Inventing NFT discounts for SaaS
NFTs since their introduction have shown significant promise to become more than simply a digital collectable, however, most implementations of these are either made in theory or currently in their very early stages.
In order to showcase a utility proposition for NFTs at Nansen, we would form a partnership with a specific NFT collection minter. Who would promote Nansen to their community and in return, their holders would receive some form of benefit such as a 20% or 50% discount on a subscription.
I set out a few rules and principles when I started to design this:
- The flow should follow an already established mental model for redeeming a discount.
- Visible reminders are necessary and should be redeemable even if they decided to skip the discount page.
- Clear terms and conditions during any part of the process.
Once an NFT holder enters the platform, this process will allow them to easily be able to redeem these discounts. For example, if a brand new user who enters Nansen is shown the signup screen they are presented with two options, Sign up/ with email or Sign up with a wallet.
When the user decides to sign up with their wallet, they are able to connect their Metamask wallet and authorise access for us to scan their wallet for NFT contracts to match our database of supported NFTs to show any and all eligible discounts.
To start offering this discount Nansen has partnered up with Cryptogoons & MoshiMonchi. The NFT holders of these collections will be eligible for these discounts.
Each NFT can be associated with different offers and discounts for which the user can either skip completely or choose one they are happy with.
Which would then direct the user to the checkout page with the applied offer chosen while giving straightforward options of choosing the method of payment through fiat or crypto. Payments through crypto will not interact with their connected wallet but rather with Coinbase e-commerce.
Introducing a hybrid approach between Web2 and Web3 is necessary for the current implementation in order to keep the process as familiar as possible before a full transition can take place, as the ideal full Web3 approach would allow the user to skip the checkout page completely.
The core objectives set out are to ensure the discount or offers or any other utility associated with the NFT is clearly visible, easy to understand and can be applied at any time even if the user decides to come back to look back at it before checking out, this is done by setting reminders displayed on the checkout page for unapplied discounts.
There are always edge cases to plan for when the user decides to skip all discounts presented, this would initiate the standard sign up flow where the user can start with a free plan and when they decide to upgrade, they can go select their preferred plan and will be presented again with a clear and prominent option to apply the discounts that are available to them.
Rigorous testing was conducted with a range of audiences ranging from users in traditional finance to users who are completely new to NFTs, all audiences found the flow straightforward as well as quite interesting that the NFTs can be used in such a manner. This further piqued their interest in NFTs and their use cases. Similar feedback was provided from the unmoderated testing where it was evident that users had a perception that NFTs are images with no purpose.
Usage of NFTs in this scenario will be the first of its kind in the SaaS industry and when leading by example it is necessary to showcase that a new use case such as this would still require the fundamentals of UX to be followed as thoroughly as it would be in Web2.
NFTs have gained increasing popularity over the past few years due to the ease of access and straightforward nature of its proposition.
NFTs on Web3 can introduce utility if it’s used and applied properly, which can usher a new era of NFTs to the mainstream only if it is accompanied with a good UX process.
I would like to give a big shout-out to Eduarda Delcourt who conducted the user testing and helped bring this feature to life.
