How we built a homepage for a trust sensitive product
A startup superannuation project — a UX case study
Superannuation is compulsory for everyone in Australia who has an income from his/her work. It is a government program to help its citizen save money for retirement. They cannot access the money until they have reached a certain age. In average, they just check their super once a year for taxation purposes. So a lot of people feel detached with their own superannuation fund.
This project was part of an ongoing project for a startup superannuation product that focused on the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDG). Our team worked on converting potential customers on their homepage. It was commissioned by an established FinTech company which cannot be named due to a non-disclosure agreement.
Handover from the service design team
Initially, this project was started by the service design team. Then the stakeholders wanted the UX Team to further develop their research findings.
From the survey data by the service design team, survey participants always talked about the Return of Investment (ROI) in the end. One participant mentioned that it wasn’t my money, I cannot touch it. Another elderly participant doesn’t even know what and how many different superannuation companies he had funds in. The more companies that one person uses, the more he/she spends in administration cost.
Furthermore, the service design team created 6 phases of the customer journey; entice, educate, enter, engage, extend, exit.
Then we decided to focus on:
How might we entice and educate users, to drive conversion on a homepage.
Research synthesis
We began to deconstruct and analyse all the artefacts from the Service Design Team and the stakeholders.
We did a competitor analysis to gain another perspective on how others had done to entice and educate their users; We focused on the smaller firms that usually gave an added value to their users by investing in a particular market. They were Fairvine, Future Super, Grow Super, Spaceship, Verve Super and Zuper. Most of them were focused on educating, showing transparency and talking how easy it was to join.
We also categorised the data from qualitative research into the affinity map. This would help us to have a clearer vision to develop the key insights.
We divided them into objectives/themes. Visualised them how it might happen in our personas’ daily life.
First iteration
We did the MVP workshop with stakeholder to decide the deliverables that are achievable within 2 weeks timeframe. Then we derived the five objectives that we will aim to solve:
- Transparency: Show transparency by having clear and concise information and provide a preview of the dashboard of the membership portal.
- Trust: Convey a sense of trust in the overall homepage by showcasing the team and their extensive financial experience.
- Impact: Deliver the business’ alignment with UNSDG in a way that emphasises how to stands out from its competitors
- Education: To provide educational material that users can learn more about super and investment in a clearly laid out and easily digestible manner.
- Ease of use: Cleary display information and data so that users can easily understand the products offered.
Then we brought the five objectives above to ideation so that each module was designed based on those objectives. Those are;
- Dashboard showcase and portfolio option for transparency
- The display of the investment team for trust
- Impact estimation and SDG and invested company for impact
- Knowledge hub and email capture for education
- Switching process for Ease of use
My role was to bring transparency to the user via the dashboard showcase. We agreed that a preview of a dashboard will be the hypothetical solution so that users can have more transparency on what to expect after the sign-up process. Preview of the dashboard showcase consists of three rotating frames, with 5 seconds delay. Users can also go to the next frame by clicking on the laptop screen. Once users clicked on the laptop screen, it will stop to animate.
For the first usability testing, we tested each module separately, because we did not have the data from the users about how important each module is.
First usability testing
After the first round of Usability Testing, we gathered the feedback and categorised them into three different colours; blue for positive, red for negative, and yellow for general comments.
Do you have a mobile version?
There were some interesting feedback from the dashboard showcase. Unsurprisingly, users mentioned that they needed a mobile version too. Overall, users found that the preview concept had been designed clearly and it provided transparency.
Additionally, from the SDG and invested company module, users found that carousel was useful and interactive. It also showed transparency and it was nice to know where the money is being invested in. On the other hand, users expected that the tiles were clickable, giving access to more information.
We also asked the participants to rank the themes that would influence them to switch or join a superannuation product. It was an effective approach on how we should construct the order of each module on the home page. Most participants ranked trust as the number one priority. Transparency and impact were generally perceived as more important than ease of use and education.
Second iteration
Based on the first round of usability testing, the majority voted that trust is the most important, followed by transparency, make an impact, education, and ease of use. Therefore, we arranged the modules based on the rank that the users chose during the interview, from top to bottom. Top being the most important.
We translated the feedback from 1 on 1 interview to the second prototype. Our objective was to increase the number of positive feedback (blue post-it notes) and reduce the number of negative feedback (red post-it notes).
Second usability testing
Again, we sorted the data from second round of usability testing to red, blue, and yellow. This time we had less red and more blue and yellow!
From the qualitative data, we summarised that the overall impression of the homepage was clear, simple and easy to follow. Users felt that the structure and disclosure had conveyed a sense of transparency. Users also had the impression that this superannuation fund focused on sustainability. However, they felt it lacked in practical information regarding its financial performance and this was the main reason for the lack of trust.
Solutions
How to convey trust
What doesn’t:
- Being perceived as having a small team or being a small start-up company
- Having no track record in terms of investment performance
- Data and statistics that are too hypothetical, irrelevant or not relating to practical examples
What does:
- Showing extensive financial experience of the team in detail, including the number of years, institutions of employment and achievements
- Being linked to an existing financial institution with proven track records
- Shows partnerships with other companies
- Clear layout of relevant information shows a high degree of transparency
How to present 17 UNSDG on the homepage
- To show all seventeen UNSG on the homepage could overwhelm users. Some users also pointed out that they only wanted to see the goals that were relevant to them.
- Sort the 17 SDG into groups so that it is clearer for the user to identify the goals at a glance.
- Have the icons as a filter so that users can sort the companies according to the SDG they fulfil.
Summary
What worked:
- Usage of icons to depict a structure
- Dashboard (mobile and desktop) preview
- Ease of sign-up process
- Carousel of company cards
- Transparency in portfolio options
What needs improvement:
- How the SDG’s are conveyed visually
- Components need to be seamlessly integrated into the overall homepage
- Homepage needs to be condensed
Future opportunities:
- Projections of the Return of Investment
- Show long term and short portfolio performance
- Show practical examples of contribution impacts
- Include testimonials
- Community activities and events
Client feedback
Overall our solutions were well received. The client was impressed with our process to rank the importance of each module on the homepage. It had also validated the hypothesis that trust and transparency were really important in choosing superannuation.
To show companies performance at the beginning might be the right approach, as most of our research supported that it was important to customers.
However, not all the solutions would be implemented, since there are few limitations, such as budget, timeline, or strict guidelines.
Lesson learnt
This project had shown that qualitative and quantitative data from the survey, insights from research synthesis are really important in UX process to validate and back up our design strategy. Moreover, it also helped us to build a persona to stay unbias and reduce red flags to give validated solutions.
In the end, it had opened my eye about superannuation product. It was not only a boring retirement saving product (nonetheless, it is important to think about how we can support ourselves when we retire), but it could give an extra value on how we invest our money for our life and future generation.
