99Bill, one of China’s third-party payment providers, completely revamped their website on November 17.
The new look offers a less complicated and more intuitive interface. Merchant partners are now divided into separate groups based on their sector. The whole look and feel of the new website is much more user-friendly, in my opinion, and looks a lot like the site for PayEase, one of 99Bill’s competitors.
Other major changes to the site include an increase in advertisements and advertising space, as well as the scrapping of some marketing activities, such as the free, slot machine-style daily lottery.
However, 99Bill’s change did not go smoothly as they hoped. The company decided not to notify its users of the change and the technical issues that may follow (and indeed followed). It is no surprise, therefore, that this caused quite a stir on the 99Bill user forums. Many users are posting and complaining about a severe slowdown in the site’s operation, disappearing links, inability to top-up their accounts, and even disappearing payments. Some of the posts were quite hostile, with angry users resorting to foul language. The fact that 99Bill’s service hotline seems to have collapsed under the pressure certainly does not help matters.
Here are a few snapshots of user complaints (click to enlarge):
From my own exploration of the site, it seems that some of the issues raised by the users are true. Speed is much slower than before on most parts of the site, and I encountered many error messages as I was browsing through it. I also called 99Bill’s phone hotline several times, getting a busy signal most times. The one time I got through to the voice menu, I was put on hold for several minutes, and then the other end suddenly hung up on me.
It will be interesting to see just how quickly and effectively 99Bill can fix the situation. Unlike some other payment providers, 99Bill has bet on a strategy of quickly expanding their user base. It remains to be seen, however, whether they can do so while keeping their current customers happy.
99Bill is one of the most aggressive marketers in China’s e-payment market; we will be covering 99Bill as part of our third-party payment in China series.
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