Evaluative User Research — Paytm
This is the summary of research which was carried out to evaluate the user experience of the PayTM app.
The target user group was working professionals with 35+ years of age. There were 5 users interviewed with an average age of 44 years.
PayTM is an Indian e-commerce payment system and digital wallet company which uses a mobile application and a website to interact with its users.
The users were asked some basic questions about their payment and shopping behaviours. There were 3 tasks given to each of them.
Tasks:
- An amount of Rs.50 was transferred to their PayTM account. They were asked to return this amount using the mobile app.
- To check the wallet balance on the mobile app.
- To search for their favourite brand of jeans on PayTM mobile app.
Insights and pain points obtained by observing the users and interviewing them are as follows:
Online payment behaviour
All the participants reported that they are not comfortable making online payments via their mobiles. They preferred making transactions from their laptops as they felt it is less prone to malware and viruses and is more secure. They browse for products on phone but make payments via laptop preferably using a debit/credit card or net banking.
They preferred making cash payments wherever possible. The users used PayTM only because it was the most popular app and doesn’t involve bank transactions in every payment done. They used it mainly for small transactions where small change is required.
A user said that she usually did her payments while travelling.
Usage
Out of the various services provided by PayTM, the target users mostly used only P2P payments. Bill payment was also used by 2 out of 5 users. Other usages included booking movie tickets, making uber payments, payment at small shops and eating joints. Mainly, the motivation behind using PayTM was to do away with small transactions where a change in cash was difficult. A user had this habit of exploring the apps he is using and that is how he came across the feature where he could pay his LIC premiums via PayTM using his credit card which otherwise cost him an extra percentage of the surcharge. But other users couldn’t. On telling about this feature to other users everyone wanted to try it out as they thought it is very useful. But it is very difficult to find out what are the various services the app provides.
Also, users didn’t want to lock a lot of money in their wallets as they cannot use it anywhere else apart from PayTM supported transactions. Also, they find no monetary benefit in putting their money in their wallet. A user suggested that interest can be provided on the money that they put in their wallet like what banks do.
Online shopping behaviour
4 out of 5 participants reported that they don’t prefer shopping for apparels and footwear online, mainly due to issues with fitting. They preferred shopping experience offline. Online shopping was only done when there were time constraints.
Most people preferred going to Amazon or Flipkart for shopping as they were well-established ones. Users landed on to new websites only via ads in social media or through google results.
Generally, people knew what they wanted to buy and directly searched for it. Very few of them enjoyed window shopping in their free time.
Notifications and emails
Users had reported that their inbox is full of receipts and offers from so many apps that ultimately nothing is read. The sole purpose of sending the email goes to vain. Similar is the case with the notifications. When asked whether they are interested in reading them the answer was a major yes. The users were interested in the information being sent but they neither had the time nor wanted to put effort to go through the emails and notifications being sent. A user wished for a notification manager that digests all the information and presents a personalized summary.
Cashback and discounts
As most people are motivated by cashback and discounts they get attracted to services that provide huge offers. But as they don’t have much time and are not very tech savvy, they find it very difficult to search for cashback and discounts. Participants either asked their husband or children to search for offers before making any payment.
App Usability issues
1. QR Code & Scanner
When asked to do a P2P money transfer, all the users preferred to do it via saved contacts list or by entering the phone number explicitly. 4 out of 5 people didn’t even know that they can do payments via QR code also and that every account is provided with a QR code which can be saved and shared with users.
On asking the users to find where can they find the QR code associated with their account only 1 out of 5 could find out.
Also, no one had ever noticed the flash and gallery options provided in the QR code scanner area. It had been very conveniently ignored and when told about it, everyone was amazed.
2. Search and catalogue
On asking to search for their favourite brand of jeans, most people had used the catalogue path. Users could find out the right path to the jeans section except for a person who had eyesight issues. He used the hit and trial method to get to the correct category. And only 1 out of 5 participants used the search box to directly search the item.
One of the users also mentioned that the main reason for not using PayTM to shop is that she finds the catalogue very cluttered. It feels as if everything is placed in one place.
3. Accessibility
One of the users had an eyesight problem and he had forgotten to wear his glasses. It was a struggle for him to use the app as he had to strain a lot and he couldn’t read the text and identify icons properly. When he was trying to select the contact from the contact list to make payment, he accidentally was redirected to WhatsApp where he started searching for the contact. This was because he couldn’t read the texts properly and his view wasn’t clear. He came back and had to ultimately enter the number manually.
Another issue was reported by a user where her 1-year old child while fiddling with the app, booked a club membership in an eating joint and made the payment. She later had to cancel the membership. Her mind was blown and couldn’t figure out what had happened exactly.
4. KYC
2 out of 5 participants had stopped using PayTM because they hadn’t done the KYC yet. So now they ask their family members or friends to make payment on their behalf. Time
constraint was reported as one of the reasons for not doing it. The second reason was that the users were not comfortable in providing their personal details to random people.
5. Network issues
While doing tasks participants reported that many-a-times due to network issues an ongoing transaction got stuck. They get confused whether the transaction was successful or not. Should they go back from that step or wait till the success message appears. As a result, they either must restart the whole transaction, or they abort it.
6. Passbook
No notification is provided when an amount is received. Users must always go through their transactions in the passbook to confirm the receipt of the payment.
Also, it’s difficult to view all the debit or credit transactions in one go. There is a filter that has been provided in the passbook which enables the user to do so, but it doesn’t click on the first time.
