Merchant Customer Portal

Overview

Introduction

Mulligan Funding serves as a provider of business loans and working capital loans to small and medium-sized businesses across the United States, reaching the milestone of 1 billion dollars funded at the end of 2022. Mulligan Funding prides itself in taking the time to understand each client’s situation and business goals to determine the optimum amount of capital they need.

This project aimed to initiate the foundation of a new customer portal for merchants to view their loan details, reducing the need for direct communication with customer representatives and promote self-service of common requests. Initial designs focused on features that were found essential by user research and competitor analysis; however, to reduce scope and have a minimal viable product, it was scaled down to included some prioritized features.

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My Role

I partnered with the UX lead as we both spearheaded different features of this initiative. My responsibilities included product design strategy, creating wireframes, refining visual design elements, creating interactive prototypes, and facilitating usability tests. We collaborated closely with the Chief Operations Officer, the Chief Credit Officer, the Head of Client Success, a product manager, and software developers.

Features Worked On (Desktop and Mobile):  Loan Overview brainstorming, Side Navigation, All Loans Views, Single Loan View, Profile & Settings

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The Opportunity

Obtaining a competitive edge by creating an enhanced user experience for merchants in which they can obtained real-time information access about their loan, alleviating and reduced the time client success team spends on customer service and support.

The existing experience for customers with active loans includes receiving monthly statements through email. Customers have also voiced concerns of only being able to know their current balance by calling their loan representatives during business hours. From a business standpoint, current upsells of eligibility for a new loan also only occur through email marketing and direct calls to the merchant. Similar to the loan checkout experience that I previously worked on, users relied heavily on an internal team, which negatively affects the scalability of the business model as well as customers perception of the product compared to the industry norm.

As of today, customers who have applied for a loan with Mulligan Funding have access to extremely simplistic portal with loan status and amount funded. Through aggregated screen recordings and direct user feedback, the need for additional loan management functionality has been evident from a user experience standpoint.

The Solution

The solution focused on designing a new merchant portal experience for users with active loans and applications. There was a strong focused on creating a simple yet informative overview page that included basic loan details, balance pay off, recent transactions, and a side navigation to easily access individual loans, statements, and support sections. The interface also incorporated a scalable and modular card-like design that allows for opportunities for marketing and different forms of engagement. Lastly, a mobile-friendly approach was at the core of designs to allow merchants to access any feature on the go.  
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Results & Impact

Merchant Empowerment

Usability testing demonstrated merchant participants felt empowered to have access to their loan information, real-time balances, and ability to make additional payments. Participants were delighted to see mobile-friendly designs as they all considered accessing  loan information "on the go" very important.

Operational Efficiency

Though this initiative has not launched, based on customer representative conversations, call time savings is an expected metric to be highly impacted. This will leave room for more operational efficiency and increased focus on other revenue-centric tasks such as clients near eligibility for additional funding.

Competitor Positioning

Like other foundational projects I have been involved in for Mulligan, the company's market position can be elevated by offering a digital experience that provides a competitive advantage, attracting new partners and merchants and increasing revenue opportunities.

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Design

Features

Loan Overview Page

A simple yet informative page with a modular design interface that gives merchants a high-level picture of their loans, transactions, and access to support touch points.
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All Loans View

Presents details of active and historical loans at a glance with the ability to apply for more funding if eligible.
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Single Loan View

To get a more in-depth look at a loan, a single loan view was designed to track loan payment details, balance and transactions.

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Design Principles

For this initiative, design focused on the following principles:

Be Easy To Use

Created a layout to allow for easy scannability to find information

Be Mobile Friendly

Ensured all features were accessible and visually appealing on various devices, especially mobile devices.

Be Supportive

Provide different options for users to access a support, either by articles, scheduling a call ability and a direct phone contact.
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Design Process Highlights

Strategic Vision and Requirements

Met with CEO, COO, and other stakeholders to understand business goals and long term vision of the merchant portal. Merchant surveys and interviews helped hone in essential features for merchants and helped shaped scope of the project.

Feedback & Iterations

Designs were reviewed by stakeholders and developers for iteration and ensured that we were building within the intended vision as well as to see any technical limitations that could have a impact on scope.

High Fidelity Designs

High fidelity designs used existing design system components to facilitated the creation of some sections within the portal. The modular "card" framework layout also allowed for a smooth responsive design adaption of pages and was praised by developers for ease of implementation.

Usability Testing

Usability testing helped identified the importance of a merchant portal for loans as well as give us the opportunity to test prototypes of the ideal portal we envisioned for launch. Task-based scenarios findings and feedback demonstrated great ease of use and a mobile-friendliness desire.

Conclusion

Reflection

Understanding Business Limitations & Complexities

Perhaps one of the most difficult things a designer can experience is dealing with changes in requirements, priorities, and overall direction of an initiative. It is important to take a step back and understand the perspective of the business and adapt to determine what one can do to move the project along.

Design & Product Validation

Validation through user interviews, testing, and other research methods during multiple points in the design process is vital for the success of a product, specially one that is foundational for a company. Not only do these methods give insights to what features are needed, but they also serve as window to see how important the product is for the user and the impact it may have.