Klarna, in simple terms, is a bank. It helps consumers shop online by offering direct payments, pay after delivery options, and installment plans. Klarna provides payment solutions for 90 million consumers across more than 200,000 merchants in 17 countries.
Klarna’s site is a shopping site that includes over 200,000 stores to find the top deals and pay with Klarna. The site has many images and playful colors that catch the eye. The site continually promotes its app, which has more useful and creative features. Here is the site: https://www.klarna.com/us/
Klarna’s website is pink; it has many pictures, and as you scroll, you see headers that have images below them. They have different categories, such as Featured Stores, Top Deals, Black Owned Businesses, Women-Owned Businesses, Beauty, Home, and many more. The site has an infinite scroll feel, where you can continue scrolling for a long time before the site ends, and you have the footer with their information. Klarna would benefit from a design improvement because the website can be very confusing, and it can be hard to look for a specific store you want to shop from. It has a raw feel and design so that the design improvement can help with its simplicity, but the design can be more visually pleasing. Klarna needs a site that people want to go to instead of its competitors such as, Afterpay and Affirm.
Every company and website has a set of requirements that they need to hit or follow. Some of those requirements could be about how the site looks, how the checkout works, the different sections, and more. Another set of conditions are for marketing, and those requirements include social media marketing, merchant marketing, and self-promotion. According to Understanding Your Users, marketing requirements could consist of “features or functions that customers may want, that competitors have or don’t have.” Marketing requirements lack detail because these requirements are overarching thoughts that need to be tested and achieved in smaller departments. More specific marketing requirements include having the new merchants post on their social media about Klarna and Klarna will post about having the new merchants on their team.
The marketing requirements will affect users because if there are too many ads or overwhelming marketing strategies, users could be turned off and not want to use Klarna. However, on the opposite side, if users continue to see Klarna’s ads and marketing, then they are more likely to click Klarna at checkout instead of its competitors. Users also have requirements. These requirements can consist of testing the products before they go “live” to make sure that users can use the product or service and contain all of the features a user needs. If users aren’t satisfied with your product or service, you did not meet the user requirements.
Below is a table comparing Klarna to three competitors.
| Klarna | Afterpay | Affirm | Sezzle | |
| Unique Features | Customer service 24/7 | Search bar | Live chat option | Testimonials on the site |
| Design Strengths | Include many brands underneath each category on the home page | Menu bar | Inspiration section | Graphics |
| Design Weaknesses | Scroll lasts forever | Two footers | Constant image changes | Different size images and different edges |
| Core Features | ||||
| Top Deals | X | X | ||
| Membership | X | X | X | X |
| Merchants Sign Up | X | X | X | X |
| Different Categories | X | X | X | X |
Klarna compares to the other three sites because they are all options for the four-installment payment plans. They are rivals. All of these sites have straightforward designs that are boring. They all have white backgrounds with images and information and different categories for their merchants. This is all the essential information and structure that they have. Klarna compares to them because they have the same goal and similar requirements.
References:
Baxter, Kathy, et al. Understanding Your Users: a Practical Guide to User Research Methods. Morgan Kaufmann, 2015.
