How to launch a new feature in a stagnant market, get $465,373 turnover in the first month and set a trend
This is what happens when a designer’s vision aligns with business stakeholders’ support
In the one and only “The business value of design” research by McKinsey, which was held in 2018 (yep, we really need a new one), a strong correlation was found between high design index scores and superior business performance. To put it simple, design-oriented companies got 32% higher revenue over five years among ones who didn’t pay so much attention to user experience and visual aesthetics. These results held true across the three industries studied: medical technology, consumer goods, and retail banking.
As a Product Designer at one of the largest private banks in the CIS, I had a professional need to explore how a disruptive design approach could drive our business metrics. Is it true that the visuals are valued only by the design community, or do they have an actual impact on how the final user behaves? This case provided the opportunity to prove McKinsey’s hypothesis: a visually compelling feature could indeed boost purchase conversion rates. Or couldn’t it?
The Challenge
In my working process, at some point I often face a question: how to do it better, nicer and meet the time-to-market indicator? As we all know, product development usually comes with constraints such as resource allocation, technical challenges, and time limitations. This case was no exception.
Still, the business task was simple: make metals purchasing available online in our web and native apps
You see, despite the fintech era we all live in, our clients could only open metal accounts and purchase metals offline at physical bank branches. We were going to enable clients to complete these operations and transactions directly through the app. In business terms, our objective was to increase the number of opened metal accounts through the app and boost conversions to metal purchases.
Our team has successfully launched various features, including an exchange asset screen, dual currency deposits and an investment moneybox. As a result, we have established ourselves as an expert group with a strong vision for each new feature. But this one pushed us to find a balance between refined aesthetics, business goals, user convenience, and time-to-market demands.
The Process
Initial goal was to make metal trading as straightforward as possible. We thought, what if we could simplify the process, bringing it closer to the seamless experience of a marketplace, where the user doesn’t worry about account details or signed documents — and just buys the product in seconds? We hypothesized that opening a metal account was secondary to the primary user goal of buying or selling metals. Thus, we aimed to make the product on the digital market shelf visually appealing, encouraging more purchases. This led us to the idea of creating an NFT-style metals showcase, turning the “shopping” process into an engaging experience. In short, we merged fintech with funtech.
While the target wow-solution appeared awesome (at least in our minds) but needed some production time, we decided to roll out the feature in stages, starting with an MVP version, so we wouldn’t lose all the business revenue for months.
Quick fix and MVP development
To quickly generate business revenue and identify potential issues, we launched an MVP version of the metal purchasing feature. We used the existing product opening, transfer, and payment flows to facilitate standard metal account openings and purchases.
Before launching the MVP, we surveyed 400 individuals aged 25–45 from major cities to refine our approach. We targeted the upper mass segment since statistics showed they opened most metal accounts.
Key findings included:
👉 Placement: users preferred metals to be listed under “deposits” or “investments”, not “current accounts”. Hence, we placed metals entry points in both the investments section and on the main screen of the app.
👉 Expectations: users did not always expect to enter the purchase flow immediately after clicking “Buy” button. Instead, they often sought for more detailed information first, prompting us to develop a robust FAQ section for the target solution.
👉 Convenience: users found it more convenient to see their account balance in currency by default, though we allowed instant conversion to grams.
👉 Tax Implications: we assessed how familiar users were with metal accounts and whether they needed detailed information about tax implications upon account closure. Spoiler: they were generally uninterested, so we simplified this with a brief alert.
After refining the approach based on this feedback, we finally launched the feature.
In the first three months we saw 12,000 metal accounts opened, $4.7 million in turnover (buying and selling) and 1 ton of metals sold
Target solution
After delivering the MVP design mockups for development, we began to work on the target solution. We wanted to add some emotion to the metal buying experience. In the end, even PwC research on customer experience shows that fun and design stays on the 2nd and 3d place for the Gen Z appreciation, after the actual existence of a mobile app. Given our desire to attract younger customers, this wow-feature direction seemed right.
We focused on the visual component and its technical implementation. The idea of a visually appealing metals’ showcase had been circulating within our design community for some time, and this project allowed us to explore two potential 3D solutions: classic metal bars and metal nuggets. We decided to validate one or another usign the following in-depth interviews.
UX interviews
With the target version designed, and all interface communications (texts, images, videos) ready, we conducted in-depth interviews followed with usability testing of the flow to validate the solution and make prompt adjustments. We asked 10 respondents, with or without investing experience, to buy 10 grams of silver. We monitored their success rate and gathered feedback on what they liked and what could be improved. After the interviews were conducted, we incorporated feedback into the final version, ensuring the design, content, and business objectives were aligned.
Technical Adjustments
While the interviews being held, we were also testing different technical approaches to the metal animation with our development team. It was vital to explore all the pros and cons of various technical solutions from sequences to MP4 formats, so that our app wouldn’t crash once we deployed our feature. Ultimately, we settled on Lottie animation as the optimal choice (well, this was predictable).
The Launch
After securing stakeholder approval, we launched the feature in phases: first to 500 users, then to 5,000, and eventually to all users.
As a result we got:
👉 20% increase in opened accounts month-over-month
👉 10x increase in activated accounts (from 1,109 to 10,764)
👉 45% increase in metal purchase value (from $781,521 to $1,246,894)
I believe, this solution worked as a design disrupt within our market. After some time we noticed similar approaches used by our competitors. Sounds flattering!
As we developed the target version of the metals showcase, we also worked on the enhanced account screen. We already gathered input from 112 respondents to identify the most intuitive display of metal growth and the most readable account screen layout. Metal account screen redesign was put in our backlog — maybe you’ll see it some time in the future.
Ed Catmull, Pixar co-founder, once told in a McKinsey Quarterly interview that his company encourages its teams to take risks in their new projects. Pixar considers repeating the formulas of its past commercial successes a much greater threat to its long-term survival than the occasional commercial disappointment. That’s why their business revenue grows continually.
In my opinion, it is vital to try and follow you imagination for all the business goals you get, even when the timing for initial task is tough. This is how we did it — and I guess it worked.
