How to retain users when payment is *not* the last part of the process?

Question

I'm working on a project in government that requires users to fill in an online form and make payment for the service online, but that's not the end — users then have to do some stuff in the real world, including downloading and printing some now-finalised documents, and taking them to the appointment they've booked as part of the online application process.

The problem: in online transactions (most typically shopping), payment is almost always the last thing you do, to the point where the research participants we've tested with tend to switch off when they see that their (pretend) payment has been successful. It's vital that we retain users: while they might think the 'conversation' is over after payment, we know it isn't, and there's some important information after payment that we don't want them to miss.

(NB: it would be inappropriate to put the information before payment, because (a) it's not relevant yet, being about what they need to do next, and (b) users can change their form details at anytime up to making payment successfully, so we don't want them to download any documents until the details they've given can no longer be changed)

Are there any examples out there (ideally good ones, but I'll take what I can get) of online processes where payment is not the last thing? Or any tricks to stop people from dropping out? This isn't e-commerce in its usual sense; the experience will be worse for everyone (customers and government) if customers pay but don't see the information after that about what they need to do next.

Thanks in advance :)

Answer 1

Amazon's process keep you informed of both the entire process and the step you are currently completing :

A suggestion could be :

• to inform your users at the beginning of the process and also before they start the payment that there will be another key step after that
• to always display an Amazon-like path and current step
• to send an email to your users once the payment has been completed (right away or after a few minutes if there is evidence that they have not completed the last step) with an easy and possibly one-click action to help them complete the last step, such as a "print your documents" link.

Railway companies sometimes do a great job here. Here is an example email you receive when you buy an e-ticket that needs to be printed. The extract says "You chose the e-ticket service. Click on "Imprimer" to download and print your ticket [...]".

Answer 2

One way is to show the users a message in bold text (probably even using highlighting) that the process is not completed and there is still a couple more things to be done.

Secondly, if you think warning message might spook the user, you could display a progress bar at the top of the page from a step before the payment step until they complete the whole process at the last step which would be after payment step. Make sure that the progress bar is evidently visible to the user. If you notice similar kind of progress bar is shown even on the amazon shopping site, its just that they are displayed in a very subtle way, wherein for your case you might have to display it more evidently.

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Answer 3

users then have to do some stuff in the real world, including downloading and printing some now-finalised documents, and taking them to the appointment they've booked as part of the online application process.

Wouldn't that be similar to Print at Home Tickets that most ticketing agencies and theme parks offer? E.g. Legoland California's process is like this

Shortly after purchasing your Print at Home tickets, you will receive an email confirmation with a summary of your order including a PDF attachment containing your tickets (note this process can take up to 90 minutes).

I think the concept of Print-At-Home tickets is known to many users, so maybe you could try a similar wording in order to have them "get" the idea of having to perform an additional task.