Have you ever downloaded an app, only to delete it shortly afterwards because it was too complicated or confusing to use? Us too. In fact, 90% of us have ditched an app because it didn’t meet our expectations.

From the moment we sign up to the moment we sign out, we expect it to be seamless. And if it’s not, we’ll tell our friends about it (here’s proof). But for service providers, that means one thing must be prioritised: user experience.

What is user experience?

Put simply, user experience is the journey we take within a product. It’s the interactions we have with it; from signup to purchase and renewal to customer support.

Imagine you’ve just launched new features on your app that you’re really excited about. People are downloading it left, right, and centre and are keen to try it, but then…they get stuck. They’re faced with so many options that they’re overwhelmed and can’t figure out what to do next.

Before you know it, they’ve deleted your app and moved on to another that’s easier to use.

The key takeaway? User experience is everything. If you want a product to succeed, you need to focus on creating something that’s user-friendly. This is especially important when it comes to using open banking, where many are still figuring out what it all means.

But user experience isn’t a one-and-done initiative. It’s a long-term effort between teams…

So, who owns user experience?

You might think the product team should own product experience. After all, it’s their responsibility, right? Wrong. Customer success also plays an important role in product experience. Why? Because the two teams share similar goals: retain customers, incentivise them to upgrade to new features, and keep conversion rates high.

On that note…

How does product experience impact conversion rates?

First things first, let’s define conversion rates.

A conversion rate (or completion rate) is the percentage of users that have successfully connected their bank account or made a payment. Good user experience means higher conversions. But what does that mean in practice?

• For niche use cases, consider having a specific set of banks. Don’t send users where you know they’ll encounter challenges (or worst of all, can’t connect their accounts)

• Take into account edge cases, particularly for high-value transactions. No matter how few users they affect, your product team should work to solve edge cases.

• Open banking is still (relatively) new, so users need direction. Make sure you educate your users about where they’re going, like being redirected to a consent screen

Best practices for user experience

Keep it simple… Don’t overwhelm customers with too many features. Instead, focus on the most important functions and make them easy to find and use.

Be transparent… Open banking can be a complex concept. Be transparent about how customers can control and manage their data to build trust and foster a positive experience.

Maintain consistency… Repetition is a good thing when it comes to branding, so make sure your user flows have a consistent look and feel (including your consent screens).

Provide logical navigation… Make it easy for customers to find what they need. That means having a clear and logical navigation structure, with intuitive menus and familiar language such as ‘account balances’ and ‘transaction history’.

Support your customers… Open banking can be confusing at first, so provide resources to educate customers on what it all means. Why not go old-school with a FAQ page? Just make sure your contact page is easy to find in case they can’t find what they’re looking for.

How can Yapily help you improve your user experience?

Open banking is all about giving financial service providers access to our bank data, whether that’s basic information like our account name and address, or more detailed data like transaction history. But it’s not just about data… open banking also makes payments easier.

With open banking, payments like top-ups and bank-to-bank payments can be done in just a few clicks, without having to enter card or bank account details. But what does all of this mean for the user experience?

Well, it can make payments faster, cheaper and more secure for customers. We recently asked businesses to rate the user experience they offer customers at the checkout, and the majority (66%) said it was good or very good. But we also found that a significant 62% of consumers have recently abandoned their cart because of a poor experience.

The biggest reason? Lack of transparency about costs.

That’s where open banking makes a difference. For example, wealth management platform inbestMe saw conversion rates increase up to 70% since partnering with Yapily, and payment solution Crezco achieved a net promoter score of +76, showing a strong satisfaction with the user experience.

Interested in what Yapily can do for your business? Explore our API documentation or start testing Yapily’s API using our free sandbox environment.