The good, bad and the ugly. Mobile banking in NZ. Designing for mobility

The good, the bad and the ugly: Mobile Banking in New ZealandKris Nygren & Michael Dutton

Designing for Mobility 2013

Melbourne

Some of us…20 UX consultants and designers in Auckland and Wellington

Disclaimer (and credentials!) – we have worked with most New Zealand banks on more than 100 projects

http://services.google.com/fh/files/blogs/our_mobile_planet_new_zealand_en.pdf

TNS Mobile Life study (New Zealand) 2012

Mobile and mobile banking were hot trends in NZ in 2012 (penetration:)

Google Analytics

Banking (NZ)

Mobile banking (NZ)

Google search trends told the same story:

By mid-2012 it was like a mad race with New Zealand banks announcing new mobile banking offerings on a weekly basis!

But lets step back and look at the bigger picture…

6 billion mobile connections

1.2 billion mobile web users

1 billion smartphone handsets

Global mobile stats in 2012…

http://mobithinking.com/mobile-marketing-tools/latest-mobile-stats/a#subscribershttp://mobithinking.com/mobile-marketing-tools/latest-mobile-stats/a#smartphonepenetration

Pop Quiz!

Rank Country Subscribers(millions)

1 China 1,1002 India 6993 USA 3224 ? 2605 Brazil 2596 Russia 2277 Japan 1288 ? 1209 Germany 11410 ? 107

http://mobithinking.com/mobile-marketing-tools/latest-mobile-stats/a#chinasubs

Where is mobile growing?

Pop Quiz!

Rank Country Subscribers(millions)

1 China 1,1002 India 6993 USA 3224 Indonesia 2605 Brazil 2596 Russia 2277 Japan 1288 Pakistan 1209 Germany 11410 Nigeria 107

http://mobithinking.com/mobile-marketing-tools/latest-mobile-stats/a#chinasubs

Where is mobile growing?

2009

What about growth in mobile banking?

2013 2015

55m

550m

1.1bn

http://www.berginsight.com/News.aspx?m_m=6&s_m=1

+2000%

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/02/prweb3553494.htm

http://www.ababj.com/tech-topics-plus/m-banking-530-million-users-by-2013-2695.html

http://mobithinking.com/

blog/china-top-mobile-market

China 2012:>1 billion mobile subs>400m mobile web users

http://mobithinking.com/banking-the-unbanked

The global trend is for “un-banked” and “under-banked” consumer segments driving the growth in mobile banking

Pop Quiz!

This country has 29 million mobile subscribers.

65% (19 million) use mobile money services.

Where am I?

Q:

A:http://www.cck.go.ke/resc/statcs.html

Pop Quiz!

This country has 29 million mobile subscribers.

65% (19 million) use mobile money services.

Where am I?

Q:

A: Kenyahttp://www.cck.go.ke/resc/statcs.html

And it turns out it’s the same trend in the US as in China, India and Kenya….

The “unbanked” and “underbanked” are key to growth – adoption among younger, minorities, lower income segments are driving growth in the US

?But the question we really wanted to answer…

who provides the BEST mobile banking experience in New Zealand?

So, UX consultancies regularly study the usability of internet and mobile banking…

…and there is a plethora of mobile banking “awards”

…and sometimes its just one guy’s opinion!

So we asked ourselves - as UX researchers and designers - if we were to evaluate mobile banking offerings as objectively and scientifically as possible, …how would we do it?

This is how. Evaluate each offering against 5 core criteria:

Usability

Interaction design

FeaturesUser ratings

Platforms

We assessed all New Zealand banks (and US giant) and plotted them on a pentagon spider-diagram

Usability

Interaction design

FeaturesUser ratings

Platforms

Big graph area = good

Usability

Interaction design

FeaturesUser ratings

Platforms

Small graph area = bad

Before we start, however, it’s important to understand the relative size and resources of the banks we evaluated…

TSB Bank ~$200m revenue

JP Morgan Chase $100bn+ revenue

FeaturesUser ratings

Platforms

We started with some secondary research – looking at publically available data

iPhone Y Y Y Y Y Y y y

iPad N Y N N N N y y

Android Y Y Y Y Y N y y

Windows Y N N N N N y N

Open accounts N N Y N N Y N N

No log-in balances Y Y Y N N N N N

4/5 digit log-in Y N Y Y Y N N Y

View account balances Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

View transaction lists Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

Transfer between accounts Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

Bill payment Y Y Y N Y Y Y N

Set up payees - From Mobile N N N N N Y Y N

View automatic payments N Y Y N Y Y N Y

Change upcoming payments N N Y N Y y N N

View term deposits Y Y Y N Y y N N

View mortgages & loans Y Y N Y Y Y Y Y

View KiwiSaver Y N N N N N N N

Pay tax N N N N Y Y N N

Alerts: Text N N N N N Y Y N

Push N N N N N Y Y Y

Email N N N N N Y Y N

Foreign exchange, rates etc. Y N N N Y Y N N

Share trading N N N N N N N y

NFC N N N N N y N N

Location based services Y N Y N N N Y Y

Pay to mobile Y N N Y N Y N Y

Pay TradeMe sellers Y N Y N N N N N

Pay to Facebook friends Y N N N N N N N

Personalise account N N N N N Y N N

Personalised service N N N N Y N N N

Picture cheque deposits N N N N N N Y N

Loyality scheme points Y n N N N N Y N

Secure Messaging Y N N N Y Y N N

App store - latest version 4.53 3.33 4.55 1.82 4.35 4.45 2.34 2.19

App store - all versions 3.31 1.87 4.16 1.82 4.35 4.45 3.49 3.00

Google play 3.94 2.93 4.50 3.93 4.35 4.24 3.92Ratin

gFu

nctio

nalit

yPl

atfor

m

It turned into this heat-map…

Features

How many is enough?

How many

is too

many?

We looked closely at the features provided – both core and non-core

Here is how they ranked on features…tiny TSB at the top!

User ratings

Next we looked at the user rating in the app stores (which must be taken with a grain of salt…)

And there were some clear winners and losers

Platforms

Finally, we looked at how many platforms banks make their mobile offering available on

Revealing a wide spread with TSB and ANZ potentially excluding a large part of their customer base

Usability

What to

test? Who:

Millennials

Where?

Method

As UX consultants, we believe that comprehensive usability testing was critical to a robust evaluation

…so we recruited real bank customers and tested all the mobile banking apps in our specialist mobile user testing lab in Auckland and Wellington

In

Action!

Big gap between the best and the worst…and as expected, a strong (inverse) relationship between usability issues and

SUS (system usability score)

On balance, Westpac and ASB provided the most ‘usable’ UI

Interaction design

Finally, we asked five UX consultants and interaction designers to assess how well designed each mobile

banking app was

We created a robust evaluation framework, which enabled independent assessment and scoring of each banking app

And yet again, it revealed a big gap between the top and bottom performers

We didn’t feel all criteria were equally important, so we weighted them to emphasise the most important aspects

?So, how did they all stack up?

This should start to give you a picture…

Usability

Interaction design

FeaturesUser ratings

Platforms

56.01

In the end, ANZ achieved the lowest score due to a lack of features, few platforms and poor user ratings

Usability

Interaction design

FeaturesUser ratings

Platforms

77.83

ASB, by contrast achieved strong scores across all criteria

Usability

Interaction design

FeaturesUser ratings

Platforms

74.86

In fact, giant US Bank JP Morgan Chase (often held up as a benchmark in mobile banking) came in second to ASB

77.8374.86 68.83 67.35Scores:

Finally, some key insights from this study…

• Is “feature bloat” a problem in terms of mobile banking UX? Not if the app is well designed.

• It’s really hard to measure good design!

• Good mobile usability and features can make people switch banks!

• Americans still use cheques!

• And, these findings are already out of date…