International Money Transfers
Reducing the cost of onboarding.
Sector: Finance
My Role: Product Designer
Platform: Web App & Mobile App
Framework: React Native
Methodology: Agile
Business model: B2B and B2C
Overview
An international money transfer service would like to improve its onboarding process. The process for Business customers has long remained unchanged, with limited validation and a fair amount of manual input required. Errors are carried over from screening into the application. These data discrepancies increase the time it takes to verify business account details, further increasing the time it takes to onboard users (the process currently can take up to 30 days).
We set out to understand the existing experience and uncover potential opportunities using various research methods.
Review the existing onboarding process and align on goals and objectives.
It’s good to start any workshop with a warm-up activity and provide the team with a little context. I like to use the Character Mix & Match Icebreaker on Miro to get started. This is an excellent icebreaker for new groups.
Workshops and whiteboarding sessions
A brilliant way for teams to envision processes that customers go through to reach their objectives. It helps to improve lead and client experience, company alignment, and develop new products and strategies. It is an excellent way for stakeholders to discuss backstage and frontstage activities, dependencies, and an opportunity for knowledge sharing.
- Collect stakeholders’ insights and find the most consequential ones, and high-risk ones, validate these with research and find out if they’re real.
- Use assumptive personas (best guess on who will use the product and why). This helps to recruit for interviews and to empathize with future users.
- Examine how people navigate through the feature or service.
- What is the perception of value?
- Validate assumptions for each customer segment.
Goals
- Increase acquisition
- Reduce the amount of time it takes to onboard
- Reduce data inconsistencies
- Allow for edge cases during screening
- Collect data to inform future decisions
Target Audience
Business Account Consumer; frequent flyer that makes multiple international payments (using an app). Aged between 35 and 60, from the UK, Employed. Behaviours include; Transferring money internationally via an app. Tracks rates for the best deal. Scheduling payments.
Identifying the problems
Generate ideas quickly by mapping out the customers’ journey from awareness to their first successful international transfer. Get a clear picture of what customers need, their pain points and the business opportunities.
Onboarding in numbers
Secondary Research
74% of users will switch to other solutions if the onboarding process is complicated.
85% of users remain loyal if continuous education is provided.
63% of users think that onboarding is key to deciding to subscribe to a product.
Prioritising ideas
Examine the reach, customer value, potential business revenue and implementation effort for each idea.
Using an effort/ impact matrix to help you get a clear idea of current priorities.
Ideas from the session
Increase engagement
Explore alternative entry points to core features.
Validation:
Reduce data discrepancies, and the time it takes to onboard new users by updating the rules on existing forms.
Manual input:
Visitors currently enter their business details manually. Reduce completion time by implementing a look-up service for business details and prepopulating the application with the data obtained. Allow for edge cases: the look-up service cannot find the business details in the registry or when the registry API is unavailable in a specific location etc.
Transfer Calculator:
Users are only able to use core functionality after onboarding. Showcase key features to improve user engagement and conversion rates.
Track Rates:
This feature is hidden. Showcase key features to improve user engagement and conversion rates.
Measuring Success
How will you know if your idea meets a user need or if it provides value to the business?
Coming up with great ideas is one thing but if you are not measuring success conscientiously, applicable ideas can fail.
Metrics
Task success rate
The % of users that correctly completed all tasks.
Completion time
The total amount of time it takes users to create an account and verify their details.
Engagement rates
How often do users interact with core features?
Retention
How often do users use the Track Rate and Transfer features?
Revenue
In what way does the product make money? How much is it making monthly?
Conversion Rates
% of users that use the Track Rate and Transfer features?
User Acquisition
% of users that are using the features for the first time?
Research
When presented with a specific task, what will visitors click on?
First click test & survey
Examine what users will click on first in order to complete their intended task. Evaluate the effectiveness of the linking structure of your site, including the navigation, to see if users know how to get around the site and complete their goal.
Task: Imagine that you need to calculate the cost of your next international transfer. How would you go about doing this? Where would navigate to?
Initial click-test and survey reveal that the hypothesis for placing core functionality on the landing page stands valid. Run further tests with a small % of users. Measure engagement and conversion rates over time to gauge the impact.
Opportunities
Allow visitors to use core functionality (before onboarding).
By showcasing the ‘send money’ feature in the shop window, we will increase return visits, user engagement and onboarding rates. Visitors want to calculate their transfers, track rates, schedule, review and save their trades.
Onboarding should be delightful, educational, quick, and intuitive.
How might we improve onboarding?
Prepopulate the application with data gathered from the eligibility application. Reduce manual input by using look-up services. Simplify the front-end presentation of the application steps, and list the steps in logical order. Allow users to navigate between sections easily, and display a progress indicator. Celebrate milestones. Include incentives and information.
Do not overwhelm users with oodles of text.
How can we improve the experience?
Simplify the front end of the application (KYC and avoid repetition, simplify steps, celebrate milestones etc.). Provide support, make it intuitive to track progress, and allow visitors to navigate between application sections.
Exploration
Modifying the toast component.
Exploring entry points to app features
By modifying the existing component we can; increase app enrolment and feature engagement. Toasts are a great way to show a message that is clear and actionable.
