Pricing Flow Overhaul
Zola
Overview
Zola, an online wedding planning platform, needed to simplify how venues enter their pricing during the onboarding flow to be listed on Zola's website.
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Problem
Data analysts flagged incomplete and inconsistent pricing on vendor listings within Zola. This caused mismatches between engaged couples' budgets and actual venue prices, leading to abandoned connections between couples and venues. Couples searching Zola for venues were losing trust in the platform's quality, while Zola and venues faced less potential revenue.
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Discovery:
After meeting with the Vendor Support, Product, and Design teams, we realized venue owners were unsure how to list their total prices; some were including all services in their price, others were only including the basics. Some venues had site charges, others did not. Many venues adjusted their prices for high and low season, while others did not. The complexity of how each venue priced their location and services, coupled with confusion on what to include in prices, resulted in inconsistent and inaccurate listings on Zola.
Together with two product designers and the product manager, we came up with an onboarding flow to help vendors calculate their prices more accurately and list them correctly within Zola's inventory. After brainstorming a few options, we agreed on a solution that could offer the greatest impact with the least amount of work within a two-week timeframe.
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Solution:
We removed superfluous information from the onboarding flow and added the option for venues to choose peak or off-peak pricing. Once a venue owner made that selection, we then revealed the remaining form fields and added tooltips explaining how to calculate and enter prices. We also included examples for added clarity.
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Goals:
- Reduce abandoned venue onboarding sessions
- Provide guardrails to increase pricing consistency across all venues listed on Zola
- Improve clarity and reduce frustration for venue owners while entering their prices​
CONTENT DESIGN STRATEGY
1.Reduce cognitive load
CONTENT STRATEGY
- To reduce cognitive load, subsequent fields are only revealed according to the user's answer to the first question. ​
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- Based on info from the Vendor Support Team, high/low season pricing was the catalyst for inconsistencies in venue prices. Therefore, I opted to start by asking if a venue offered peak pricing.
2.provide context
CONTENT STRATEGY​
- I put placeholder text in every form field to build a consistent content system that matches our other flows, and guides users through pricing inputs.
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- I added context about why we ask how much couples usually spend with that venue so users would be more likely to complete the form. I offered two options for stakeholders to choose from: A label text that gives context, or a secondary link with a modal (one corresponded with Zola's content system, one simplified an already complex flow).
3.Clarity over brevity
CONTENT STRATEGY
- Although we were working with limited space and trying to reduce onboarding steps, including detailed info on exactly how to enter prices was more important based on our project goals and feedback from users.
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- To help venue owners with exactly what number we were asking for, we added a tooltip to explain the nuances and offer a clear example on how to calculate the price. ​
7. built-in guardrails
CONTENT STRATEGY
- I added error states on each input field to ensure users would catch mistakes before moving on and listing inaccurate/incomplete prices on Zola. For example, if a user accidentally entered the minimum price in the maximum field or vice versa.
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OUTCOME
I left Zola before the project was launched in full, but we were able to test it with a small group of venues. We received overwhelming positive feedback.
Venues who had previously needed help entering pricing information confirmed that with the new copy and design, they knew how to complete it without assistance. Venues who had never tried it before noted how helpful the tooltips were as they considered how to list their prices.
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