UX reconstruction of the pre-approved offers screen
Company:
FinanZero
Year:
2023
My role:
Product Designer (UX, UI and UX Researcher)
About the company
The biggest loan marketplace in Brazil
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Finanzero is a pioneering fintech in the Brazilian credit market, founded in 2015 based on a Swedish business model;
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It operates with the digital banking intermediation and loan comparison service;
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FinanZero offers a monthly report that highlights the main trends in the credit market.
The problem
In three months, the number of acceptances on the pre-approved offer screen dropped by around 12% . At the same time, the number of clicks on the decline button increased by 6% .
Context
Throughout 2023, "Debt Payment" was the main reason for the request.
During November and December 2022 and January 2023, the number of registrations remained stable.
After the user completed the registration, the pre-approved offers screen was displayed, if the user had offers available.
The user could choose to accept or decline. If he declined, he could not reverse the process.
The challenge
How to make more users accept more offers, considering the scenario of economic vulnerability?
Objective
Increase the number of clicks on the acceptance button of pre-approved offers by 5% in 3 months.
Interviews with stakeholders
As it would not be possible to speak to the client at this time, for internal company reasons, I opted for another approach. To organize the information I had internally, I gathered some members of the Customer Success and Customer Service teams, who could help me with valuable insights and with the following specific problems:
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Identify the main factors that make users accept or decline offers;
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Identify how they choose the offer;
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Analyze what creates security or insecurity in the acceptance process;
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Understand what were the biggest points of customer complaints on the offers screen.
From there, I facilitated a process of filling out the CSD matrix to document the knowledge contained in the two areas mentioned.
Hypothesis and supporting evidence
According to the Customer Success and Service teams, almost 1/3 of customers have:
Difficulty in understanding what happens after acceptance, causing fear of clicking the button;
Difficulty in choosing the best offer, considering that they do not know the probability of approval of each one;
Questions about payment methods.
Furthermore, the screen made poor use of space and content, concentrating little textual information in a small area.
My assumption was that if there was a new layout and clearer communication in the interface, we could increase the number of acceptances and also reduce the overload of Customer Service requests.
User Interface Analysis
I took the next step by performing a thorough analysis of the existing interface, identifying problem points based on Nielsen's heuristics.
Old layout
System visibility and status
In the mobile format, the user saw an offer take up practically the entire screen space. As a result, the customer could not see or know that there were more options to choose from if they did not use the scroll button.
User control and freedom
If the user clicked the decline button on an offer and selected a reason, they could not undo that action. This action did not trigger warnings that it could not be undone.
Aesthetics and minimalist design
The buttons, tags and content took up a lot of space, there were seven different colors on the screen and different typography weights, in addition to almost illegible textual information.
Help and documentation
Users had some information about how the process worked, but it was very limited and incomplete. It was of no use in clarifying doubts or helping with decision-making.
New layout
Before starting to build the layout, I conducted a study of competitors and marketplaces from other segments to obtain references and adapt them to FinanZero's context. From there, I produced the initial versions to improve the clarity of the information and facilitate comparison between the offers.
Wireframes
New layout
Comparative usability testing
With the layout finalized, I prepared the script and started the test. The objective was to verify, between the old layout and the new layout, the understanding of the information in the offer , understand the expectations regarding the process after acceptance and the new visual standard .
Tester profile
We use data from the internal platform to help map the ideal profile
- Age: between 30 and 40 years old - Amount requested by the user: R$3,000.00 to R$8,000.00 - Income: From R$2,000.00 to R$7,000.00 - Education: From “no higher education” to “higher education” - Occupation: CLT - Region: Southeast, Northeast and South - Reason for loan: Payment of debts - Sampling: 6 users, considering that there was no great complexity in the flow
Recruitment and scheduling
Recruitment was one of the most challenging stages, taking about two weeks between emails and phone calls.
Initially, 500 users were contacted, but the response was low. We increased this to 1,500 and then to 3,000, which resulted in 20 interested parties.
Of these, only 10 answered our calls, 4 confirmed their participation and, on the day of the test, only 2 showed up. At the same time, we expanded the recruitment to 4,000 users, getting 5 more participants, totaling 7 testers.
Usability testing
For the application, without showing any screen yet, I started with questions like:
What do you take into account most when choosing a loan proposal?
What makes the most difference to you?
Below, I just showed the old screen and asked users to comment on what they thought about it:
What was your last experience on the offer screen like? What did you miss?
What did you feel when you accepted the proposal?
Finally, I showed the new screen, paying attention to the change in tone of voice of some users, and asked some questions to understand their understanding of the proposal:
What do you think can be done on this new screen that I'm showing you now?
What differences do you see between this version and the previous one?
Synthesis and discoveries
After watching the recordings and reviewing my notes, I performed a thematic analysis of the results, bringing the following findings:
Users value the company name, but also the clarity of information.
Fear is one of the main issues; three of the users have already been victims of scams.
The old screen wasn't complicated to navigate, but the information wasn't as clear and didn't feel as secure.
Important quotes: - “The title shows the number of pre-approved proposals. It also shows the approval rating of the offers and the other differences are clearer”. - “There is more space to compare the offers”. - “Now I have more information about what you are offering me”. - “Before, only the ‘Accept’ button scared me to click and complete the loan agreement. Now I can have a better view of the steps”. - “On the old screen, I didn’t know what would happen after I accepted”. - “The new screen looks more modern, more lively, has more color, and has details about the approval rating; the other one is more basic”. - “There is a very intuitive step-by-step process to accept the proposal and I can see the details”. - “This ‘Learn more’ button really helps me. I feel like there is more care now”.
Final solution
I present the final solution after small adjustments to the information hierarchy and UX writing that emerged during testing:
Thinking about standardization and handoff to developers, I componentized the main elements for the layout base.
Metrification in Google Analytics
With the layout and features defined, I moved on to describing the metrics. We would need:
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Home page view by user;
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View details page by user;
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Click on the “Accept” button on the main page;
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Click the “Accept” button on the details page;
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Click the “Not now” button.
Results and next steps
Starting with a rollout to 50% of the public in May 2023 and 100% in June, the new version has resulted in:
14% growth in acceptance clicks
21% reduction in decline clicks
Due to my departure from the company, I did not have access to subsequent results, but the projection, until mid-July, was stability.
Based on this initial success, FinanZero’s goal is to continue exploring visual and functional improvements to further enhance the offer screen. In addition, there are plans to extend the improvements to the platform’s other two main products: Vehicle-secured loans and Real Estate-secured loans.
Conclusion and lessons learned
This project reinforced the importance of conveying security and confidence to users in delicate financial situations. In addition, it highlighted the value of listening to and interpreting their needs to continually improve the experience;
With a user-centric approach, multidisciplinary team and data-driven decisions, we overcame challenges and achieved concrete results. A key learning was the need for a higher volume of initial invitations (around 8,000 emails) to optimize recruitment and ensure greater adoption.