From Rial to Toman: Optimizing Pricing UX for Ozone Coworking Spaces
In this article, I will discuss how to improve the user experience for pricing on the Ozone coworking space website. Specifically, I will address the following:
- What is the problem?
- How did I identify the problem?
- What process did I follow to fix the problem?
- What solution did I propose?
- What other options were considered?
- How about today?
Ozone: What is it and what does it do?
Ozone is a coworking space that allows people to book a desk, either daily or monthly, and enjoy additional amenities such as meeting rooms, high-speed internet, conference rooms, a kitchen, a dining hall, and more.
One of the website’s winning features is the online booking option, which allows users to select their desired plan and date, even choose their desk location from the Ozone map, and finalize their reservation with the option of online payment.
Learn more about Ozone.
What is the problem?
One of the challenges that every Iranian faces is the difference between Rials and Tomans. A single zero difference can make a big difference in price. This can be a problem anywhere where payments or pricing are involved. Our website was no exception.
Problem: It was difficult to quickly and easily identify the actual price on the website.
This note is for those who do not have experience living in Iran. The currency of Iran is the Rial, but in everyday life, another unit called the Toman is also used, with 1 Toman equal to 10 Rials. For example, all of the following formats are equal to one amount:
• 1,200,000 Rials
• 120,000 Tomans
• 120 thousand Tomans
• One million and two hundred thousand Rials
• One hundred and twenty thousand Tomans
How did I identify the problem?
The first time I visited the website, I was shocked to see a 3-month Desk reservation for 18 million. I thought the prices were wrong, but then I realized that they were in Rials. I felt relieved, but then I thought about how a user might react to seeing such a high price.
I called one of my colleagues and said, “Look at this.” He took a look and reacted very casually, realizing the cost immediately. I became a little indifferent to the matter because my colleague did not find any problem and we had more important things to think about.
A few days later, I saw a colleague make the same mistake. He was reading the new reservation cost and accidentally misread the Rial cost as Toman. I thought to myself, “My colleague, who is more aware of the cost rates than the others, made this mistake, so it is possible that the user may also make this mistake.”
During lunch, I sat down with one of the people who had already reserved a desk and started talking to him. I steered the conversation towards his reservation process and what he had done. In the conversation, he mentioned that when he saw the price, the number of zeros behind it scared him for a moment, but when he paid more attention, he realized the correct price.
One of our largest numbers was 18,000,000 Rials, which seemed like a large number at first glance, especially for our users who, given the culture of the city, considered this cost to be high (even though this price was one-third that of cities like Tehran).
After lunch, I went to the information desk to gather more information. I discussed the issue with the people at the information desk and they confirmed the existence of several cases.
It became clear that this problem existed seriously.
What process did I follow to fix the problem?
I went back to the list of competitors I had prepared earlier and visited each of their websites again to see what they were doing. Almost all of them had listed their prices in Tomans. However, since I had seen many cases where the prices were listed in Rials, I continued my search. I checked the promotional SMS messages I had received and realized that they used the Rial format to make the prize amount seem much larger at first glance (such as: Win the grand prize of 1 billion Rials — 1,000,000,000 Rials for 10 people).
All of the banking apps I had also used the Rial format, but some of them had an option in the settings to change the format from Rials to Tomans.
Fortunately, four of my friends were accountants for large companies, and one other friend worked at a bank. I thought they could give me valuable information, so I invited them all to coffee. Three of them accepted, but the other two were too busy to meet in person, so we agreed to talk over Telegram.
Scenario 1 (In-Person):
I would start by asking questions like:
What’s up?
What are you up to?
And then I would continue with the story of what happened to me a few weeks ago. A story about when I went to the store to buy something, and when I got to the checkout counter, I realized that the price was too high. Because I thought the prices were written in rials, but in fact they were in tomans. And I was upset that there was no indication on the package whether the price was in tomans or rials.
Fortunately, our friendship was to the extent that if each of us told the other about his trip to Paris the other one would complete it to the end; and I had also counted on this kind of relationship a lot.
Scenario 2 (Online):
Naturally, I couldn’t use the previous scenario for them because I had little time to talk, so I decided to open the main issue for them and go straight to the point.
What data did I collect?
I collected some interesting memories and experiences from my friends. Some of them told me about customers who were confused by the difference between Rials and Tomans, while others shared stories about how they had misread prices in stores.
I also learned that people who work in accounting and finance are more likely to be familiar with Rials. Just because they use Rials daily in their work therefore the Rial format should be used for financial and banking issues that are highly sensitive.
On the other hand, people who are not in these professions are more likely to be familiar with Tomans. This is because they see Tomans used in everyday life, such as in stores and conversations.
What solution did I propose?
Since our persona was people who dealt more with online stores, and we were also one of these websites, I concluded that using the Toman format for our website could be a good option.
In the meeting, I started talking about this and presented my reasons and research. Almost all the kids on the team agreed with me, I say this from their positively nodding their heads. Until…
What other options were considered?
Until one of the team members suggested removing three more zeros from the prices, meaning writing them in the format of a thousand Tomans. This proposal was initially attractive, but I had some concerns.
First, I wondered why I hadn’t thought of this idea myself. Had I been missing something?
Second, I thought about Digikala, why didn’t they use this format? This format seemed much better!
I quickly checked Digikala’s website and found that some of the prices were not round and had fractions. For example, the price of a smartphone was listed as 13,799,000 Tomans.
If I removed three zeros from this number, the price would be listed as 13,799 thousand Tomans. seeing this case made me realize that when the discount code is applied, there are no zeros left to show the more fractions and we are forced to show the numbers in decimal form.
I shared my concerns with the team, and after some discussion, we decided to remove only one zero from the prices. This would make the prices easier to read and understand, while still allowing us to show fractions if necessary.
How about today?
Today, while writing this article, I wanted to get more data and understand whether we made a good decision at that time?
For this reason, I designed a very short 6-question questionnaire to get more data.
In this link, I have fully reviewed this questionnaire and its results, and I will only mention some of the results here. (The relevant article will be linked here once it is published.)
According to the data I obtained from two of my questions:
When an amount does not have a fraction, people prefer the format 120 thousand Tomans.
But when a small fraction is added to the same number, people prefer the format 120,500 Tomans.
Although it is still not possible to say with certainty which format is more suitable, I can say that it seems that we did not make a mistake at that time.
Thank you for your attention.
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