
PayPal.com Gets a Makeover [UI] - v33ra
https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/home
======
sgdesign
I know bashing PayPal is cliché by now, but its UI is seriously one of the
worst I've seen for an internet service. Everything loads extremely slowly,
and every action is buried inside multiple layers of navigation, which only
compounds the problem.

What's more, you often cannot choose how many items to display per page or
even search by keyword. This ensures that you have to click through page by
page, enduring the slowness each time.

They're obviously aware of these problems, but the fact that they haven't
fixed them in years would indicate that either their codebase or their
organization (or both) is very inflexible.

Forget about destroying violins, for me this inability to adapt and improve
their product is PayPal's main problem.

~~~
GvS
I like new design. It's much better than previous one. It was slow and when I
clicked on "Log in" it opened new window. This one feels much faster and I can
finally log in from main page.

------
trg2
Hi. I work at PayPal. Really good feedback from everyone, so thanks for that.
This redesign has been a long time coming, and the team that launched it are
some of the most brilliant I've ever been lucky enough to work with.

As for the internal UI, that's changing soon too. If you're interested in
checking out the beta, activate in-store checkout with your PayPal account at
paypal.com/anywhere and you'll see the new account design. Still have work to
do but it's getting much better. I'm an employee so I have a bias, but I'm
also a customer that's been bitching about the UI for the last 8 years as
well. I'm really happy with the direction the site (and the company) is
headed.

~~~
meric
I like this that what Paypal had before, but I see one issue (on Mac Safari):

On the <https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/make-online-payments> page,

There is a drop down menu to select currency. Let's say I want to select TWD
(New Taiwan Dollar), it's "below the fold" so I've got to scroll down. I do
this using the scroll wheel, which I use almost all the time. So I see it's
near the bottom of the list (because TWD starts with a T which is likely to be
at the bottom of an alphabetically sorted list) and do a quick flick
downwards. However rather than going to the bottom of the list, the list
suddenly disappears and I'm no longer able to select my currency! Unless I can
scroll almost exactly the amount I need to, either the TWD option is not
visible on the list or the list closes. Even if I scroll slowly there is still
a large chance I have to try a couple of times before I'm able to select TWD.

It looks like when you scroll past the bottom, an instruction to close the
list is triggered, and then the window containing the page scrolls down. I
think that's the problem which can be fixed by preventing the drop down
passing focus back to the window.

~~~
ophis
works fine on: Win7 - Opera 12

~~~
meric
On Mac Firefox this is less of a problem - as long as it doesn't register a
mouse move while you're scrolling it won't disappear the list.

------
moe
The title is misleading. Paypal's _homepage_ got the makeover.

The rest of Paypal.com (i.e. the actual application) is still as terrible as
ever...

~~~
v33ra
it's not just the homepage redesign - the US customers should be able to see
the complete redesigned site [As per the official PayPal blog:
[https://www.thepaypalblog.com/2012/06/paypal-com-gets-a-
make...](https://www.thepaypalblog.com/2012/06/paypal-com-gets-a-makeover-2/)
]

~~~
studiofellow
I'm in the US, and I only see the redesign on the homepage, not after log in.
Maybe they haven't rolled the rest out yet.

------
TheKidCoder
Great, they redesigned the side of that site that is useless to an actual user
of PayPal.

~~~
veb
It's a lot of work to redesign a website, especially one with lots of weird
pages. Makes me wonder of how much of an undertaking that would be... perhaps
it would be easier to rebrand, build the same thing in a better way, with
their API.

~~~
fredoliveira
They've had several years to do it already. It is a big undertaking, yes, but
it's not like they don't have the resources.

------
rurounijones
"When it came to updating our website, we brought in an expert: You."

As soon as I read that I closed the tab. I thought it was pretty much agreed
by now that relying on the "wisdom of the crowd" is useless when it comes to
things that require specialised skills like design.

Honestly, I wouldn't trust me to design a nice UI, why on earth would paypal.

~~~
kintamanimatt
I think they're lying; the logo's not bigger.

------
Zaheer
The redesign is only skin deep. As soon as you log in you're back to the old
UI.

~~~
DigitalSea
Considering the amount of work that would have gone into redesigning the
exterior, I couldn't fathom how much work would be involved in redesigning the
logged in interior part, it's not easy to just redesign an entire web
application and when you're a site like Paypal the logged in view UI probably
doesn't matter so much because you've already succeeded in converting a
visitor into a Paypal account holder. When you're a site as big as Paypal,
you've got to approach changes like this very carefully. Having said that,
it's good to see design updates being made the old design screamed 2001 and
needed drastic work.

------
marknutter
I'm getting a little used to everyone on HN bashing every redesign they see
(I'm exaggerating, of course) but I have to say I really like this new Paypal
design. So much, in fact, that it really saddened me when I found out that it
didn't translate over to the app itself once I logged in.

------
fleitz
Same old beast, new threads. Once you get past the first page it's ugly as
ever. I think we'll see man land on the moon again before that thing gets
updated.

~~~
DeepDuh
Ironically, we could see THE man land on moon who (kind of) built up paypal.

------
mrchess
"PayPal.com gets a new landing page" is more like it.

------
treelovinhippie
I like that photo of the lake. The tagline should be "Want to access your
money? Start swimming!"

------
yaix
Fixing stuff that isn't broken.

One critizism. Some years ago, G started putting these little downward arrow
heads at the right side of words, meaning "click the link to open a menu".
That was great. It put the user in control (again) of UI elements.

Before, there was only "hovering opens menu", and that is terrible. While
moving the pointer accross the screen, all kinds on UI elements jump open and
vanish again. Its confusing, most of the time its anoying.

And Paypal? The put the arrow heads at the right of the menu words, but don't
respect the click convention. The menus ficker open and close again when you
move the pointer away from the menu word. That is not how the it should be.

~~~
corin_
> _Fixing stuff that isn't broken._

I haven't looked at this new UI much, but I always found the old one to be
pretty horrible, finding the right place for various tasks/settings was a pain
in the ass.

So while I don't know if this update does "fix" it, I certainly disagree that
it wasn't broken.

------
da_n
"When it came to updating our website, we brought in an expert: You."

I'm confused, is this a sneak peak or something? If not this seems pretty
disingenuous. All they have done is put a lick of paint on the front door. I
would rather they spent their resources speeding up and streamlining the site,
it is painfully slow and confusing to navigate.

~~~
josscrowcroft
I think you mean "sneak peek"

(<https://twitter.com/#!/StealthMountain>)

~~~
da_n
Oops, you are correct. I hang my head in shame.

------
georgechen
The new design language speaks "banking" to me.

At one point I was mistaken the site for the American Express site which
shares very similar color palette.

The design also "feel" very Square (payment system) like to me.

I am surprised this rebranding effort hasn't touch the brand mark logo yet...

------
mediocregopher
That grey text-shadow on top of the lake picture looks horrible, especially at
my resolution since some of the text overlaps the mountains which makes the
shadow stick out like a sore thumb.

Other then that, looks like your standard bootstrap clone.

------
ericcholis
This is great and all, not a bad design really. But, as a business user and
developer, they seriously need to focus on performance. Their api speed has
been rated extremely low (I couldn't find the source, but it's out there),
which has a negative effect on customers as well as account users.

------
Ygg2
Nice to see someone from PayPal here, so I have a question that is of interest
to me. Why doesn't PayPal accept payments from countries that are outside of
its PayPal networks? I understand that in the past you could choose to pay
even if you don't have PayPal account.

~~~
ppalavilli
Hi - 2 separate things I guess. One can still pay with a credit card directly
without requiring a PayPal account (we call it guest payment) but in most
cases it depends on how the merchant has configured his payment options. But
that said there are a few corner cases where we cannot allow direct credit
card payments (eg. Preapprovals in Adaptive Payments) due to credit card
policies.

Regarding accepting payments from countries that are outside of PayPal
networks, it really comes down to what is allowed by the local govt
authorities around cross border transactions.

------
kalleboo
Still feels like 2002 in here, 800px max width and all. I guess because I'm in
Europe? <http://imgb.mp/imA.jpg>

~~~
ophis
go here: <https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/home>

------
robmcm
Nice try phisher!

(seriously though, something like this is bold from a company that has been
trying to educate users to be wary of sites pretending to be PayPal!)

------
cynusx
I am glad paypal is taking steps to address their UX problems, it should be a
major priority if they ever want to reach regular uneducated folks.

------
zensavona
Imagine what they could do if they spent the amount of time reforming their
shonky business practises as they did on the new landing page.

------
kmlymi
Seems like the same illustrator for Porter Airlines headed this redesign.

<https://www.flyporter.com>

------
chris_wot
Be sure to tell those folk who have had their payments refunded and violins
destroyed. They'll love skin deep changes!

------
bryanjclark
"We don't make money when you send a friend $10, so we've buried that
commonly-used action in the navigation."

------
rbn
Their API should get a makeover.

------
anebg
Looks like the landing page for american express

------
usablebytes
I don't see any change at all, whatsoever.

------
conradfr
I like it. It's not really "energetic" but the color scheme is pleasant, and
look at the old page ...

Now the "you" part is unnecessary and quite demagogic.

------
randomdrake
Why would you use Twitter Bootstrap and not give any credit anywhere?

It feels you intentionally tried to hide some of the common Bootstrap classes
with your own names like "homepageHero" but went ahead and left some of the
defaults like "button primary."

Also, why are there 1500+ lines of HTML, mostly consisting of whitespace?

The design is just okay, but the source code and lack of attribution is really
shoddy.

