Case Study: Trust me!
This UX design case study outlines the process I went through with my team at Red Academy to create a website for VaultCircle, so they could acquire pre-launch investors for their new promissory note.
Client: VaultCircle Inc. (affiliate of Lendified Inc.)
Project Length: Three week sprint
Team: Anton Itkin (UI), Sucheta Mehra (UX), Kiersten P. Mosley (UX)
Challenge & Opportunity
VaultCircle, the only registered digital lending company in Canada, was founded to mitigate issues in the investment market. Even though this fixed asset platform has existed since 2008 in the UK and US, it has only become the alternative to traditional big banks for Canadians this year.
With access to high-yield small business loans from creditworthy businesses in the form of a promissory note, accredited investors and institutions will receive monthly cash flow via regular principal and interest payments. The portfolio is diversified — tailored across business sectors, credit grades and investment yields — to minimize risk.
Currently, VaultCircle has minimal marketplace presence which may explain their lack of investor awareness, trust and acquisition. Our challenge was to design a dashboard and responsive website to provide investment knowledge, build trust and boost sales.
“Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.”
~ Warren Buffett
I knew so little about investing. My cousin, a financial advisor, takes care of it for me. I transfer money, he invests it. I need money, he transfers it. How was I to advise on a topic I knew so little about? What was a ‘note’? What was a ‘fixed asset class’? WHERE WAS THE COLES NOTES?!?!?
Research & Insight
When you don’t know where to start — google. I went down the knowledge rabbit hole in search of the definition of a ‘note’:
- asset classes: equities, or stocks; cash equivalents, or money market instruments; and fixed income, or bonds;
- Fixed income generates a fixed amount of income that does not vary over the life of the investment.
- A note is a debt security obligating repayment of a loan at a set interest rate in a defined time period. There are three types: unsecured, convertible and promissory.
- Promissory note: written documentation of money loaned or owed from one party to another. The loan’s terms, repayment schedule, interest rate and payment information are included in the note.
Now I knew what we were talking about — promissory notes — so Sucheta and I dove into domain research, reviewing white papers, performing competitive/comparative analysis, and creating surveys.
We needed a very specific target to complete our survey — Accredited Investors or Institutions — people that had an income of $200,000+ and/or $5,000,000+ in assets.
The latter was where we had the most difficulty. We tried the list of existing VaultCircle investors; posted on Facebook and Linkedin; emailed friends and family; contacted our own banks; and I even started reaching out to Angel Investors in the US and UK through LinkedIn Groups. In the end, we only received two ‘qualified’ responses to our survey, so the data was scraped.
All was not lost though, the white papers and c/c analysis proved quite fruitful. We found huge disparity between user expectations and business offerings. Customers want track records, transparency, risk assessments, and knowledge of who is investing.
VaultCircle had minimal presence on Facebook and Linkedin. Even though their website included an explanation of the product, team bios and a lead generating form, there was not enough traffic and very low acquisition.
Planning & Design
Stats Canada and the white papers were invaluable and enabled us to define VaultCircle’s target investor beyond the accreditation. Even though ⅓ of women are millionaires and 31% are the primary bread winners in Canada, men are the primary audience.
I filtered our findings further and developed two VaultCircle personas — the unassuming neighbour and Chinese immigrant. Both have considerable and extensive knowledge of investing, but their frustrations and goals differ.
As Sucheta worked on the dashboard, I developed the website wireframes. I leveraged best practices — smooth user flow, easy navigation, multiple CTAs — but felt it would not be enough to engage potential investors. Our research showed over and over again that you need to build trust, and that could only come from content and copywriting.
I thought about the product — first of its kind in Canada; Canadian small business loans funded by Canadian Investors; provided through Canadian experts — and I came up with a heading for the home page:
Next, we thought about how do you build trust in a product that has yet to launch? By meeting as many user expectations as possible — showcase the note’s attractiveness and value; incorporate the team’s expertise in copy beyond their bios; explain the relationship between VaultCircle and Lendified for transparency; and explain the risks and vetting requirements
“If a picture is worth a thousand words, in business, so is a number.” ~Peter Lynch
Lastly, I felt like we needed something compelling, so I did math — at $150,000 per investor, how many investors would VaultCircle need for their first $1,000,000 Lendified note? Answer: 6.66. Rounded, that number was a social norm effect:
Prototype & Test
Lendified Small Business had an existing website and we debated leveraging its layout for VaultCircle to create consistency among the affiliated businesses. We used First Click Usability Testing and it disproved that tactic. The unique layout we first created outperformed by 40% and had a 20% higher conversion rate. That does not mean the Lendified Small Business website is underperforming, it only means that the design does not work for VaultCircle and its unique product offering.
The UX design was ready for Anton to apply the user interface and his redesigned VaultCircle logo.
Results & Considerations
In many ways, our research confirmed what VaultCircle already knew, however, we were able to target two primary investors—unassuming and immigrant; and suggest the next cities for expansion — Vancouver and Calgary.
Taking time to craft the copy while I designed the website, enabled us to provide a marketing angle — proud to be Canadian; and a social norm effect to hook investors — be one of the seven that impacts the Canadian marketplace.
We also provided next steps that will positively impact the success of the new website when implemented.
Our goal was to meet VaultCircle’s current need to acquire investors for the first Lendified Note, but we also understood the long term focus, and advised that the website be updated once they have statistical and social supporting data.
Summary
The creation of VaultCircle is meant to reduce frustration with low interest rates and lack of alternative investments. However, they will now be able to improve the user journey even more by following our suggestions.
The customer will see increased social media presence, venture to the new website, be able to find considerable information, feel confident in the company and product, and start the process to be one of the “group of seven”.
“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
