Rethinking how traders exit their positions
About Groww
Groww is an India-based investing and trading platform, similar to Robinhood, serving millions of users and offering stocks, F&O, and other investment products. Most traders on Groww are option buyers who profit from sudden moves in market.
Core problem
Exiting a trade required users to do several steps, and the price of an option changes every 0.3 seconds, which made it difficult for users to book profits at the right price. 70% of all trades were exited within 15 minutes.
I wanted to address the needs of these option traders who wanted to act quickly and book profits at the right moment.
Solution overview
I designed Fast Exit, a feature that lets users quickly exit trades without leaving their current position. Research showed that tracking returns during the exit process is essential, so I developed a layered gesture based solution that enables one-click exits from the positions tab.
Impact
MTU
600,000+
DTU
50,000+
Retention • Week 7
38%
My Role
Solo product designer owning the problem working alongside engineering and product counterparts. Shipped on both web and app.
Team
PM: Aayush Sharma & Aman Agarwal
Engineering: Brijesh Maserani & Anand Mishra
Problems of an options trader
Trading options: a beginner’s guide
An option is a contract that gives you the right to buy or sell a stock at a specific price on or before a certain date, in exchange for a small upfront fee. Think of it like a down payment on a house, but it allows you to call dibs on the house. Buying an apple stock option lets you call dibs on the stock at that price.
Why people trade options?
Apple stock might be priced at $100, but an option could cost just $10, allowing people to trade with less money.
The core trading problem
Options are very volatile, and this $10 premium can quickly rise to $20 or drop to zero in seconds. Therefore, decisions must be made rapidly. Option buyers take advantage of this volatility to make quick profits, so timing is crucial.
Problem overview
Current experience wasn’t cutting it
Multi-step process was leading to losses
Imagine you see a profit of $100, but by the time you finish the exit process, your profit drops to $80. This can be really disappointing for traders, as it feels like leaving money on the table. The multi-step process is causing delays.
4 steps to exit 1 trade
Exiting all feature didn’t provide selective exit
Groww had a feature called Exit All, which lets you exit your trades at the best market price. This feature is great when traders want to exit all trades at once, but it doesn't work if you only want to exit two trades out of four.
Exit all positions
Traders were struggling, the process to exit trade was too long. Exit all feature was useful, but it didn't allow traders to exit trades selectively.
NPS Survey comments
Process and iterations
The flow to exit a single trade is 3 steps longs
Users need to tap on a position to open a bottom sheet. Clicking on buy or sell opens the order card, and hitting the sell button exits the position.
Existing flow
85% people exit their trade in full
Current process is valuable if you want to partially exit your position. For example, if you are trading 1000 shares and want to sell 500, this flow lets you do that. However, 85% of users tend to sell all 1000 shares at once when they see their desired returns.
Exit orders breakdown
Exiting a position is a key step, yet only 30% users use Exit all
Option buyers often have several trades and will exit all positions only if they want to close everything. An option buyer can be trading S&P 500 and Apple options at the same time.
Exit feature is also a multi step flow
How might we better enable traders to quickly exit their positions while keeping an eye on their returns?
Explorations
Idea A: Instant exit button on the bottomsheet
Instant exit button in bottomsheet
It didn’t work: Idea is nice and layered, but traders still need to click twice to exit a position. Traders also keep an eye on their overall returns. They set a daily goal, like making $100 in a day, and exit the positions right at that point.
Idea B: Instant exit to square off all positions
Instant exit button on positions
It didn’t work: This approach didn’t solve the selective exit problem but was by far the fastest way to exit position. Critical issue was miss taps, what if you wanted to click on the position but you clicked on instant and it exited all the positions.
key Design tenet
Exit option should be upfront, yet layered. Designed to take action on individual trades. Elegant & simple 🌼
C: Swipe/ Tap on the position
Surface an exit button at on each position. Inspired by the swipe-to-delete feature in Gmail and combined that with the seriousness a financial platform requires.
-VS-
Swipe vs Tap
Swipe vs Tap: I decided to go ahead with tap instead of swipe. Swipe as an interaction was used to switch between different tabs on the app. Swiping on a position was interfering with swiping between tabs.
List item explorations
Introducing Fast Exit
Fast Exit
Each position features a Fast Exit button, allowing users to close trades one by one with clear returns and less slippage. Tapping on the right side of the positions list opens a side drawer with the Fast Exit button, which exits the trade when tapped.
Tap area
I chose to make the entire right side tappable instead of just the position pill. Ensuring that users can easily access their options.
Positions can be long or short. While 90% of traders buy options, 10% also short them. In this case, the exit button should clearly reflect the action it will take. This is a design pattern that the team follows throughout the product.
Position list item states
Shipped to Groww web & terminal
I faced an interesting trade-off between displaying this option on hover versus having it as a constantly visible button. The hover effect kept the design clean, while the button seemed redundant. However, during prototype testing, we discovered that the hover interaction made the overall experience feel sluggish.
Learnings
Fast exit is used by 50,000+ traders daily
Reached out to traders, they described the experience as quick. Traders mentioned they could exit positions at the right time and secure more profits, which they had previously lost due to slippage.
Playstore reviews