When banking becomes fun or at least tries to...
Last time I wrote about methods that will allow you to get to know your customers. This will allow you to deeply understand them and build the perfect solution for their needs.
But building a financial product, must have something more — it must have some kind of “X-factor”.
Finance is no fun at all. Let’s face it — it pretty sucks. Who wants to see his Minus balance or the status of the loans that he took from his bank?
But believe it or not with a few easy principles you can change it and make it much more delightful and maybe even fun — and that is the “X-factor” that we are looking for.
So are you ready for my 4 tips for making banking app fun ?
#1- Don’t leave the login to the end
This tip goes not only for financial products, this should get a proper focus in all digital products planning.
Usually, we plan the full app and focus on presenting crucial data and building the relevant activities and only at the end we pay attention to the login & authentication.
There are a few problems with this situation:
1) when the effort graph built like this - you put your effort at the beginning, and when closing to the end, you don’t have enough time, so you can’t pay enough attention to the details. In this case, the login will be left to the end and won’t get the proper planning resources.
2) The login is the first step the customer meets when using your product. If it won’t be easy as he wishes for, he will just abandon the app/website. I’m sure that you all have apps that you stopped using because of this huge friction in the login step.
3) When it comes to Finance & Banking, the authentication & data security are critical for the customers, for the bank and for the regulator.
Customers will want to know that you secure their money and their information. Banks will want to avoid security attacks and the regulator as well. So, Advanced data security mechanism must be implemented in your product.
That’s why the login step needs to be planned at the beginning of the product design process and in addition it should be smart and secured but not on the customer’s expense. The customer should have the best experience he can have.
#2- Transparency is the key
People are afraid to “get screwed”, especially when it relates to their money. And the problem today is that they don’t understand what their bank wants from them. They don’t understand the professional banking language that is being used in the app, they don’t always know what to ask and they are constantly living in the feeling that they are missing something.
2 Pointers regarding this issue are:
1) Talk to your customers in a “Human language”. Stop with the legal- banking nonsense that says nothing. You can take it one step forward and even make your copy writing fun, like you are talking with a friend. What ever you choose, put a lot of effort in your texts.
2) Be transparent. Give your customers all the information that they need at the right and relevant place. Don’t hide anything and even choose to give information that your customers would not necessarily look for.
For example: When informing your customer of his credit frame, let him know how much he is going to pay for using it. Or, if a customer tries to open a saving account, while his balance is negative, let him know how much he’s paying for his negative balance.
Be good for your customers and they will be good for you.
#3- Make Banking Fun
I know it’s a huge challenge but it’s possible. A fun bank is built from many small things. It can be done by using the mobile sounds when something nice happens (e.i Getting your salary), it can be integrating pictures of fun moments within your app and it can just be the language that you choose to use (point #2, above).
#4- Build a Proactive Bank
Give your customers insights about their financial behavior, don’t confuse them with a large variety of products that they can’t differentiate between them, remind them about important financial facts and events and you will make banking much more delightful for them.
With those 4 important steps and the tips from my previous post (https://medium.com/@orlysternizhaki/how-to-build-financial-products-that-people-will-love-f024beea62ed ), you will be on your way to changing able this old and heavy industry.
Next time, I’ll talk about how to leverage the resources that you have, and build it all in Minimum time.
