AN INTERNATIONAL MONEY TRANSFER PROVIDER NEEDED TO SIMPLIFY THEIR ON-BOARDING JOURNEY.
MyCurrencies (Not a real name) is a key player in the UK in international money transfer. My involvement has been evaluating key benchmark journeys and recommend a new user journey to be implemented, presented in wireframes.
Pre-project
The journey analysis of MyC shows a 15 page-transition, starting from the landing page, going back and forth between the user’s email and the website. This proved to be a very painful journey and a pretty disappointing one for the new user, as it doesn’t deliver the promises on neither seeing the quotes nor sign-up.
Re-designed
Simplified all 3 key tasks (Sign up, view quote and transfer) in the total number of transitions to just 5 pages
The number of verification steps to is just 1 page, and by using mobile verification, the process is more continuous then by email
No more manipulative step on ‘View exchange rate’ which was effectively a step of getting customer details
LEARN MORE
Project brief
MyCurrencies (Not a real name) is a key player in the UK in international money transfer, operating since 1996 with both retail and online channels. MyC has traded £7billion in currencies in 2019.
MyC is however, now facing strong online competitions such as TransferWise and needs to revisit its key user journeys involving :
View quotes, sign-up, and making a transfer.
I was briefed to analyse their key competitors and recommend the best user journey, presented in wireframes.
What’s an on-line money transfer service for?
Source: Top10MoneyTransfer.com. As of June 2020. TransferWise was not within top3 for the sums between £1,000 to 10,000, but it ranked at no.9.
There are two most common use cases in sending money overseas. They are:
Sending money regularly to their families and relatives in their home country - also known as remittance. Small sums, regular transfer. the sum of the transfer is often between below 1,000 and in multiple and regular transactions.
Sending money to buy a holiday home or other properties overseas - large sums, one-off. the sum often ranges from £1,000 to £10,000 and even larger.
What bothers users most?
With an initial secondary research to start off, I gained some insights into the use cases and common pain points.
Some I’ve found valuable in identifying my next moves.
Many people have no prior experience or any background knowledge about how to approach this. Often, they contact their own bank as their first call, and are shocked about the exorbitant commission and disadvantageous exchange rate their bank offers.
Transferring money overseas is a nerve-racking thing to do. The single biggest cause for concern is that if their money would arrive into their recipients' account safely.
While new challengers in Fintech such as TransferWise are becoming household names for the use case category a), customers in category b) care a great deal more how established the provider is and if they can put their trust in the service provider.
My client primarily competed in the use case category b). While they did enjoy a good reputation being an established player in the market, their customer journey experience would have to match the seamless user experiences the new challengers provide.
Why is simplifying an on-boarding journey so critical?
Each sign-up task drops off users (Source: HotJar)
It’s because when you look at the funnel of the users stay on, there’s only one way - down.
The longer the sign-up stage, the more users would drop-off on the way. The illustration from HotJar (Read more about sales funnel conversion from HotJar’s funnel analysis) shows this. Also, the first step is critical as it’s where most dramatic dropoff takes place.
* Even the best businesses will only convert a maximum of 5% of the people who come to their websites. Lengthening the sales cycle only increases the amount of time that you have to spend with the other 95%. (Source: erMarketers.com)
Current experience deep-dive
Reviewing the user journey for MyC from the landing page to the steps leading to making a transfer against its key competitors - TransferWise and XE, a few serious problems were identified.
Task 1. Viewing quotes
Landing page to ‘Viewing quote’. The journey doesn’t let the user to complete the task of viewing quotes.
Viewing quotes was not immediately available and used in getting contact details of the customers.
Even when the user submitted the details, however, the site still did’t give visibility to the quotes/exchange rates. This task must be perceived as failure from the user perspective, because the user is told ‘Our customer executive will get in touch with you in the next 2 days’.
At this stage, the user must be really frustrated because not only the site wouldn’t let you view quotes, but also, he/she would have realised ‘View quotes’ was used as a bait to get the customer details.
The sign-up journey: can only start from the email link provided.
Task 2. Sign-up
Because the users would have submitted his/her contact details by this stage, they would have by now been sent an email that would let you sign up. Unless they might have already gone with MyC’s competitors, they can finally sign up.
Compared to its competitors, MyC’s sign-up journey had steps that could be reduced.
1) The sign-up process would involve 6-page transitions of filling out personal details.
This process looks considerably longer compared to the competitors : TransferWise (1-page on personal details). XE (2-page on personal details)
In particular, considering the user would have filled out key contact information, such as his email address and a phone number, this step would feel repetitive to the user.
2) A 2-step identify verification process
The user would receive a code on his mobile phone which in turn he would have to input, but effectively, this is an extra step to an email verification as the user would have already verified his identity once by clicking the ‘Sign-up’ from his own email.
TransferWise only require a 1-step verification and does not make the verification mandatory to completing the registration process. The users can verify themselves anytime later on.
The journey analysis of MyC shows a 15 page-transition, starting from the landing page, going back and forth between the user’s email and the website. This proved to be a very painful journey and a pretty disappointing one for the new user, as it doesn’t deliver the promises on neither seeing the quotes nor sign-up.
Industry best practices
TransferWise
TransferWise lets the users view the quotes instantly on the landing page without any strings attached; The sign-up is painless with just 1 page of filling out personal details and a non-mandatory 1-step verification.
In just 5 page transitions, the user can already do what he/she came to do; making a money transfer.
XE
XE’s key user journey is a little longer but not by much; it lets the user to view quotes instantly as well, and the sign-up takes 2-page personal details page and 2-steps mandatory verification on the user’s email and mobile phone, making the total number of page transition 7.
Key design principles
Going into the new journey design, I’ve drawn up key design-principles learning from MyC’s current journey and those of its competitors.
1. Make ‘create an account’ available from the landing page
2. Deliver on earlier promises : Enable ‘View exchange rate’ upon sign-up
3. Reduce steps for registration : 2 pages and 1 non-mandatory verification
4. A clear, easy-to-understand progress bar
New journey design
CLICK THE PROTOTYPE BELOW
What did the new user journey achieve?
Final implemented version
Simplified all 3 key tasks (Sign up, view quote and transfer) in the total number of transitions to just 5 pages
The number of verification steps to is just 1 page, and by using mobile verification, the process is more continuous then by email
No more manipulative step on ‘View exchange rate’ which was effectively a step of getting customer details