Five ways to ease user anxiety

This week’s five in five breaks down what users fear in high-stakes moments, how that leads to churn, and some ways in which you can design to fix it.

I’m on my first post-pandemic, post-parenthood, international work trip this week. As a mum to a 13-month old toddler, this trip is nerve wracking because I’ve never been 6000+ kilometres away from my child. My flavour of anxiety is high-performance, so I spent a large chunk of the night before my flight setting up a variety of investment instruments to go to work for him just in case my plane falls out of the sky. I’ve never invested six figure amounts out of a bunch of new smartphone apps without talking to a wealth advisor first, so the whole experience got me thinking about product users in similarly high stakes moments where the cost of “getting it wrong” are high.

Imagine this: you’re using a new app to invest in stocks, or a crypto remittance platform to send fiat to family, or a loan app to take out a working capital loan for the first time. If you’ve not built trust in the brand before this or looked at their app, how do you know that you are safe? That your money will go where it’s meant to, your assets will remain yours, and that you have recourse if something goes wrong. That’s exactly what this week’s Five in Five focuses on. Let’s dive in.

1 The fear of keying in the wrong number

Once upon a time people used cheques and wrote amounts in numbers and words so the odds of getting it wrong were minimal. Then net-banking made us enter numbers twice and it was irritating but at least we were forced to double check. With an app, transactions can be lightening fast but so can mistakes. It’s natural that users feel anxiety and product managers see churn. I see a lot of product design introducing sales/cash backs etc to tackle the churn but really all these do is make greed go to war with risk avoidance. Here are some simpler (and I think more responsible) fixes:

• Audio playback of critical numbers like amount of money, account numbers and so on to verify accuracy with two senses, or just check against a piece of paper
• Increased leading and kerning to improve the readability of numbers — an 8 between two 6s is hard to read, make it easier!
• Reducing the chances for human error by giving people the tools to input important numbers by scanning — e.g. scanning an old receipt to get details of a remittance recipient

2 The fear of signing up for a bad deal

In my early twenties I was conned into saving through a bunch of unholy instruments called ‘savings insurance schemes’ which are really the worst of both worlds. The snake oil salesperson who sold them to me neglected to mention the risks and the term of commitment. Since then, I have a healthy mistrust of terms and conditions of financial services. I start out assuming they’re going to take advantage of me. Last night while I was looking through a bunch of mutual fund apps to set Advait up for the “mom died in a plane crash but left me rich” conversation with a therapist someday, I was feeling that same sense of suspicion. Here are some interaction design considerations that would have made me feel better:

• Highly visual, readable information on the key terms explained in ways that lay-people can understand without having to do their own mental math — for instance, for a saving app a clear breakdown of amount invested, range of return expected (calculated) with post-fee/tax earnings, minimum lock-in period and penalties for early withdrawal etc.
• A review moment to look through and edit key information and choices BEFORE making a payment (looking at you ET Money for making me pay before setting up a nominee, on any other day if the circumstances were different you would have lost me as a user)
• Some social proof from other users who’ve made similar purchase decisions and had good experiences — think back to your last high-stakes Amazon purchase. Would you buy something with zero reviews from verified buyers?

3 The anxiety of buyer’s regret

Our brains are wired to feel the pain of losing something immediately for a not-so-immediate reward. This is especially true of products that promise delayed gratification: think savings, health gains, SaaS tools to improve business efficiency and so on. The questions start to pile up: did I make the right choice? Would I have gotten a better deal elsewhere? Should I have waited? In these moments what users crave are strong signals that validate their choices but so many products will try to double down and sell another thing. Instead what if:

• The “transaction confirmed” screen reassured me that I got the best deal compared to other alternates
• For products where the gains from spending are especially far off, what if there were ways to show an immediate win — e.g. in my case I’d have loved to see a message that said “you bought at 20% lower price than this time last year, congratulations”

4 The terror of a lengthy “transaction in progress” interaction

First-time, high-stakes transactions in a new app, particularly while purchasing a product or service that doesn’t ‘arrive’ immediately can make users doubt their own decision-making skills and knowledge. Low trust in themselves meets low trust in a new product and can lead to absolute panic in situations where there is a time lag between purchase and confirmation — for instance while remitting crypto to fiat in a bank account. Here are some ways in which feedback loops can help users feel more confident and in control:

• Setting upfront expectations of any wait times, with clear details of recourse in case the wait is longer than predicted. For instance, something along the lines of “A transaction will typically take 2 hours. During this time you can track the status here and also sign up for a WhatsApp confirmation. If you have any concerns chat with us on WhatsApp”
• Clear stage-wise progress trackers showing where exactly the transaction is currently at with a countdown (rough estimate is fine!) of how much longer to go
• If possible a “learn more” option with an explanation of what’s going on behind the scenes and a reassurance that everything is ok!

5 The post-transaction ‘what now’ uncertainty

High stakes moments are accompanied by a surge in adrenalin that increases focus and alertness, and helps users get the job done. Then, there’s often a tidy shot of dopamine following the accomplishment of doing something that matters: sending money home, saving for a goal etc. Both of these are emotional highs and, given the general cussedness of biology, are soon followed by a crash. In user studies where I’ve simulated these transactions, there’s almost always a “what now” uncertainty that accompanies the emotional lows. As a product manager, I’ve personally had the most success in tackling this through highly personalized homepage interactions (for instance as a vertical scroll of tiles) that focus on building trust and user confidence first, and then upselling. Some specific feature sets I love testing are:

• A to-do list tile for new users to guide them towards setting up preferences to track what matters and help them build knowledge
• An overall status update tile that functions a bit like a “you are here” marker on a map and helps orient users in where they are in their journey of accomplishing a goal
• A tile that celebrates a small, immediate win — for instance in the context of long-term investing something like “Over 75% of our users are senior executives at top firms, you’re in good company!”
• Occasional tiles introducing new products that might be helpful for the user, with personalized copy linking the product back to the goal they are trying to accomplish