Day 17: Email receipt design — GTBank, FirstBank and Diamond Bank case study
If they truly care about our experience, then marketing copy, unconcerned formatting and unnecessary information won’t be a priority.
So the prompt for the 17th challenge was to design an “Email receipt” of any choice.
An email receipt in this context means those confirmation, notifications and receipts you receive after making any online transaction. So an e-commerce purchase order confirmation email is an example of such transactions. It can contain information like what was bought, how much it was bought for, shipment address, due date for delivery etc. An email notification from your bank about a particular transaction is also another example. I think you get the gist now. Cool, let’s move on :)
Banks, businesses and email receipts
We could say they’ve been doing well by sending us email notifications after a transaction occur — after you recharge your phone with the trending star number number number harsh (USSD Codes), When Uncle London or Mama Lagos send some bar (money), and you get some credit alert in your inbox. Same with when you pay Junior’s school fees. Isn’t it a great thing to get email notifications free of charge? Can’t that be called total love for us by our dearly beloved banks?
So you see email receipts mean a lot to many people. If you work in a company like mine, you can only get expense reimbursements if you show confirmation receipts of done transactions. Travelers use email ticket confirmations to check for flight names, departure times, seat numbers etc and for checking-in at the airport. It’s seen as a proof for some who doubt that payment has been made, many online businesses depend on payment slips like that to be sure a customer paid for a service online. The importance of email notifications, confirmations or receipts cannot be over emphasized for we see it almost at every touchpoint online.
So what about GTBank, FirstBank and Diamond Bank’s email receipt for customer transactions?
Yes, they do well by sending in those automated mails when we opt-in for email notifications. Don’t know how others feel, but email notifications for transactions feels better than sms notifications for many reasons — history, easy search and access, sharing, printing, etc.
But our banks have made a tasteless bitter-soup out of this minute but very important platform to win the heart of customers. Email receipts, when done well can improve customer experience and overall satisfaction of a brand and yes, you can also make money from it.
Building a devoted fan base is the hardest of the approaches for delight, but probably the most long lasting. — Jared Spool
Market copy and unnecessary clutter is the order of the day. Banks want to show us the next marketing feature they got, the next way to recharge better, what to do to get loans, how to invest in your future kids and so many others.
Am I saying that they are bad? No, but they are mostly ignored by users including me because that’s is not the FIRST thing I am after. Will I have a a look? I might, if the right information is made a priority and not them making ads seem more appropriate through those channels.
5 Seconds test
The picture below is what GTBank sends to you after you get a credit alert notification.
Dear honest reader, observe the screenshot for 5 seconds and let me know if you easily recognized what’s happening.
The above picture is worse on mobile because I had to take 3 screenshots to capture everything.
Was it that easy?
Users might end up not opening the email.
I can bet you that many don’t even click-in to see the content because the email header — GeNS Transaction Alert [ Debit 3,000 NGN ] says it all. But if a user should end the journey at that level, then the essence of the email receipt has been defeated, especially for the business with their marketing copy prioritized.
Busy street, can’t get in. Unnecessary information everywhere especially at the bottom.
Do you see how busy that page is? From the content, one can’t immediately pinpoint the most important info which is “what transaction happened — credit or debit alert and amount involved. It’s very sad.
What if I want to send it to someone for reimbursement or proof of transaction?
Can I send that mail to my boss or to someone that way? They will just kick me back with “I am out of school brother, can’t read long text again”. Well, I know Nigerians will still accept that because we have been made to accept anything so far it works — after-all everibodi dey huzulu. Why we go kweshon peson wey dey give im besti. Abeegi leave trash for Lawma.
Most obvious, a marketing copy introduces the email receipt.
I want to check a transaction that happened on my account to know if it was a 419er that pulled a trick on me and the first thing I am presented is a marketing trick. We need to be careful the way we treat people online. Some deaths are caused by frustrations and panic — you know the rest. Thank you
Same with Diamond Bank,
- The email subject text is not even helpful at all — meaning that I must actually open the mail to know what happened in my account.
- The information is hidden and a PDF attachment is included for us to view. In this age, that should not be the default option. I can keep mentioning lot of use cases where one can get frustrated trying to do justice to a PDF receipt attachment.
How about Firstbank
At least Firstbank was fair enough to provide a summary table with shades of blue all over the place. You can’t even see the ‘cleared and uncleared balance” information and formatting I will say was carelessly done (forgive me). A final year student who really cares about graduating well from the university will strive to present his papers well. I remember putting on a borrowed suit for my project defence — never owned a suit though. :)
How can our banks improve their email receipts?
I can keep on ranting but some things we can do to improve those screens are:
- Make the most important detail obvious — transaction type and amount.
- Communicate your brand — make your customers have confidence in you.
- Ads are good — I won’t say you should do without them, but present it wisely — Placing them at the end of the main content won’t be a bad idea.
- Remove unnecessary information whenever necessary
- The help notes, reminders etc, below your mail receipts are not helpful — I only care about the call support numbers. We don’t read those things. We can make a request, when we need them.
After some design thinking and lots of iterations…
I came up with the following
Well, this can be improved upon, but it’s a great starter to tell us that we can do better — baby steps rule.
Thank you so much for going through this. I hope you enjoyed it? Please if you did, recommend and share your thoughts too :)
You can follow the 100 days design with context in mind here
DISCLAIMER: I represent myself and myself alone and not any company or secret agency trying to mar or destroy any bank’s online image. This is for educational purposes only and learning through real life design challenges.
