Strategic Recommendations for an app that helps you save
I was given two weeks to work on an individual UX challenge of my own choosing. I considered this my first true solo project at General Assembly, as at this point in the course I was armed with enough knowledge and the tools necessary to deliver a UX solution based on a problem.
I chose to revisit the thing that ultimately drove me towards User Experience and made me enrol in the 10 week immersive User Experience Design course at General Assembly.
Note: For reasons of commercial sensitivity, all names and any figures relating to the app and company been removed.
I started the year helping a friend who was developing an app by providing suggestions on what to do with the app, in terms of visual changes and features. I eventually started testing beta builds of the app. But as my relationship with the team grew I quickly realised that I didn’t have the required knowledge or tools to provide any evidenced based solutions.
This led me to UX.
A Brief Introduction
The app, available on both the iOS app store and Google Play Store, that lets you automatically invest loose change from everyday purchases into a diversified, low-cost investment portfolio. The app aims to offer every Australian a simple low-cost way to begin investing using a mobile app.
The Brief
The app has an x% drop off rate during sign up, how do we improve the process to get more people on board?
Understanding the Competition
It was important to study the competitive landscape to understand what the company offered and how it was different from the myriad of services that offered similar means to users wanting to start investing.
Due to the numerous competitors, too many to list and being mostly foreign, I chose to concentrate on the major local competitors.
Direct Competition
Key information:
- Raiz has over 140,000 clients
- 70% of Raizs’ user base is under 35
- $160 million in funds under management
Raiz Invest Australia Limited (Raiz) is the company’s closest competitor.
Raiz is a micro-investing product that lets users invest virtual “change” or round-ups, in a diversified portfolio of exchange traded funds (ETFs) listed on the ASX using an app.
Raiz offers practically the same product as the company with one key difference. Raiz allows investment in a mix of ASX-listed ETFs, based on a diversified portfolio, from a selection of six options that best reflects the risk appetite of the user. The company on the other hand allows users to select from 4 different ‘themes’, ETFs, that cover the majority of the global investment universe. User’s can then select their desired level of risk.
The Big 4 Banks
Key information:
- The Big 4 hold assets worth ~$2.1 trillion and income ~$20 billion
- Control over ~80% of all owner occupier home loans & 85% all investor housing loans
The banks have the reputation of being secure and safe, which most individuals gravitate to, because they ‘know’ what services they offer. The services they typically provide are high interest savings accounts (least risk), fixed interest investments (term deposits, government bonds and corporate bonds) (low risk), Shares bought through a CommSec, but with the inherent risk of investing in the stock market and investing in property.
Key Findings — Customer Attitudes
I interviewed 9 people to ascertain what their understanding and habits were towards savings and investing — I chose this approach in order to get an understanding of what their thought process was and how this would relate to using an app. This research provided the following common traits among the people I interviewed:
- People think about savings in a very traditional sense. Cash in a bank a/c that earns interest. Fixed interest investments. Shares and property.
- People’s habits and behaviours are highly influenced by their childhood experiences. Parents, especially mothers, had a large influence.
- People tend to be risk averse. This is a symptom of their lack of understanding of risk and the various services and products related to saving and investing
- Everyone sets a goal for saving — whether it be saving to make a purchase or travelling, everybody sets goals.
- The perceived barriers to entry to are cost, knowledge and time are a barrier to entry when it comes to growing savings and starting to invest.
- People want a hassle free way to save and potentially invest.
The theme tying all these common points together is the fact that the majority of the people I interviewed were not very keen to seek out information on different ways to invest or save.
Key Findings — Stakeholders
I spent 2 hours conducting interviews with the founders, to gain an understanding of what the company is and what its value proposition is. This line of questioning gave me an insight into what the product is and what it was trying to achieve. Here are the key findings from the interviews:
- Understanding what the service is — attitudes among customers
- x% drop off during sign up stage (x% bank stage, x% portfolio selection, x% initial deposit)
- Passive investment through the app only works with the big 4 banks
- Transfer of funds takes time due to processing delays
- The main target audience of the app is millennials, but upon further questioning it was apparent that group only made up a part of the audience
- There seemed to be confusion over what users wanted vs needed
- The app took inspiration from many of its competitors, this lead to cherry picking of features and design choices.
Contextual Inquiry
After conducting interviews I conducted 3 contextual inquiries. I observed individuals trying to sign up to the app for the first time. This brought up the following findings:
- Despite having a high-level understanding of what the application is and the service it provides, people hesitated when it came to providing banking information (essential for the service to work).
- Common views expressed throughout were that individuals didn’t understand why the company needed the information they were requesting and they didn’t trust them enough to provide said information.
These observations coupled with the interviews conducted changed the fundamentals of the original brief.
I had to change focus, moving away from the idea of producing wireframes and a prototype to providing a strategic document that the team at the company could use to inform their next course of action.
Evolution of the brief
People don’t understand exactly what the company, and as a result the app, is and what it does. The company needs to educate the potential user on the benefits of saving and the service it provides through its website and the app.
Strategic Suggestions
The following strategic suggestions have been conditioned by the interviews conducted with the founders of the company and the information provided through user interviews and contextual inquiries.
· Redefine what the company is — Investing to saving: Settling on a clearly defined value proposition needs to be the first priority. A value proposition should be a clear statement that explains how a product solves a pain point, communicates the specifics of its added benefit and states the reason why it’s better than similar products on the market.
· From the stakeholder interview it is understood that the company has implemented multiple tracking metrics within the app to measure user behaviour when using the app. This approach allows the company to gather a broad set of metrics, however it does not illustrate why a user chooses a particular action. Pursuing an all-round approach by utilising metrics gathered and conducting thorough testing and research can reap multiple benefits and provide insight into future product/service offerings.
· The company needs to build trust before people start using its services. Providing a clear understanding of the service through media releases and the information the company provides on its website will benefit users and more importantly potential users.
· Provide information on the website that gets people familiar with the terms associated with saving and investing — a major section in the website that provides this will be beneficial.
Proposal for next steps
The following steps are proposed for the on-going the development of the application over the next 6 months.
The company will need to revisit its value proposition, it must outline what the product is, how it creates value and how it is different from its competitors.
The company needs to develop a content strategy that carries on from the newly developed value proposition, which outlines:
· The content the company will provide (text, imagery, video, articles and blogs, podcasts, etc.) and the topics that content will cover.
· The problem the service is going to solve for the audience it is targeting along with the business value the service delivers.
· How the company will deliver the message it wants to transmit and the tone of voice to be used
· The media formats the company will concentrate on.
· How the company will schedule and manage creation and publication of the message.
· And who within the company is responsible for the content and who will maintain it over time.
Update the website to reflect the change in focus from investing to saving.
Build up a repository of knowledge, that takes the tone created in the newly developed content strategy and provide it in a new ‘Learn’ tab on the website and within the application.
Release the newly developed onboarding screens, further test and refine them to deliver x% decrease in drop off during onboarding.
Redesign the ‘Home’ screen to reflect user research and provide content that represents savings and goals.
Information architecture of the app needs to be reviewed in order to remove areas where the application provides duplicate information.
Take into account compliance with any proposed changes to the service and the messages to be delivered.
Conclusion
Note: At the time of writing this case study, the company has launched a new on-boarding process and continues to work hard developing new and exciting features that will enable all Australians to save in a much smarter way.
This project showed me that the UX process, when understood and followed in particular the research and the synthesis of the research produces, evidence based solutions.
On a personal note, this project showed me that I made the right choice in choosing UX.
Hello, my name is Adi (Adithya) Prabhakar. With 5 years working in multiple industries in marketing and management roles, I am now chasing my passion for technology through UX.
