Groupon fine print

Groupon's "fine print" was originally listed on deal pages as a joke, since there weren’t really any restrictions to speak of. Over the years though, it became a go-to field for housing restrictions, legalese, and customer-critical information that didn’t fit anywhere else on the page.

The issues

The Fine Print field created a crop of CX problems. The massive text block hid valuable details that would help customers make an informed purchase decision, such as:

  • Eligibility requirements and restrictions

  • Details on extra fees and such

  • Boilerplate legalese, which obfuscated the field to make it look unimportant

Customers also got the vibe that the platform was intentionally hiding important info from them…

The fine print gets you. I bought this Groupon with a plan to do X but it turns out with the restrictions I can’t. That’s really frustrating.

Groupon customer

…and merchants would take the brunt…

I had a customer that was so mad yesterday because we asked for additional fees. She said I shouldn’t charge her and because I should know that people don’t read fine print.

Groupon merchant

…which would impact the sales teams.

Merchants complain a lot about customers not reading fine print. Merchants don’t want to upset customers and get bad reviews. Some of them stop working with Groupon because of that.

Groupon sales rep

The fix

I did a few things to fix the problems:

  1. Analyzed customer service contacts to see where the issues originated. This involved reading ohhhhh, ten thousand or so chat logs and codifying the data.

  2. Worked with UX research teams to get customer feedback straight from the horse’s mouth.

  3. Determined which clauses were actually useful customer-facing information and got them into the backend taxonomy.

  4. Separated those useful clauses from the "Fine Print" section and place them within the main deal details.

Other applications

Prior to these changes, fine print was entered as plain text, making it difficult to parse and analyze. Incorporating fine print into the taxonomy enabled:

  • Analysis conversion rates and other metrics for deals with certain fine print clauses

  • Easy pulls of lists of deals with a certain clause

  • A/B tests with the flip of a switch

By structuring the content within a taxonomy, it's easier to play around with placement and layouts, along with the actual copy itself. Future iterations included using the clauses—each of which have their own UUID—as filters on search and browse pages, and creating friendlier verbiage for each clause.