Issue

When looking at how providers collect payment from customers, Booksy noticed that many providers who have the Booksy payment functionality were not using it to do transaction after a service was completed. Users were using this feature to collect deposits and cancellation fees but to collect payment after a service was completed. Because people were using the feature for some things but not for transactions, I was tasked to figure out what methods shop owners were using and why.


Process

When I started this project, I decided to target users who signed up for the Booksy payments feature. When thinking about how to approach this study and get the best results, I decided that doing user interviews would yield the most insights. The interviews were done with 4 people from a variety of health and beauty categories like hair salons, lash bars, and nail salons. These participants had also been with Booksy for at least 3 years and were well versed about Booksy’s capabilities and features, especially when it came to transactions and payments done through Booksy.

Outcome 

This study uncovered a lot of similarities on what other tools providers were using for payments and why. Most people said they use PayPal, Zelle, Cash or Square to collect payment. This is because Booksy has a much longer processing time (up to 2-3 days) for users to get their money. Most people said they would use the payment feature if processing times were the same day or within 24 hours. Another finding showed that people found the transaction fees to be very confusing. This was much more complicated than with the other methods they use. Furthermore, the other methods they use came with a lot of perks as well. Some perks were the ability to:

  • Easily get their 1099 at the end of the year for taxes

  • Save client payment information

  • Quickly and easily see how much they’ve earned for a specific time period

  • Receive payments through QR codes

Even though some of these perks are available on Booksy, participants were not aware of this because they don’t use Booksy to complete major transactions.

As a result of this study, the payments team worked to create faster processing times, simplify the explanation of processing fees, and even creating a physical POS terminal for providers to use. More improvements are on the roadmap for 2022 to further simplify providers taking payments through Booksy.