>\n

      When I joined Instamojo, I was the first designer. And the in-house front-end person. For about 2 years I was designing & coding-up the product with Django templates (they\u2019re horrible), javascript, and CSS.<\/p>\n

      I had 2 big priorities:<\/p>\n