The internet has fathered numerous sophisticated innovations over the years: Amazon for the book industry, Netflix in the entertainment industry, Coursera.org for education, among others. Now, the internet and the financial industry have merged to create Fintech. The financial industry has taken a turn for the ‘better’ with the introduction of some revolutionary fintech products.

A mix of good ideas, opportunities, flexibility, and more importantly great user experience is what has contributed to the most part of the current Fintech revolution. Now that more consumers are more connected than ever, they are spoilt for choice and expect quality personalized experiences from financial technologies.

A mere switch into internet banking was enough to drive thousands of customers swinging through the hypothetical doors of the online bank. With the addition of extra features, some fintech companies have proved a worthy competitor against other traditional banking systems.

However, there has been a surge in digital banking services all of which are now offering similar features. This means that features alone are not enough to engage and retain customers in this highly competitive and flexible digital banking industry. Providing the right experience, to the right customers, at the right place and time, is what sets apart a successful fintech user experience from an average one.

In addition to the digital banking sector, other savvy fintech companies, such as trading platforms, risk management or payment platforms, are giving their customers and prospective clients compelling reasons to trust them by creating a design that turns their product into a holistic financial approach to each digital consumer. This approach ultimately provides an enhanced user experience, which further cements the relationship between the consumer and online financial technology company.

Here are a few basic concepts that help create a good fintech user experience.

1. Keep It Simple

Digital users don’t fancy going through an instruction manual in order to use fintech services, that’s why it is important to keep things clear, purposeful, and straight to the point. Simplify the user experience in terms of the page layout, task flows, navigation, and content display. It is important to ensure that the most frequently utilized tasks are visible and easily accessible. Easy navigation ensures an ease of use throughout the entire digital experience, plus it instills confidence to the end consumer when handling their finance.

2. Know the Business Really Well to Breate a Flow That Will Appeal to the Pros

As a UX designer, you can’t understand everything, most definitely not in the Fintech area, and that’s alright. However, in order to create the right user experience, you need to understand the business first. No matter how smart you are, there is no way you can learn and understand the business as well as your client, who has been in the industry a minimum of 2 years. Still, you need to spend the time, observe, learn the tricks and trades of the business. Only thenwill you be able to plan any interaction. Otherwise, the best result you can get to is shallow.

3. Integration Of Different Digital Ecosystem Assets

Some of the most valued fintech user experiences are held with such high esteem because they are able to interweave other digital applications into their online system. These include: personal financial management tools, bill payments, money transfers, and person-to-person payments. All these assets make it easy for consumers to assess and carry out capabilities they value and probably use the most. Nevertheless, the fintech product should make it easy to navigate these tasks to create an easy workflow. For instance, with just one click, upcoming bill payments should be displayed including, details of the payment and when it is due.

4. A Multi-Channel Design

Seeing as the internet can be accessed from various devices, more consumers are using their smartphones and tablets to gain a fundamental digital experience. As such, a great fintech user experience should resonate well with different channels, while still providing simple navigation and consistent online design components.

5. Resemble the “Real World” Products

For decades, people in the financial industry had to put up with ugly products. Even today’s Bloomberg terminal is not the best aesthetic experience Yet, offering your clients’ products that resemble out-of-fintech product design will immediately be more welcomed than any other product that looks like an engineer did the design work.

6. Create Data Learning Loops

It’s no secret that the digital world is fast paced. To create a good user experience, it is important to acquire as much updated data as possible. Today, top technology entrepreneurs like ZestCash and Billfloat are using Google-like processing technologies and online social and financial data to transact advice and serve their clients in a smarter way. All it takes is to apply for savvy analytics to gain a better understanding, and even be able to predict behaviors of various digital channels all of which gives you insight into your consumer.

7. Be Of Service

Just because you are working with a fintech service, does not mean that all the financial technology products can only be delivered and executed via computer servers. When it comes to money matters, most people want to speak to a live human being every now and then, or at least have that option open for them. Aside from providing high tech features, it’s important to have financial advisors on call for clients. This creates a balanced and diversified portfolio, which instills confidence and trust in the client.

8. Put A Face On It

Trust plays a critical role when it comes to user experience and consumers want to see the face of the person or people that they are entrusting with their money. If you want your clients to trust you, you should be willing to show your face or your teams’ faces. This could mean putting up full bios of yourself, your team, and how they can be contacted.

9. Gamify It

Gamification has increased in popularity in the past five years and we’ve seen some of the top products in a variety of industries adopt the practice in design. Consumers in financial industry are serious about their interactions with fintech platforms, but that doesn’t mean they are not interested in having some fun when using products. In addition, gamification allows users to be engaged with the product, focus, and solve problems, thus increase the value and quality of the fintech product.

10. Realize You Are In An Experience Business

Keep in mind that you are not only competing with other online banking institutions, but with other retail websites like Fab or Amazon. This means that you need to be familiar with current ergonomics, mobile app development, user experience design, and how to interact with your clients across different devices with ease. This requires you to be up to date with today’s must-haves in the tech and financial world to offer a better user experience.

11. Be Tactical

Most people use fintech to carry out tasks that are frequent and cannot be ignored like filing tax returns, or paying bills. A great user experience however needs to also revolve around a design that provides strategic and life changing financial services, like savings and investments.

Do you have any critical user experience design tips for the fintech industry that weren’t mentioned here? Feel free to share your thoughts with us vis email: [email protected]