Designing an Entry-Level, Light Touch Investment Product
Late last year, it became apparent that some new, casual investors were being overwhelmed by MyWallSt’s product suite.
As the brainchild of an active, hobbyist investor, MyWallSt has always attracted users who were willing or interested in putting in a bit of work when it came to their investment portfolios. They often loved consuming financial content, constantly wanted new companies to research, and hoped to update their portfolios weekly or monthly. MyWallSt’s app and premium investing service were the helpful launchpads this audience used to boost their technical advantage.
However, due to MyWallSt’s approachable branding and promise to “get the world investing, successfully” we often also encountered users who just wanted help setting up a retirement fund. Some just wanted a few, large stocks they could put their money in every quarter and forget about.
For these users, I designed Foundations.
The goal:
- Refine the MyWallSt shortlist into a collection of large, bedrock stocks any investor could easily buy and hold for at least ten years.
- Deliver that list in a way that makes users feel competent and comfortable.
- Ensure the product doesn’t demand too much maintenance from the content team.
To achieve this, I decided the product design should:
- Maintain MyWallSt’s established style of digestible, organized, and friendly content seen throughout our app.
- Incorporate and explain more quantifiable metrics so users feel empowered to independently “measure” their stocks’ health at any time.
In this way, the content team could easily adapt existing content from the MyWallSt app while also setting up Foundations to be more evergreen. If we do our jobs right, the list and its content should only be updated once a year.
Stock Profile Page
Above is the Stock Sheet Explainer page, which is included in the introduction of the Foundations e-book. It breaks down a stock profile for novices and aims to ease the early stages of a customer’s journey.
The heavy use of bullet points and the Key Highlights section is consistent with MyWallSt’s style guide and ensures content is easily digestible.
The Foundations collection includes 13 stocks, selected for their diversity and future security, each is presented in this way. The layout was optimized for the e-book format but the content could easily be added to our in-house CMS for our mobile and web applications.
The introductory section also includes an explanation of why these stocks were selected and how they interact with one another so users understand the importance of diversification. This should encourage users to buy more than one or two stocks and insulate themselves from volatility.
