Finance masterclass app for user retention & convince: UI/UX Case Study
In this article, I will explain why having a particular niche app for users is necessary especially when it comes to money.
🌱 Background
As a member of 10kdesigners cohort-3, we were assigned to design a masterclass app of any particular niche.
Seeing a lot of recent patterns/trends just after covid hit the world(discussed in the next section), I picked to design a masterclass app on finance.
⚔️ Problem Statement
Our goal as the UI/UX designer for this startup is to design the Onboarding, Browse Products, Product Details and Checkout flows for the mobile app.
🤔 Why finance masterclass?
A lot of you might be thinking why finance? why?why?why?…
Okay so just after covid hit the world a lot of people were sitting idle in their homes looking at this kind of news -
In short, just watch these videos below to check what happened around January- February in the global market in a meme context -
Youtube and other social media were full of trending tags like #Pumpit, #Tothemoon, #hodl, #GME, #BTC, etc.
People idly sitting home new to the investment world were probable getting intimidated that they might lose the chance to earn money.
Which led to a rise in the user base of finance, stock exchange, crypto exchange apps and even increase the viewership of youtube content creators in the finance niche.
Fine now what’s the problem here?.. 🧐
👫Understanding users (target audience)
So as we have evidence that has started to get into finance and have made accounts into crypto exchanges (WazirX, Zebpay, etc), Stock market exchange apps (Zerodha, Groww, etc) or other kinds of finance apps but just by seeing the bull market. Getting in just by seeing one lead to -
- Discretionary/emotional decisions.
- Increasing volatility in the overall market.
Which lead to a lot of new investors losing money.
Even though a lot of creators on Youtube like Tanmay Bhat, Anthony Pomp, Garyvee, Metakovin and a lot of the creators are trying their best to educate new investors about finance giving them content that can be easily watched.
Still, we have to agree Youtube is a very big & broad platform for users. Anyone can easily get slipped into watching these kinds of videos, who have very little experience of the market trends.
Over that, we don’t have many apps on the financial education niche to educate new investors specifically other than Zerodha varsity.
🤕 Pain Points
After going through a lot of apps in the specific niche of financial education. There was a lot of static long-form text-based content, also there was no particular app to educate users about crypto, De-fi, NFTs, etc. (In my scope of view)
- Low empathy especially for new users who are making effort to learn something new.
Example - 1200+ words reading material with just some static illustrations. 4–5 lessons like this just at the starting. - Alone learning experience - People mostly don’t make an effort to talk about money to each other or in a new community. People only talk about these topics when they get into a community with the commitment/goal to learn it. (Example - Colleges, institutions, etc. in the real world)
- No one asking questions throughout the learning process. No options for users to even ask that. (no comment, discussion section to be particular)
- No incentives for creators for creating educational content on these platforms. (like Youtube, Instagram, Twitter, etc)
- Respecting users time - Time is the most scarce resource a human have respecting it can create a lot of difference.
For example - while reviewing any piece of content users had to skim through most of the content again to find what they are searching for.
it’s like finding something in a book again which you have read already without any bookmark or highlights.
💪Solution
After going through these apps reading reviews I came up with a solution -
- Designing an app using sensory appeal. (basically, an experience that uses multiple senses for users helping users engage, remember content better)
- Providing mentees with a private community with like mind people and mentors. (just like a college or school but virtual)
- Monetization for mentors/creators to create content in their community.
- Respecting users, providing them with resources in a categorized way. (creating an endorsement effect to keep high retention rates just like - Instagram, Spotify, Twitter, Youtube, etc)
Concept
Creating an app with nit picked/verified creators/influencers creating educational content for its users helping discussion/comment section to help keep engagement high.
Adding a premium subscription-based community feature for users to have a small group of mentees with mentors and his team, ready to answers their questions throughout the journey.
Helping mentors monetize their content better & without worrying about a big audience.
🎯Main Goal
The main goal for this app is to increase the retention for the users first by creating engagement, looking for revenue or other kinds of goals is not a good idea for any new business before providing a lot of value for its users.
We see content creators follow the same path creating value for free for a long time (at the starting of the career then getting monetary benefits out of its audience.
📝Research
I started with competitive analysis, to first understand the finance and ed-tech niche. Always a great way to understand what’s important what’s not in these apps. Observing through written copy, colours, visuals, and content.
While there was only 1 particular app in the particular niche I was building for. But, taking experience from both finance and ed-tech is always a good idea to understand the niche more broadly and combining different experiences.
After making a framework around the Financial educational app. I moved to bigger apps in finance and ed-tech, started nitpicking good experiences and reading through reviews positive and negative really helped me understand what’s working, what’s not.
Basically, we can understand my process in this way -
- Level 1-2 for Research
- Level 2-3 for IA & wireframes.
🌈Visual Design
Too much brand colour or brand concept can create a sense of discomfort in the users have a sweet balance in between can create a seamless experience for users.
Onboarding and signup flow is your apps first experience, it better be good 😎
- Keeping them in an instant feedback loop of what’s happening and setting expectations about how long the process can be is really important to keep them in a loop without any ambiguity.
- Also incentivizing them for completing the whole flow is a good motivator for them to get started.
Personalizing content for users according to their usage can make a huge difference. Also helping creators/mentors for their premium community feature with von restorff effect (People remember items that stand out)(3D cards here - breaking usual flat card pattern) or explore community nudge with big emoji with low opacity.
Users always remember the thing on top of the screen and the bottom taking that into consideration keeping the search text field on top helps the user identify the main functionality of the screen (that search in this case) not making the user think too much. Getting things done faster.
Clearing abstraction and showing the option to the users when it's necessary for them, is a very important part of UX design.
A lot of my friends never started learning a particular course just by seeing its length showing up in the staring itself. The first goal should be to let users get started, without having the anxiety of finishing a 5–8 hrs of long course.
To make the learning experience bit engaging where users also put the effort to answers all the questions of what they have learned from their side, helping them remember content/learnings more vividly.
To keep users motivated after finishing a big long task especially when it's checkout. (either by giving reward badge or Fincoins or with fancy animations)
Also providing them with the option to apply the discount just while checking out creating the user flow easier not making them go back to search for the token and applying it. The checkout process should always be smooth, free of any other interpretations.
Categorization in the favourite tab where users can easily review the stuff they have favourite saves time for the user. (example - adding the ability to save video, timestamps, resources or even courses they found useful, can come back and review anytime without going through a long list without any categorization.
Having the ability to see your viewed history can help users a lot because sometimes in future we release that the content was valuable which we haven’t saved but watched.
All these features create an Endorsement effect in the user which ultimately increases retention for the business.
As we are talking about new investors in the market most of them will be considered millennials or gen-z most of us use these kinds of patterns in our daily app usage.
For example - swapping from right to left to open IG camera, double-tap to like content and a lot of other patterns which helps us in our daily life to make our workflow/content consumption faster.
✨Learnings
- While starting I was trying to tackle everything at once problems like engagement, retention, revenue, etc, which was not a good idea after some iterations I realized picking one problem up and connect the dots to it can go a long way.
- Even while reading strategizes for increasing retention for users I got through a lot of different strategizes. But choosing what’s good for business and users should be well thought of.
(Loss Aversion example - I found that a lot of apps like Duolingo, even Zerodha varsity have some kind of goal setting/streak system where it makes you feel proud about your streak on the app. No having this kind of system in the app was a conscious decision here because motivating users for their wins is a great idea but losing these kinds of long streaks can be very demotivating for the users which sometimes leads to uninstalls or usage might stop of the app from the user's end.) - Iterate:
While working on the project I had to go back and forth to different stages of design processes because the design process is not one way flowing like a river you can go back and iterate. It’s an iterative process. Be okay with failures.
✌️And that’s a wrap!!
Heyyyy.. good to see you read till here, appreciate you for putting in the effort. Hope you found it insightful to take away some point for yourself.😉
If you had any questions feel free to reach out to me on Twitter, Linkedin or Instagram. Always up for some constructive feedback. 🙌
