The Role of User Experience in Fintech
With the astronomical rise in the adoption rate of fintech, the focus on customer services and user experience has magnified dramatically. As more participants enter the service market of fintech, providing excellent, efficient, and competitive user interfaces has become a popular mandate.
There are more than 6 billion smartphone users in the world presently. The key USP of fintech is digitalizing banking and financial services to enable easier transfers, payments, investments, and more, across the globe. The medium that is more popularly used to bring consumers and fintech services closer is- smartphones. Such an affair directly opens doors for fintech providers and servers to create user interfaces that could help build instant bonds between financial institutions, fintech providers, and customers.
This is where user experience comes into play.
UX Explained
UX, short for User Experience, is the interaction and engagement of potential and existing customers with a company’s services and products, through their user interfaces (UI). All processes and activities involved in the user exploring different products and services of a fintech and using them make up for the whole user experience.
Consumers base their experiences on the design, engagement level, and quality of the interfaces, making it essential for providers to create relevant interfaces that are intelligent in different aspects like language, theme, graphics involved, loading time, etc.
5 Factors Influencing UX
All online services and products require good UI that can cater to an average consumer’s UX expectations. As more consumers interact and integrate internationally, the competition level increases manifold. Someone having experienced excellent banking services while studying in the UK would expect similar standards when they are back in their home country like, Canada or India.
Not only internationally, but the level of competition in the industry is also very high, compelling fintech providers and technology companies to offer innovative and disrupting interfaces that speak the customers’ languages. Some of the factors that directly influence UX are:
Intuitive Content
To provide a seamless experience with content that resonates with customers, fintech providers need to focus on the intuitive aspect of the design of the application or website. The intuitiveness and simplicity of the website or application content decide how seamlessly a customer would be able to navigate through them.
Customization at Every Step
With more information, fintech servers have the power to provide personalized content for their consumers. All consumer activities and expectations are different, which makes it crucial for fintech servers to offer customized services and content, to prompt a better experience for their users.
More Power to The Consumer
By building interfaces that give consumers better control over their banking activities and accounts, fintech can unleash a different level of UX. Consumers seek easier interfaces that allow better control for the consumers on their banking and financial activities.
Data Security
Boosting the security of the website or application is a necessity more than a want. The level of trust consumers place in fintech providers reflects the importance of data security for UX.
Application Interplay
A key advancement that plays a huge role in determining UX levels is the application’s or website’s ability to interplay and integrate with other applications and websites. It is built based on acceptability, like in the case of credit cards, where they are widely accepted by vendors both online and offline.
How Fintechs are Enhancing UI
To boost the UX level of consumers, the key for fintech providers is to upgrade their UI. Fintech world over has employed strategists, designers, and UX/UI experts to create and enhance UI that caters to the explicit and implicit needs of customers. Some of the methods of enhancing UI are:
Simple Designs
Simple and relevant designs that complement the goals of the fintech provider are an essential element that reflects maturity and trustworthiness in a brand.
Engaging Text
Internet usage of people has fiercely increased globally. With more time being spent on the internet, there is a huge change in the way websites interact with consumers nowadays which has led to an unconscious mass absorption of the way applications and websites interact, giving way to similar expectations. Such expectations require fintech to create engaging and interactive content for its consumers.
Theme
In creating a good UI, fintech must determine a color theme that reflects the organization’s goals and caters to the targeted audience.
Tone & Voice
Gone are the days, when the tone of voice was the deciding factor for content creators; nowadays both the tone and the voice of the organization play independent and equal roles in determining the company’s content language, level of friendliness, formal to informal ratio, etc.
Loading Time
Because fintechs are expected to be equipped with advanced technology to provide easy and quick solutions to consumers, any lag in the loading time of the UI can have a damaging effect on UX.
The Takeaway
User experience in fintech is a key component of customer services, which has been an integral part of the foundation of fintech. With users becoming more acquainted and accustomed to online processes, the focus on UX UI is growing rapidly. UX and UI have now become business investments for fintech, that help them offer better services, resulting in prosperity.
