UX for fintech: How to enhance the customer journey
With the rise of mobile banking, neobanks, electronic trading platforms, cryptocurrency, and a wide range of other innovative fintech solutions, the financial services industry is becoming more digitized every day.
In a world where you can purchase almost anything online and have it delivered to your door in as quick as 24 hours, consumers expect businesses — whether it’s their grocery store, healthcare provider, or bank — to provide seamless and engaging online customer experiences.
When a website or mobile app is difficult to navigate, users won’t think twice before bouncing to another service. And consumer expectations around the performance and capabilities of online services are constantly changing. Therefore, gaining a competitive edge in the fintech industry means building, maintaining, and continuously optimizing a high-quality, data-driven user experience (UX).
However, unlike businesses in industries like fashion and tourism, fintech companies have to factor in a stricter set of government rules and regulations — such as the Federal Trade Commission Act (FCA), Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws — when mapping out the customer experience and launching new digital products.
By following key fintech UX design best practices, you can enhance your customer experience while also maintaining industry compliance — resulting in a more powerful digital presence, better client engagement, and increased revenue.
So if your financial service is looking to launch a new online platform, or optimize its current one, here are six critical details to keep in mind throughout the fintech UX design process:
A self-service approach
Whether they’re making a bank deposit, applying for a loan, investing in stocks, or sending cash to a friend, today’s consumers expect the ability to quickly and easily complete tasks via their desktop or mobile device — without the help of a service representative.
Not only does this encourage stronger customer engagement and conversions, but it also helps financial institutions save time and money.
With your fintech product doing most of the customer-facing work, you can streamline back-office operations, and invest fewer resources into onboarding and training new employees. This opens you and your team up to focus on growing the business, developing new products, and finding new ways to optimize the customer experience.
Smooth user interface (UI) design
Venmo, Cash App, and other mobile payment solutions have taught us that a solid UI goes a long way. If these apps were slow, clunky, and difficult to navigate, there wouldn’t be millions of people using them to send and receive money every day.
Users need to feel secure when engaging with a fintech app, especially since it requires them to provide sensitive information like bank account numbers, credit card details, and so on. This all starts with designing a smooth, aesthetically-pleasing interface, where users can effortlessly complete tasks in a minimal number of clicks.
However, it’s important to note that — specifically in the fintech space — certain steps of the customer journey should come with a little friction. For instance, if a customer is getting ready to transfer a large sum of money, there should be a page or popup screen that confirms this action before it goes through, so the user has one last chance to make sure everything is right. Knowing when and where to add this type of friction to avoid user error is essential when designing UIs for fintech applications.
High transparency
In addition to knowing that their data is secure, customers must be able to understand the business’ policies and processes, as well as any complicated terms and concepts — which the fintech industry has no shortage of. Compound interest, FICO scores, capital gains, asset allocation, rebalancing, net worth, and other financial jargon can leave users feeling confused, which can then deter them from moving forward in the customer journey.
There are several ways to improve your site or application’s UX to make it more transparent. The most obvious way is to avoid lengthy web copy with complex phrases and acronyms. It’s important to keep descriptions short and present relatable examples whenever possible. When this is not an option, tooltips can be a very useful solution. This involves the user hovering their mouse over an icon, image, or text, then a brief message popping up to provide further information around it.
Personalization
Businesses across all industries are embracing personalization to deliver more impactful customer experiences — and the fintech space is no exception.
Personalization starts with collecting data around your customers from internal and external sources. This can include basic information, like age, gender, and geographical location, as well as more granular information, such as transaction history, recently viewed pages, and so on.
With sophisticated, properly integrated personalization tools, all of this data can be used to deliver content that’s tailored to individual customers. And as a result, customers receive the information they want, when they want it — leading to stronger user engagement and higher conversions overall.
Mobile optimization
It’s no surprise that more people in today’s world use mobile apps for banking, budgeting, trading, and other financial services, as opposed to the traditional channels. The ease of doing it all on your smartphone or tablet cannot be denied.
Now, challenger banks such as Monzo, Revolut, and Starling — which operate entirely through mobile — are reinventing the way consumers and organizations think about banking. And the top financial institutions in the world, like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Chase, are investing more and more into the mobile customer experience to remain competitive.
The point here is simple: Whatever your fintech solution is, it must be designed, developed, and maintained to fit all screen sizes and devices.
Team up with Codal to enhance your fintech customer experience
When it comes to UX for fintech, knowing the best practices is one thing, but knowing how to apply those principles as effectively as possible for your website or app is a whole different animal. That’s why it’s imperative to partner with a team of professional UX designers and developers who understand the fintech space — with all of its regulations, trends, and emerging technologies.
Here at Codal, our award-winning team has over a decade of experience building, launching, and maintaining online customer experiences for businesses in the financial sector. We know how to create advanced fintech sites and apps, while also ensuring that the client is safeguarding their data and maintaining industry compliance.
By leveraging in-depth market research, customer data, and cutting-edge tools, we plan and execute UX design strategies that enable financial institutions to not only compete, but flourish in the digital space.
For example, we recently completed a UX design and development project for Charles Schwab — a multinational financial services company that offers banking, investment, and wealth management services to both retail and institutional clients. This involved transforming the business’ outdated internal compliance platform into a fast, user-friendly web application.
Interested in learning more about Codal’s UX design and development capabilities in the fintech space? Reach out to a member of our team today!
