13 TOP 13 FOR 2013 Financial $ervices User Experience

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1 Bottom Line Details Matter People are especially conscious of money, well, when they are on a site deciding what to do with their money. This was true for consumer banking, credit cards, business banking, mortgages, and investing. Regardless of age, income, or goal, people want to see rates and fees or their trust rating drops precipitously.

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2 Making sense of money is difficult enough without introducing more jargon. Of the 45 financial services sites we had people try out, sites that used branded names or financial jargon in product descriptions, or worse still, in navigation, consistently lost points on trust and likelihood to recommend.

Death to Jargon

APY Overdraft

Fixed-rate

RemoteDeposit

Roth eSavings

Pun

chth

ePig

Rollover

EasySend SEP NSF Fee

Amer

idea

ls

P2P

ACH

MyQ

L

HARP

3Too Much, Not Enough People often reported that there was too much going on, yet not enough information or just not the right information. It’s a conundrum. When people have to sift through a lot of noise only to find little relevant information, they are much less likelihood to explore or return.

4Pace the Conversation You don’t tell a new acquaintance your life story. Likewise, don’t dump all your products in the lap of a new visitor to the site. Our top-rated sites framed the experience like a conversation, anticipating questions and gradually revealing information.

Hi

Let me tell you about everything we offer. We’ve got 47 things that you should look at. We have awards. You probably saw our clever commercial. Or there is this repository of articles. Still more questions? There are FAQs…

Umm, bye

CALL ME SOMETIME!

5 Time ≠ Engagement

Across all the sites we studied in 2013, there was not a significant relationship between time spent on the site and any of our engagement metrics, including happiness, interest level, or number of things that people explored or wanted to explore. Engagement is just not as simple as tracking time spent on the site.

Dense Text Stops Exploration

6

Product A Most descriptions will not get read if they are longer than a few lines. On financial services sites, any small text will be interpreted as fine print. Warning: This is not real fine print, it is only an example of how consumers perceive a product description if there is a lot of text to read. Product B You may start to feel anxious about having to read all the text you see here, but don’t worry about it too much. We know you aren’t really going to read all this anyway. But if you are still reading consider this an example of what not to do on your site. Product C Small text and mobile are a lethal combination. Proceed with caution. Do not try this on your mobile app or site. We are professionals testing this in a safe environment with scientific controls.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks that people encounter on financial services sites is too much reading, yet not the right information. Consumers are especially tuned in to anything that feels like fine print on financial services sites too, even if it isn’t required by legal.

7Mega-Dropdowns are Done Sites using mega-dropdowns are on the wane, and with good reason. There are too many choices, that are too hard to find and actually click. Mega-dropdowns are often the result of lazy design. Financial services sites laying out every product and service in mega-dropdowns scored the lowest for usability.

Cats

Fluffy & White

Hamsters

Dogs

Fluffy

Patchy

Mangy

White

Orange

No Tail

Kittens

Catypus XL5

Grumpy

Hangin’ In

Sleepy

8 Comparing is Engaging

Comparisons Fees & Rates Reviews 26% 15% 13%

On financial services sites, people are not engaged by stock photos or even funny commercials. The thing they want to see most is comparisons. Comparisons between products or services are a basic requirement. Comparisons against competitors can actually drive up likelihood to convert.

9 Calculators Can Convert A

Yes, many people do actually seek out and use calculators on financial services sites. It can be a key engagement point and have a significant impact on how likely consumers are to take action. But as the number of fields goes up, engagement ratings go down. Only the simplest survive.

B

C

$$$

Simple

Easy

Clear

10 Filtering is Essential Whether browsing through cards or selecting the best checking account, people want to narrow down the many, many options typical of almost every site in our dataset. The top performers baked in targeted filters on results pages, or provided selection tools for complicated products, increasing engagement and likelihood to take action.

11 The True Authentic People have their truth-detecting radar set to high when on a financial services site. Testimonials that look too produced, reviews that are overwhelmingly positive, or unbalanced comparisons set off alarms with the consumers, over 2000 of them, in our studies this year.

Us Them

12 Negative Bias is a Reality When people had a bad experience with the brand, online or off, engagement and likelihood to convert were significantly lower. More troubling though is that brands people really loved had no significant advantage when it came to using the site. Negative bias is strong, halo effect is minimal.

No.

13 Innovation is Hard for Customers Few innovative financial services sites -and there were innovators in PFM and investing - ranked highly with consumers. What gives? Familiar trumps innovative. Users don’t want to have to think too much about you, they have their own worries. Think long and hard about a major revamp, and adopt a progressive approach instead.

NEW!

The Next Big Thing

2014 It probably won’t be posting selfies of your local branch employees on the consumer banking site or offering emojis for your mobile PFM app. A simple, seamless, cross-channel experience is going to be the focus for 2014 and we will be tapping consumers about their tablet, smartphone, and desktop experience.

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