Ten UX/UI Design Challenges That Can Compromise Financial Apps
“If you think good design is expensive, you should look at the cost of bad design,” Ralf Speth, a former Jaguar Land Rover CEO.
UX does matter. If you still doubt it, assess this. The study by the Design Management Institute analyzed the performance of design-led organizations that place influential design decisions at the top as compared to the Standard & Poor’s index over 10 years. It showed that they outperformed the S&P by 219%.
When it comes to building financial software, the importance of great design skyrockets. With the worldwide revenue from the financial technology sector to double by 2024, fierce competition evolves.
Another crucial factor is credibility. Users share sensitive data and entrust performing operations with their finances, so even minor defects in fintech products destroy confidence, make users question the company’s expertise, and what’s worse, abandon an app.
Therefore, forewarned is forearmed. To deliver complex financial solutions with an engaging design at the core, make clients fall in love with a product, and cultivate trustful relations with the audience, businesses can introduce QA to strengthen the development process.
So, let’s have a closer look at the most important UI/UX issues to bear in mind when assuring the quality of financial products.
1. Lack of accessibility in place
“Disability need not be an obstacle to success,” Professor Stephen W. Hawking. WHO states that over 1 billion people, or 15% of the world population, live with some form of a physical/cognitive disability.
And it’s great that more open-minded companies understand how important it is to think about all social groups when it comes to using the software. The revenue aspect also matters. Statistics show that retail companies alone neglecting accessibility (blindness) lose almost $7 billion annually compared to their more caring competitors.
Fintech software represents specific challenges due to diverse dynamic content, graphs, tables, and more. How to make sure that such software products are truly universal? Businesses can focus on UX/UI testing for accessibility. For instance, by deeply analyzing the needs of the clients with visual impairment, UX experts can choose the most vital aspects presented in the graph and provide their text description correspondingly.
2. Overcomplicated process of registering biometrics
With the increasing usage of biometric technology in the fintech industry, consumers get better experiences and reach their aims faster. Companies already use this tech novelty for authentication and expediting transactions. So, instead of paying with cash or credit cards, people can simply perform a fingertip scan.
However, things are rarely that simple. Today, many users can’t fully benefit from biometrics because of a long and sophisticated way of registering data. To configure voice recognition, some apps require repeating a phrase several times using different voice tones and still may reject it. While to set up face recognition, fintech products ask users to simultaneously look into the camera and press key buttons. And often technical aspects, like insufficient lighting or camera settings, impede the process.
For a part of the audience, this step is frustrating and there’s nothing but a desire to skip the functionality. During testing UX, the team should make sure the path to entering biometrics is simple and quick.
3. Non-transparent system response
Imagine a case: after starting an operation, the system stops responding. Annoying and all-too-familiar, isn’t it? However, it doesn’t always mean a frozen system, it may just perform voluminous mathematical calculations, which are so common for fintech apps. The problem lies in the ill-conceived UX, as users don’t receive information about the current action performed by the system and the time it takes. Thus, by simply providing text messages containing a brief process overview, it’s possible to warn users and make them stay.
Also, fintech applications often possess third-party integrations, like those that allow downloading financial data from a stock exchange. A time-consuming process. UX experts make sure that the action is running in a background mode, doesn’t impact user activity, and is supported by a progress bar indicating an up-to-date status.
4. Confusing hints
Effective financial management is the bedrock of using a fintech app. If the process of organizing, planning, and controlling finances is smooth and swift, users will probably turn into the brand advocates.
To achieve this, among other things, it’s important to provide clear and transparent hints indicating the procedure for executing financial operations, the course of action in case of any occurring errors, and more.
Novel users don’t always grasp a full idea regarding what instruments best fit the process of trading diverse stocks. In this case, UX specialists should check that hints contain a comprehensible summary with links to external resources, if necessary.
5. Inefficient dashboard configuration
Traders often leverage dashboards to monitor data from personal accounts, control transactions and contracts, follow the latest currency market trends and shifts. To increase working efficiency, users can tweak dashboards and choose the most topical tabs.
And here’s when UX testing steps in. Unfortunately, the customization process often turns out to be highly sophisticated due to numerous steps. Besides, the app demands customization from the get-go, which is a huge mistake as users need time to delve into app specifics and define areas of work.
It’s also important for the team to check that the process of adjusting dashboards to personal needs is simple and maximally intuitive, and all the data selected after filtering and sampling appears at once.
6. Pagination issues
Within fintech apps, simple paging is a good way of presenting data. The number of transactions or contracts may be huge, so bidirectional paging may overload the system and cause performance issues due to constant data downloading.
In case of the second option, the UX experts should place special attention to the correct display of information as sometimes it may duplicate, making users feel nervous. They may think the transaction is performed twice and with a double withdrawal. Although, in reality, it’s a UX defect, and no money is lost for good.
7. Rounding and text field layout challenges
Financial apps are all about numbers, so to ensure a great user experience and high accuracy, the team usually checks that app’s numeric fields are set to decimals. It allows target audience to enter figures after the decimal point to perform quality calculations. It’s also significant to remember that different countries officially use diverse decimal markers ― decimal comma is more common for Germany and Finland, while point ― for Australia and Japan.
Secondly, most fintech apps are to deal with users from across the globe. This is when app’s versatility does matter to provide an equal user experience for everyone. The UX specialists should place special attention to currency conversion to make software engineers plan the text size accordingly. For instance, 2.000 AUD turn into 5,521,829.38 COP (Colombian pesos)!
8. Lack of consistency
Great UX creates a meaningful first impression, makes apps a pleasure to use, and defines brands that users will return to repeatedly.
When it comes to finances, companies should organize the design in the simplest way possible. Too bright colors, too many images, excessive variety of fonts, too small or big font sizes ― all these aspects spoil the overall appearance and impede users from meeting their targets.
Therefore, the team should ensure the compliance with the consistency criterion. It means the implementation of the same design patterns and style throughout all app’s flows comes to the fore.
The UX specialists also focus on switching between dark and light themes. Often, the teams spot numerous defects connected with unmodified font color, meaning financial data melts into the background and gets lost.
9. Weak onboarding
As mentioned before, building trust is the cornerstone of any fintech solution, as it’s the credibility alone that ensures long-lasting, successful relationships with users. Your onboarding should be intuitive, informative, and be perceived as a great opportunity to build trust.
This is where UX experts highlight if there is simple but catchy content, including video, that showcases the ways to interact with an app and the benefits it provides. The presence of a straightforward step-by-step guide guarantees users’ engagement from the get-go and significantly decreases the probability of early app abandonment.
10. Poor interface design adaptation
With the advent of a mobile-first era, the interaction with fintech apps has become more varied, as device and browser fragmentation now create more contexts of use.
Therefore, it’s vital that app’s design ensures equally consistent UX across diverse browsers and OSs. Buttons, navigational elements, input fields, menu bars ― all graphical interface elements must be correctly displayed despite the device or browser type.
To cut a long story short
Professionally delivered UX/UI is one of the most effective ways to boost conversion rates, establish a long-lasting trusting bond with end users, and turn them into brand advocates.
To help the target audience smoothly reach their goals through a fintech app, companies can engage a QA provider to focus on defining areas of improvement and eliminating weak spots.
Among them, the most common UX/UI issues relate to:
· Lack of accessibility in place
· Overcomplicated process of registering biometrics
· Non-transparent system response
· Confusing hints
· Inefficient dashboard configuration
· Pagination issues
· Rounding and text field layout challenges
· Lack of consistency
· Weak onboarding
· Poor interface design adaptation.
And the bottom line to always stick to ― be it a fintech app or software tailored to any other industry ― the first business priority is to focus on your clients’ needs and ensure maximally transparent, intuitive, and simple user journeys.
