Organizations have realised that merely digital transformation won’t help as a result of the digital push across industries during the pandemic. They must create a world-class user experience for their digital offerings if they hope to reach various customer segments. In recent years, banks have made investments in user experience design based on consumer behaviour data, customer feedback, and intent mapping through AI. Offerings that are highly personalised and have an easy-to-use interface greatly boost the likelihood of conversion. Designing user experiences now involves a more holistic approach where each component of the user interface is supported by a powerful data-driven analytics-based system on the backend
Latest trends in user experience design are focussed on storytelling, easy navigation, chatbots, voicebots, scrolling experience and interaction design based on emotions.
- Storytelling: When done well, storytelling is a great way to keep people interested and it also works for longer user journeys since it makes them inquisitive about what comes next. A user may be enticed to uncover all the intricacies when each scroll reveals more information.
- Easy Navigation: Simple and intuitive navigation on digital platforms makes users highly satisfied when they can get their purpose served in no time. When a digital website or an app displays the next option, user is likely to move on and complete the transaction. This acts as a wow factor in driving customer satisfaction and also improves chances of cross/up selling.
- Chatbots and Voicebots: Popularity of messaging platform WhatsApp among Indians is well known. As per the report published on statista.com in June 2021, there are over 487 million WhatsApp users in India alone. Many banks in India have already launched WhatsApp banking. In parallel, they are also trying to bring in seamless chatbot experience on banking apps. Implementing graphical and creative user experience through chatbots for information and transactions can help customers of all segments and create a win-win situation for both the banks and the customers. Voicebots are still in penetration phase and the popular ones like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant have already users in millions in India as claimed by these tech giants. Few banks have already taken lead by launching Voice Banking through voicebots and the ongoing developments make it evident that voice banking will also gain popularity among users in coming days.
- Scrolling Experience: Creative scrolling is the best option to keep the users engaged when there is lengthy contents or forms for users to fill in. If design elements change with each scroll and bring in fresh user experience, users get interested and keep going on with the flow.
- Interaction Design based on Emotions: If an app or website interaction is closer to humans, then it creates personal attachment with the brand. One of the adopted ones across the industry on the digital platforms is interaction design based on emotions for error messages.
In today’s highly competitive world, a good user experience isn’t just a value-added factor, but it has become something which can impact overall profitability of a firm to a large extent. As per an article published on uxmatters.com last year, 89% of users purchase from a competitor after a poor customer experience on a platform, 79% of new projects fail due to lack of user acceptance. Investing in good UX design can reduce development time by up to 55%, investing in good UX design reduces support cost by up to 90%. These numbers show how important a good UX design has become for organisations, especially banks, which aspire to become neo banks in near future.
Written by
Nitin Chugh, DMD & Head (Digital Banking & Transformation), Yono SBI
