Interactive Investor
DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTION JOURNEY
Highlights
136% increase in subscription revenue compared to previous year.
10 hours admin time per offer saved by increased efficiency.
Doubled offer reach by adding the functionality to the native mobile app.
Overview
The previous Initial Public Offering (IPO) journey on the site was an incredibly outdated and manual process. It required multiple people to upload and edit various sections to get an offer live for customers to subscribe to. Considering that some of these offers have a small window for subscriptions, efficiency is essential and meant that we were unable to take advantage of all offers.
During the project, I delivered the following:
- Researched and designed a new front-end journey to be more appealing, accessible and aligned with our design system.
- Created a user flow to help the developers re-platform the back end to a CMS solution that enabled employees to add new offers in a more streamlined way.
- Added the IPO functionality to the mobile app to create a wider reach for the feature to enable more subscriptions and added commercial value.
- Supported the project management through delivery to ensure quality was adhered to and any problems were resolved quickly.
Project details
Timelines
12 months (including planning, ideation, design, testing and delivery)
Role
UX designer - responsible for the overall design from research to delivery.
Team
8 people (design, research, product management, developer and testing disciplines).
About Interactive Investor
Interactive Investor is a subscription-based online investment service in the United Kingdom, founded in 1995.
It provides financial information, as well as investment tools. It is the UK’s biggest flat-fee investment platform, with £59 billion of assets under administration and over 400,000 customers as of 2022.
Problem areas
The business is unable to offer many Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) due to a lengthy process resulting in loss of revenue and platform 'stickiness'.
Users are unable to take advantage of offers if they are on the move and not near a desktop computer.
Multiple people are needed in the process to get an offer live, resulting in pulling employees from other priorities they currently have.
Conducting research
Before I started this project, I looked to competitors of the brand to understand how they navigated a user through a similar journey.
Competition analysis
Initial public offerings (IPOs) are quite niche in who offers them as they are classed as complex investments due to their risk.
However, there was extensive research done into Interactive Investor’s main competitors including Hargreaves Lansdown, AJ Bell and then looking at other sources of IPO information like the London Stock Exchange and NASDAQ.
It was useful to see how these other providers presented the hierarchy of information and risk warnings that would be needed with each offer.
An area that I was interested in understanding more about was how to support new investors who may be interested in an IPO. Naturally, a lot of unique terminology and understanding is needed when investing in an IPO, so I wanted to provide as much support as possible.
User flow
This flow was created so I could fully understand how a user would progress through the subscription process.
Adopting a ‘hub’ design here feels the most obvious to help anchor the user to a centre and then be able to discover from there.
It was also helpful to take stakeholders through this flow so that they could understand the journey without focusing on any visuals. I talked through each stage and could make notes of any missed or important elements.
Defining the design area
How might we provide a simple way for users to see what offers are available to them?
How might we reduce admin time needed to get an offer live on the site?
How might we support the user through the offer process to keep them informed of risks, timelines and progress?
Measuring success
Understand what success looked like for the project was vital to help show the return on investment for Interactive Investor.
Completion rate
Monitoring the drop off rate for each section to understand which part of the funnel causes the most friction.
App vs web
Understanding how many subscriptions were completed on each platform to showcase value.
Support requests
Review customer service support calls to understand if current issues have been resolved.
Considerations
Stakeholders were needed to be aware of the following factors that were outside of the project control but could negatively effect the project outcome.
Number of offers available compared to previous years
IPO offers are heavily linked to external factors, such as the Bank of England base rate. Depending on what happens with these factors, depends on how many offers become available. Naturally, these factors are outside of our control and comparison of offer success should take this into account.
Ideation and testing
Opportunity to think about possible solutions taking user and business needs into consideration. Talking with stakeholders and peers was crucial here to make sure nothing is missed.
Wireframes
To start to visualise what the final result will look like, I mocked up some of the screens in a very simple sketched wireframe format. Doing this allows for the focus to be on the journey rather than the visuals.
From here I went on to create a mid-fidelity prototype (using greyscale colours so users would focus on the journey) to understand where issues were coming from in the journey.
Testing with users
80% of users were able to complete the subscription journey successfully.
This was a positive result to see. However, there were some issues which needed resolving before development.
Issues to resolve
- Users found the complexity of the subscription hard to follow and needed more handholding throughout the journey. From this, I added extra tooltips and notifications to help assist the user.
- Users struggled with the amount of disclaimers needed for the offer. From this, I worked with the legal team to find out what was necessary and researched patterns to make the legal information easier to digest.
- Users were unsure where to see the offers they had subscribed to. From this, I added a ‘Subscribed’ tab to the table view so that users could easily keep up to date with the progress of the offer.
Installation and delivery
To make delivery smooth and efficient, I made sure that I was involved throughout with a great deal of communication to ensure that nothing was missed and could be actioned on time to the business schedule.
Project reflections
Time to reflect and understand what went well and what could be done better.
Having a constant point of contact from a development perspective
There was a high level of technical work needed for this project to re-platform old tech and to improve the process for employees who would be managing and uploading offers.
Due to staffing changes, there were multiple senior developers who worked on the project which made progress difficult at times trying to keep up to date with requirements and changes.
Naturally, staffing resources cannot be helped but should be factored into project timelines as a contingency.
Constant moving timelines meant redefining the MVP
Due to the possibility of a major IPO offer landing, which would have created strong customer acquisition, timelines for the project were constantly changing reacting to evolving news about the offer.
This made planning for design and delivery difficult. For this reason, there were many iterations of what our Minimum Viable Product (MVP) could look like for it to meet the deadline of the offer but also user expectations of functionality and quality.