Sole Designer

1 month

Web

Improving Swap to Increase Trading Revenue

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I redesigned the crypto swap experience to make it faster, smoother, and less frustrating. Users were facing failed transactions and long wait times, which led to support tickets piling up. We focused on fixing errors early, improving load speeds, and adding better progress updates. After launch, swaps felt more seamless, and errors decreased, but the direct impact on revenue was harder to measure.

TL;DR

Swaps are at the heart of our trading revenue, but we saw a growing problem—people weren’t completing their transactions.

We dug into the data, support tickets, and user feedback and noticed two major pain points:

  • Error handling was bad. Transactions were failing for reasons users didn’t understand, and they weren’t getting the right guidance upfront.

  • Load times were slow. Searching for tokens often meant staring at a loading screen, breaking the flow and leading people to abandon their swaps.

We knew that fixing these would not only improve the experience but also bring more completed trades—and ideally, more revenue.

The Approach

We mapped out every possible error that could happen before and after a swap. Then, we split the journey into two key phases:

  • Before signing the transaction (pre-swap) – The most critical stage, where small fixes could prevent swaps from failing in the first place.

  • After the transaction is sent (post-swap) – A time when users needed clearer guidance on what was happening to reduce confusion.

By addressing issues at the pre-swap stage, we could increase successful transactions and reduce frustration.

Challenges Along the Way

Like any fast-moving startup project, we had constraints:

  • Time pressure. As the only designer, I had to move quickly and make trade-offs.

  • Limited resources. Small team, big ambitions.

  • Evolving requirements. We had to adapt as new information came in.

What Caught Us Off Guard

  • Feature parity confusion. Since our swaps rely on a third-party provider, we were able to expand the number of supported chains for swapping. However, this didn’t extend to the chains we natively supported, leading to confusion. Users expected to find specific tokens in their connected wallets, only to realize they weren’t available for swapping. This disconnect created friction and impacted the overall experience.

Key features:

  1. Slippage alert

If a user set slippage too low (which could cause a failed swap), we warned them before they proceeded.


  1. Better progress update

Swapping requires multiple steps across different interfaces. We added clearer progress updates to keep users in the loop.


Final Thoughts

This project was about making crypto trading less painful. We made swaps smoother, reduced failed transactions, and helped users feel more in control. Post-launch, swaps were faster, and support tickets dropped. However, while the experience improved, the impact on revenue was harder to measure.

Still, better user experiences create trust, and trust leads to long-term growth. Even if we couldn’t immediately tie it to revenue, we knew we were heading in the right direction.