5 Best Practices to Improve User Experience in Wealth Management Products
Do you know that user experience (UX) has a direct impact on return on investment? The way people feel about your fintech application and how easily they use it is vital to engaging customers and generating profit. SWEOR reports that 94% of negative feedback is associated with design. Analysts also found that a modern user-friendly design results in a positive first impression and a lower bounce rate. By delivering an amazing UX, companies attract the audience and minimize churn while making wealth management products stand out from competitors.
In this article, software experts at Surf will consider the best practices that can help you provide a seamless UX for your solution and increase project success chances. Let’s get started.
Why is UX design so important?
UX encompasses a variety of aspects like user interface (UI) design, information architecture, usability, and brand perception. The UX determines how customers feel when interacting with a wealth management product, for example, whether it is easy for them to navigate between screens and perform the necessary actions.
In fintech, ensuring an intuitive UX is even more challenging compared with other types of applications. Solutions for online banking, investment, and budget planning include rich functionality and domain terminology that may be difficult for end users to understand. Therefore, it is essential to design an application in such a way that people can easily perceive content and find the required information.
When developing specialized software, asset and wealth management (AWM) businesses should take into account that the majority of consumers still do not trust fintechs. The primary reasons for that are user concerns about data privacy, low awareness, fear of the unknown, and limited sector regulation. In this regard, companies have to achieve the highest level of security, provide transparency around data sharing, and employ fintech trust signals. To learn more about the topic, read our article about building the credibility of app users.
How to create a great UX for a wealth management app
1. Design a convenient information architecture
When building a wealth management app, it is crucial to develop a convenient information architecture (IA), so that users can interact with the product without thinking. By organizing content and functionality in a way that people can focus on their tasks and receive a positive experience, a financial institution will manage to attract and retain customers.
For this purpose, UX professionals elaborate the content structure—named hierarchy—consisting of a flow of screens or pages. Additionally, fintech UX experts need to enable smooth navigation that determines how users move through the app, switching between screens and performing the necessary actions.
With the aim to implement an IA properly, UX designers employ a range of practices. Here at Surf, for example, we conduct the audience’s research, create user personas, and analyze typical scenarios of how people will communicate with the solution. By making a convenient information architecture for a wealth management product, companies lay out the foundation for a stress-free user experience.
2. Develop an intuitive user interface
As fintech solutions generally have rich functionality and domain terminology, a small step divides UX experts from building the application that will be difficult for end users to understand. This way, it is essential to develop a self-explanatory UI, focusing on simplicity and clarity.
To prevent customers from confusion, an AWM firm has to ensure that a wealth management product does not provide the same functionality on different screens or pages. Each screen should serve a certain purpose. Additionally, the UI should not be overwhelmed with excessive graphic items, such as buttons, icons, search fields, or pop-up windows.
When working on a finance app design, it is important to place all the elements where people expect them to be. For instance, a closed window is commonly placed in the upper right-hand corner. If the fintech solution has to ask users to fill out a contact form, say, for submitting a loan request, UX professionals have to make a document logically structured. So, questions should be divided into sections (such as personal contacts, job information, credit history), each placed on a different page.
Considering a color palette, it is advisable not to highlight important information with a frightening red color. Instead, the data should be duplicated in confirmation windows. By applying bright, contrasting colors (red may be applicable if designers choose its not so bright shades) to buttons and call-to-actions, you will draw the attention of users to the required elements.
3. Create a unique branding style
Since the fintech landscape is as competitive as it has never been before, a unique branding theme is vital to highlighting product identity and standing out from rivals. It is also pivotal to adhere to the same style that includes colors, fonts, icons, and other elements. It will look inappropriate and weird if the same design features look differently. This may also cause anxiouty as people expect financial institutions to provide consistency in design.
Let’s consider the design style of some successful wealth management products that helped them gain recognition and engage the audience.
- N26 used a concise color palette while making a minimalistic design, so that nothing draws customer attention away from the content.
- Mint, a mobile solution for personal budget control and planning, used green color to highlight important elements, such as buttons and figures. It is worth noting that green contributes to calmness and optimism, according to color perceptual psychology.
- A banking app developed by the Surf team has an intuitive interface and provides smooth navigation. Applying birght colors, our team made it easier for customers to track their expenses for each category. With images, icons, and minimal use of aggressive red shades, our UX professionals managed to improve consumer engagement.
Still, before starting wealth management app development, it is essential to conduct competitor analysis and explore the latest UX design trends. Thanks to this, you will find out how to build a product that will stand out from the crowd.
4. Include gamification
Gamification means applying game techniques and elements into a software solution to boost user engagement and increase retention. As a rule, gamification includes goal setting, progress tracking, and task completion to earn rewards like gifts, bonuses, discounts, and cash incentives.
A gamified experience in wealth management apps is generally based on points, leaderboards, and badges to motivate customers to perform certain actions, for instance, save money or build healthy spending habits. To dive into the topic, read our article about gamification in fintech.
5. Provide educational content
Wealth management products often entail concepts such as automated investment, asset control, peer-to-peer transactions, and cryptocurrency exchange that may be difficult to get for many people, especially newcomers. That is why an AWM firm should offer educational content to train users and facilitate onboarding. Thanks to this, a company will be able to improve consumer satisfaction and increase loyalty.
To educate your users, UX design professionals can provide visual explanations of financial terms, create engaging tutorials, add explanatory texts and videos.
Furthermore, organizations should provide on-demand educational content that can involve FAQs, instructions, and term definitions. It is also important to give explanations in plain language to prevent user confusion. If the target audience is novices, you should not include a lot of complex domain terminology.
Summing it up
A seamless user experience is essential to gain popularity of a wealth management product and generate revenue. By applying the best UX design practices, you will be able to build customer loyalty and increase user retention. When making a fintech solution, it is crucial to put end-user needs at the core of your design. For this purpose, you should analyze the audience’s goals and preferences before the project starts.
If you are looking to launch a wealth management app or redesign the existing one, feel free to contact our team. We will soon get back to you and help address all issues. With considerable experience in fintech software development, we deliver quality applications characterized by high usability and a recognizable branding style. Following design guidelines and keeping pace with UX trends, our software experts will create a design that will meet or even surpass your expectations.
