Betterment Depositing Experience & UX Metrics

 
 
 

Betterment is a robo-investment management platform. Meaning, customers could create their account with as little as $1 and use Betterment’s proprietary software to grow their investment.

Stage

Series C
Accelerated-Growth

Industry

FinTech

 

key Expertise

UX Strategy

Discovery & UX Research

Product Design

 
 
 
 
 
 

Challenge

Critical to the company and customer reaching its goals, it was imperative that customers deposit more — both in amount and frequency. But quantitative data told the team that Auto-Deposits were declining.

Auto-Deposit was a tool that allowed customers to schedule their deposits, such as $10 every other Friday. A “set it and forget it” type of feature that aligned with Betterment’s brand equity and should have been a positive hallmark of product-market fit.

Executive leadership wanted to solve the problem with marketing, by financially incentivizing customers to set up their Auto-Deposit. While there were open questions about how customers would qualify and receive the incentive, I wondered whether product marketing was actually the root cause of the feature’s declining adoption.

 
 
 
 

Approach

Ahead of the campaign, I conducted a heuristic assessment and UX audit of the depositing experience to ensure a smooth end-to-end experience for the customer. When looking at the experience holistically, it was clear the root cause was the poor user experience (not a lack of marketing).

 
 
 

Heuristic assessment and UX audit

There were major usability issues across multiple pages in the platform: Transfer, Summary, and Advice.

summary of issues

  • Weak (and arguably unnecessary) branding: AutoDeposit, Auto-deposit, Auto deposit, Automatic Deposit. Customers don't know what AutoDeposits or SmartDeposits are.

  • Multiple ways to deposit that all look and function slightly differently from each other, like account type, recurring or one-time, and prompted vs unprompted.

    • AutoDeposit and SmartDeposit visually treated as status buttons – of which all the functionality is deceptively hidden behind

    • UI emphasizes one-time deposits

  • Customers don't have an overall sense of how or when money is moving with all their accounts.

  • Customers don't have an easy way to holistically manage all of their deposit settings. There's no exposed record of AutoDeposit and SmartDeposit settings.

  • AutoDeposit, SmartDeposit, and one-time deposit are separate entities

  • Very low adoption of SmartDeposit

 
 

Design Studio

I facilitated a design studio with a cross-functional group with technical (mobile and web development) and business (customer support, product management, and marketing) expertise to explore a redesign that alleviates issues with depositing.

 
 
 
 
 
 

Key Insights

  • Summary is meant to encapsulate what’s going on with your accounts, so the status of money moving should be represented

  • “Recurring” not “AutoDeposit”

  • Single button to add money

  • Settings with “edit”

  • Split frequency

  • Single place with all the options to transfer money

  • Make “from where” clear

  • “Bite-sized” steps

  • Most testers (19/25) said they would click the green “Deposit” button on Summary to set up a recurring deposit.

  • In attempt to set up a recurring deposit, testers clicked on the one time deposit field: Transfer screen (7/8), Advice screen (6/14).

    • Most testers (14/25) expected to see a screen where they can enter the amount and how often they want to deposit.

  • Remove Transfer tab from nav because it’s a flow, BUT still have it be a discoverable destination

    • Migrate or translate the process of giving us money, etc.

 
 
 
 

Outcome

Overall objectives

  • Step towards a unified depositing experience

  • Improve usability

  • Consume and utilize Style Closet (Betterment’s style guide)

Left: “Before” user experience. Right: Redesigned user experience based on insights from discovery and research activities.

High-level changes

Transfer will show all of a customer's pending and recurring deposits and withdrawals, as well as the status of a rollovers. We're turning the current modal experience into a takeover experience. Deposit button launches the new deposit takeover.

 

  • New deposits and withdrawals (recurring or one-time) appear on the transfer tab with a "new" status label – logic is tbd

  • Pending deposits and withdrawals can be cancelled, which prompts a modal for user confirmation and subsequent flash

  • Recurring deposits and withdrawals can be edited, which directs user to a takeover

  • Recurring deposits and withdrawals can be deleted, which prompts a modal for user confirmation and subsequent flash

  • Remove account selector

  • Surface all pending and recurring deposits, rollovers, and withdrawals

  • Deposit button prompts new takeover

  • Rollover button links to the new rollover flow

  • Withdraw button links to the old transfer screen, stripped of depositing and rollover functionality – for now

 
 
 
 

Impact

  • All the testers (11/11) clicked on the “new deposit” button to set up a recurring deposit

    • All the testers successfully deposited, and most (7/11) successfully set up a recurring deposit – the others did one-time deposits.

  • Most of the testers (8/11) understood the relationship between recurring deposits and pending deposits

  • All the testers (6/6) understood how to edit a recurring deposit

  • Majority of the testers (5/6) understood how to cancel a pending deposit

 
 
 
 
 

Let’s work on something together

Design is a method for solving problems, and it’s about bringing intention to meaningful, essential change. Currently partnering with people and projects that push for a better world.