Sanel Selimovic
At SoFi Invest (formerly SoFi Wealth), a pioneering automated investment platform, I undertook the role of Lead Product Designer with the objective of revitalizing the sign-up flow. The motivation behind this project was the platform's underwhelming conversion rates, with only a little over a thousand customers 18 months post-launch. Collaborating closely with Product leadership throughout 2019, we crafted a novel onboarding experience from scratch, significantly amplifying the customer base from 1,200 to more than 10,000 in under a year—a testament to the efficacy of our design interventions.
Project Date
2018-2019
Project Type
Android + iOS
Client
SoFi
In my capacity as Lead Product Designer for SoFi's investment service, I spearheaded the redesign of the investor sign-up process for both web and mobile interfaces. My duties spanned conducting weekly progress reviews, ideating concepts, ensuring alignment with stakeholders on product direction, and executing both UX and UI design components. This comprehensive role positioned me at the nexus of design and product strategy, driving forward the platform's user experience improvements.
Risk Assessment: Design interactive tools that help users assess their risk tolerance and recommend ETFs aligned with their risk profile.
Automated Rebalancing: Design a feature that automatically rebalances users' portfolios based on changes in their risk preferences and market conditions.
Personalization: Design a user-centric interface that tailors investment options based on risk tolerance, making it easy for users to select suitable ETFs.
SoFi targets a unique demographic known as "High Earners Not Rich Yet" (HENRYs), characterized by individuals with promising income prospects yet minimal established credit. Despite the strategic launch of SoFi Invest to cater to this group's need for an accessible investment avenue, the platform faced significant adoption challenges, amassing just over 1,000 users in 18 months. Faced with these hurdles, the executive team sought the design and product teams' expertise to diagnose the platform's shortcomings and craft a viable enhancement strategy.
The primary business objective for the SoFi Invest platform redesign was to dramatically enhance user engagement and conversion rates, aiming to rectify the initial underperformance in customer acquisition. With an ambitious target to elevate the customer base from 1,200 to a substantial figure, the project sought to not only improve the sign-up process but also to set a new standard for user experience across SoFi's entire product lineup.
This included leveraging the successful onboarding experience as a blueprint for optimizing other key areas, such as student and personal loan applications. The overarching goal was to establish SoFi Invest as a leading, accessible investment platform for the "High Earners Not Rich Yet" (HENRY) demographic, thereby securing a competitive edge in the fintech sector and laying a foundation for sustainable growth and market expansion.
User Testing
Design Handoff
Customer Interviews
Design System
UI & UX Design
Interactive Prototyping
This figure presents an overview of the project's lifecycle, illustrating the phased approach from initial market research through to the development stage. It encapsulates the meticulous process undertaken to ensure that each step, from wireframing to UI design and the establishment of a style guide.
The creation of the Information Architecture (IA) was a foundational step in the design process, serving as a strategic blueprint that guided our design thinking. By mapping out the app's structure, we were able to visualize and plan the user journey, ensuring a seamless and intuitive navigation experience.
Technology Teal
The use of Technology Teal infuses a modern and innovative vibe into the app, aligning with the cutting-edge services offered and attracting tech-savvy users.
Wealthy Indigo
By utilizing Wealthy Indigo, we aimed to resonate with high net worth users, creating an environment that exudes exclusivity and appeals to the target demographic of affluent investors.
User interviews were crucial in tailoring our UI design to meet the specific needs and expectations of SoFi Invest's users. These conversations provided direct insights into user preferences and pain points, guiding us to develop an intuitive, user-centered interface that truly resonated with our audience.
We initiated our redesign by dissecting the existing customer sign-up flow, identifying obstacles that hindered a smooth process. Utilizing Tableau, we analyzed conversion rates at various stages, pinpointing areas for improvement.
After the analysis, it became apparent that our sign-up process could improve. The entire sign-up flow contained 6 pages, 3 of which were customer data collection, and the remaining 3 were legal requirements and investment strategy selection.
This raised a challenge: how would we know which fields caused our customers to leave? It was difficult to tease out individual usability issues within the flow because the sign-up flow was consolidated into three pages.Were the customers dropping off because we asked for a Social Security Number? Maybe we needed to move the address collection to a later part of the flow? Or perhaps it was neither of those and the issue was with the first screen, the investment strategy selection.
These questions highlighted the need to delineate the questions into categories and present them in small chunks. Allowing the customers to focus on answering only key information we needed to collect at that moment. This approach allowed us to track the performance and conversion rates as they related to specific pages and specific questions.
Another key aspect of the flow was the investment strategy selection. This key screen was used to place customers into one of five investment strategies: conservative, slightly conservative, balanced, slightly aggressive, aggressive. The existing implementation of this screen relied on a table view to present the recommended investment strategy and allowed customers to compare the performance across various risk levels. This was a critical screen to get right because the investment performance is driven by the customer’s selected risk tolerance.
One way to simplify the selection process is to highlight only the recommended strategy.However, after reviewing the designs with SoFi’s compliance team, we were told that according to financial regulations, all investment options needed to be visible, rather than only the recommended.
With that in mind, I further refined this screen to include the recommended strategy and other available risk strategies. After reviewing the work with SoFi’s financial compliance officer he directed us to present all investment options as equal, so as to comply with laws governing investments. On mobile this meant introducing a carrousel pattern where additional strategies are available by swiping left or right.
Another decision was to include a performance indicator under “View Details” CTA showing the minimum and maximum potential returns of an investment. The green highlight shows the performance range, while a green line indicates a most probable median outcome. Incorporating a performance indicator offered a visual representation of potential returns, aiding customers in making informed decisions.
At last, when writing the copy I made a conscious decision to refer to people in first person through either using their name and using personal pronouns. I did this to help customers identify or disassociate with investment goals we presented, such as “I want to buy a home” or “I want to save for retirement.”
Customer research shows the use of personal pronouns and names can vastly increase conversion rates. In an experiment by ClickZ, they found that using pronouns such as ‘me’ and ‘I’ resulted in a 90% click increase over generic statements containing ‘you’ or no pronouns. I recommended to the team that we change our statements such as “Save for a home” to “I want to buy a home”. We repeated this exercise for each of the investment goals.
The introduction of the redesigned sign-up flow marked a pivotal turnaround in customer engagement and conversion. Implemented in May 2018, this overhaul catalyzed a dramatic expansion of our customer base from 1,200 to over 10,000 by year's end. Encouraged by this success, SoFi's leadership resolved to apply the refined onboarding principles across its product spectrum, extending to student and personal loan applications. This decision further led to my involvement in reevaluating and enhancing the personal loan application's core functionality, underlining the broader organizational impact of our design improvements.
Rick LeMond
Entrepeneur
Sanel takes ideas and runs with them in the most productive way. Not only does he execute, but he provides valuable insight from his experience. Sanel beautifully and brilliantly created wireframes for a concept that was well worth the time. Hiring will be the beginning of a great start to any idea or concept needed to bring to life.
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