About

Alfa-Bank is one of the largest private banks in Russia, providing a wide range of financial services. In 2021, our team was approached by stakeholders with a request to test several hypotheses and develop new functionality, which led to surprising results and a decision to develop a new direction. But let's talk about everything in order.

Challenge

We decided to track the success of our experiments by two metrics: MAU and Average Balance. MAU shows how often customers use our product, while Average Balance helps us understand how actively they keep money in their accounts. Average Balance also indicates customer trust and satisfaction with the service. These metrics will give us a complete picture of the impact of experiments on users.

We formed hypotheses that we wanted to test.

Our team was approached by a stakeholder of the Expenses and Income team with a task to improve the section. The team's main goal was to find out how users save money and what their financial habits are. And how to increase user engagement in the process of saving money.

Research insights

And we focused on identifying what is the job that our customers hire our product for.

I track my goals and budget, but right now I save inconsistently — I just transfer money is left at the end of the month to another account. At the moment, I don’t see the progress of my goals or don’t understand how much more money I need to save for a specific goal.

Iryna, 33 years

I conducted 10 interviews with Alpha Bank users to explore how they manage their income and expenses. Based on interviews we drew some conclusions.

One of the competitors Sberbank

Problem definition

And I noticed a common trend among all users - they don't have enough visualization of goal progress and emotional component in goal creation. We decided to focus on this particular problem because the result of solving this problem could be an increase in user engagement and an increase in the MAU metric.

I analyzed the user path in a competitor's app and created a matrix based on that, highlighting existing problems with actual behaviors and potential solutions.

After interviewing users, we realized how users are building and tracking their financial goals now. But since our app didn't have a “Goals” function, we decided to analyze competitors' apps as well. After analyzing all the information received from users and studying competitor apps, we identified 5 user pain points.

Finding the solution

We decided to do a “Crazy 8” exercise to come up with out-of-the-box solutions. This workshop gave us many ideas for discussion and debate.

We wanted to find a better solution to the problem of visualizing goal progress and involved the whole team in a brainstorming session.

Wireframes

Colleagues who filled out the form on one screen spent 2 times more time than those who tested a form that was split across multiple screens. We chose the second option, and I set out to create high quality prototypes for full usability testing later on.

To get quick feedback, we did a hallway usability test — asked colleagues in other departments which version seemed clearer to them.

After we combined all the interesting ideas we got after the Crazy 8, we got a lot of interesting ideas. After choosing the main ones, my team and I were not sure if we should use all of them in the first iteration and if our form of goal creation was not too complicated.

The multi-screen form

This type was easier to follow – the step indicator helped to see how much was left to complete. And also the user has already gone through a couple of steps, which means he is less likely to quit filling it out because he has invested time and effort

The form on one page

By filling out this form, users lost motivation faster because of the number of fields

Usability testing results

Early concepts and feedback cycles

8 out of 10 users noted that all the cards look the same, it is difficult to distinguish the goals without reading text carefully. And the next round of iterations has begun.

Each respondent was positive about the visualization of progress in achieving the goal. It is clearly visible how much money he has already saved and how much he still has to save.

The result of the previous stages has been translated into a Figma prototype. We showed the prototype to 10 users in moderated usability tests and observed how they interacted with the application. As tasks, users had to create a new goal and transfer money from one goal to another.

Changed screens after usability testing

2 screens of Goals we tested with users

The text “Next debit of funds on...” does not explain what kind of debit it is: regular payment, one-time transfer or something else

The icons are small and get lost without creating the right contrast

Are they members who help raise money?
Are they the people who get access to the accumulated funds? This is unclear

All the cards look the same and do not evoke an emotional response

The progress bar line is too thin, and at 0% progress seems almost invisible

Visual design

2 entry points to the Goals section via the home screen or transaction history

Budget screen with a hint that free money can be transfer for the goal

Outcomes

The average balance on their accounts increased by 12% and MAU increased by 1%. More users began coming back to the app to track the progress of their goals. This is a great result and, as tests have shown, a needed functionality for users.

After the launch of the new Financial Goals feature, users have become more conscious about managing their finances. In the 3 months of testing this feature, users have become more active in categorizing their money.

+12%

increased the average balance on user’s accounts

+132 000

increased MAU metric