Digital banking is one of the financial industry’s most promising and dynamically developing areas. Due to the need to digitally transform existing systems and new challenges, more and more companies and enterprises worldwide are focusing on developing innovative solutions to effectively solve problems and provide the user with enhanced capabilities and easy access to services.
According to experts, by 2024 the number of mobile banking users will reach 1.75 billion. This is an indicator of user interest in online banking, taking into account the benefits provided by the digitalization of existing banking systems, as well as external factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic, which contributed to the reorientation of most businesses from different industries to the digital space.
However, with the growing demand for mobile financial applications, companies are facing new challenges and customer needs. Among the main things are the user interface and experience. After all, the success and growth of the company directly depend on how the application looks, how it interacts with the user, and what features it contains. This is why user experience design consulting services are becoming popular in software development. Even the best and most innovative idea can fail if its implementation is too complicated or inconvenient for the end user.
Let’s consider the main factors regarding the importance of user experience, existing problems, and ways to solve them in UX / UI design in digital banking.
UX Design Common Issues
UX design is primarily based on the needs and expectations of the user. This is why companies conduct research before starting development to understand who their users are, and what their habits and problems are since this data helps to create an application that is perfectly suited for a particular fintech company’s customers. At the same time, there are common issues that can often lead to user churn.
Overcomplicated Onboarding
The first touch is the most important. Therefore, the process of interaction and familiarization of the user with the application should be easy, interesting, and intuitive. Too complicated registration, navigation, and use of the application greatly increase your chances of turning customers away.
Too Much Security
Security is critical for fintech applications because customer money is at stake. However, it is essential to find a balance between security and convenience. One of the mistakes is too much authentication, entering pin codes and passwords. All this can confuse the user and ruin the experience of the application.
Not Enough Customization
Successful fintech applications are those that provide the user with a personalized experience and customization. For digital banking, personalization is an important aspect as users may have different financial habits, needs, and goals, so your application must be user-centric and provide them with enough personalization to meet their expectations.
Poor Navigation
Another common mistake is poor navigation within the app. Financial instruments, products, and services already have a higher barrier to entry due to their complexity for many people, so the information architecture of the application must guarantee easy search and intuitive navigation to teach the customer how to use your application.
UX Design Improvements
By avoiding common mistakes and understanding the expectations and needs of their customers, fintech companies can learn how to improve user experience and implement user-friendly UX design in their software.
Standardize The Vision
Think about the concept and architecture of your application. A good user interface means consistency, logic, and coherence between all elements of an application. In other words, everything from pages to buttons and colors should be seen as a single mechanism, not several different products bundled into one.
The more logical and intuitive the interface, the easier it is for the user to navigate and interact with the application.
Bring Personalization
As already mentioned, the lack of customization and personalization is one of the main drawbacks. When developing software, UX designers and architects try to think ahead from A to Z. This is an important task to complete, but at the same time, one should not forget to allow the user to configure some elements of the application themselves. These can be tools, backgrounds, colors, fonts, pages, etc.
In addition, enabling customization features in your app will provide you with valuable data about user feedback, behaviors, and preferences that you can then use to develop new solutions.
Apply Failure Mapping Approach
Continuing the subject of personalization and user feedback, apply the failure mapping approach in your UX design. This will help you clearly see the problem scenarios your customers are facing, as well as how users are interacting with the application. With this approach, you get valuable information that you can analyze to better understand the logic of your users’ actions.
Pay Attention To Emotional Connection
Even though the world of finance and money is usually associated with numbers and mathematics, there is an emotional connection here, because emotions are what people are often guided by. Therefore, along with personalization, UX designers should think about both how the application looks and what feelings it can evoke in the user. This includes appearance, style of speech, tone, etc. The ideal user interface concept for a fintech application is one that conveys a sense of confidence, novelty, reliability, security, and innovation.
Avoid Complex Elements
Additional features and elements are often an advantage, but a balance must be struck here. If the user interface contains too many different elements, information blocks, and features, this can make the interaction with the application uncomfortable. It is best to pay attention to a minimalistic, but logical and intuitive design. This will help make the use of the app efficient and precise.
