We’ve seen many businesses implementing digital solutions at a high-speed rate. The financial industry is no exception, as COVID-19 became a trigger for total digitalization.
The transition to online banking took place before the pandemic. However, closed bank branches and quarantine restrictions have affected the increased usage of web and mobile bankingplatforms. So, by the end of 2022, more than 65% of Americans will use digital banking.
The trend toward online banking will likely remain relevant even after the pandemic decline. Forbes Advisor claims that 90% of surveyed financial services customers will continue to use digital technologies. The reason is apparent: it is much more convenient than visiting brick-and-mortar institutions.
With the increased need for digital banking, you should pay special attention to the average user. You may consider your software straightforward as a banking product provider. Yet, for the regular user, everything related to finances can appear a confusing task.
It takes a lot of effort to ensure that the interaction with your banking product lives up to customer expectations. Therefore, if you want to improve the usability of your solution, keep reading this post.
Arounda will share the main challenges related to user experience in banking platforms with you. We can help you determine if your app needs improvement and advise you on how to do it.
We’ll draw on our extensive experience conducting UX audits for many FinTech products to make this article informative. We’ve already helped numerous clients like Gigzi and BlocFX become more competitive and satisfy their users.
Why User Experience Is Critical in Digital Banking Products?
As previously stated, digitization has become a common practice among financial institutions. However, only 7% of these organizations believe that their digital solutions meet their and users’ expectations.
Digital transformation goes beyond merely developing a banking app. It also considers client needs and implements them through functionality and design.
Delivering banking product UX means analyzing customer behavior thoroughly. The user experience is directly related to your business’s ecosystem: brand, products, and services. So, your reputation and customer loyalty are impacted by how easy it is to use your application.
The best digital banking experience focuses on the psychology of your customers. If you understand what your users need, you can give them an efficient and seamless product. As a result, you will see an increase in user retention.
Providing a flawless user experience also lies in the opportunity to lead the competition. Financial institution customers are more likely to choose an easy-to-use digital banking application.
What Are the Common UX Issues in Banking Products?
User experience is about a deep understanding of your customer. So, those areas in your banking product that you don’t pay enough attention to will likely cause user churn. So, what are the common mistakes in UX worth avoiding?
Complex Onboarding Process
Onboarding is the first interaction users have with your banking product. If the process of signing up and learning about your FinTech solution is complex and confusing, it can scare away your customers.
Annoying Authentication
The security of banking platforms and transactions is critically important. But what could be more frustrating than entering all your PINs and passwords every time you need to check your balance? The ideal solution is to find a balance between security and convenience.
Confusing App Navigation
The finance industry itself is quite complex. It requires customers to understand financial instruments and services, not to mention the use of digital solutions. Does your banking product offer a complex information architecture? Then, consider improving it as the navigation must be intuitive.
Insufficient Personalization
Personalization is relevant for banking products and many other areas and solutions. Modern users expect the ability to customize the software to their needs, thus improving their experience with your app.
How to Improve the User Experience in Banking Products?
If the UX of your existing banking web or mobile app needs improvement, you need to consider the following strategies:
Apply Failure Mapping to Improve Your UX
You cannot create a perfect user interface that will suit everyone. It is because all users are different and, accordingly, there is no standard solution.
However, you can investigate exactly how your customers behave in your application using the failure mapping approach. It lies in identifying problematic scenarios of using your banking platform. This process also involves trying to understand your user’s logic.
Eliminate Complex Design Elements
An excess of features confuses and even annoys users. So, the more elements and information blocks in your banking or money transfer app, the more complex it is for a typical user.
Try to place features and design elements according to their priority for your customers. Highlight them in different visual ways: fonts, colors, etc. Also, don’t confuse simplicity with primitiveness: your banking system should be minimalistic but useful.
Make Your Banking Platform’s UX Personalized
Personalization is improving the customer experience in banking apps. Enable your customers to customize your platform to their needs. Let it be the ability to adjust the digital tools, change the background color, etc.
Also, do some research on your customers. Then, you can offer them individual offers based on the collected data.
Provoke an Emotional Connection
Even if you think emotions have no place in banking, it is not the case. Financial applications’ complexity and excessive rationality create a gap between them and their customers. Therefore, you should focus on making your users closer to you.
You need to work on personalized experience to achieve an emotional connection with customers. Pay attention to the language of your application as well. Design should not just be what your users see but what they feel.
Make Your Banking Platform’s Design Consistent
When we talk about consistent design, we mean that it should be smooth and logical. All screens and elements of your platform should be connected and not make customers feel like they are using different products.
To make your user interface design for online banking system consistent, you need to standardize the vision of your product in general. It applies to fonts, colors, images, buttons, information blocks, etc.
Offer Problem-Solving Features
Bank application providers often want to pack as many features into the platform as possible. But do users need all these functionalities?
Instead, focus on making your banking product’s features solve real user problems. No one needs a lot of functions if they don’t hit critical customer needs.
Don’t Be Afraid to Change
The financial sector cares about corporate image and is often reluctant to adjust. Change it by being open to innovation. It applies both to the introduction of some advanced technology and to new design solutions.
Remember that the most important thing is to focus on your users, not on the legacy of the corporate culture. After all, your customers will bring you profits and success.
How to Understand That My Product Needs Improvements?
If you are a fan of customer-centric design, you know that the needs of your users are of utmost importance. So, it is necessary to conduct a UX audit to understand whether your banking platform is usable enough.
We have good news for you: Arounda deeply understands this process. We help our clients become market leaders by offering a flawless user experience.
Here is how we conduct a UX audit:
- We analyze the user experience. We study how users interact with your product to explore the logic of their behavior and their emotions. As a result, we find bugs in the design that needs fixing.
- We study the content. Our designers review the content of your application and determine whether it meets the needs and goals of your business. We also consider whether this content is appropriate for your users.
- We look for technical errors. During the UX audit, we also look at the general performance of your banking platform. For example, how long do the pages of your application take to load and whether there are technical errors to fix.
- We provide summary documentation. After conducting a UX audit, we draw all our conclusions in a document. There you will find tips for improving your specific product.
When might you need a UX audit? Here are some typical scenarios.
- You need a banking product redesign.
- You want to validate a new banking product.
- You need to define key product metrics.
So, by conducting a UX audit with Arounda, you can satisfy your users, increase conversion rates, and reduce product development and design costs.
Final Thoughts
User experience in banking products is critically important. It allows you to retain customers, increase the availability of banking services, and make your platform competitive.
To understand whether your product needs improvement, Arounda recommends conducting a UX audit. As a result, you will learn what to pay attention to and what needs alterations.
If you want to improve the digital banking product user experience, we can help. Arounda has experience with more than 20 FinTech products and is ready to share it with you. Therefore, do not hesitate to contact us.
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