INYOVA:
IMPACT INVESTING
This Zurich based startup markets personalised investment strategies to clients who might prefer to 'do good' with their savings
MY ROLE
I was wholly responsible for driving UX. When I started, they had a basic website and a survey (with very poor UX) in place and some back office systems. The team consisted of 5 full time staff plus myself, interns, part timers and contractors.
I worked 35 days between - Feb to April 2018 (including a few voluntary unpaid days)
EXPLAINING INYOVA
The company concept followed a simple process where customers are encouraged to:
1. Fill out an investment survey
2. Receive a personalised investment portfolio
3. Optionally request changes and then accept the investment portfolio
4. Fill out a complicated form
5. Send money to invest in the shares suggested and wait for returns
The survey itself was initially very complicated when I applied for the role, but was reduced to the essentials by Feb 2018 by an agency:
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1a. Choose 4 of 12 areas to invest in such as 'Clean water' or 'Electromibility'.
1b. Exclude any or all of 4 areas such as ‘Weaponry’ or 'Nuclear Energy'
1c. Several other questions are then asked to ascertain the clients risk level and collect personal details.
WHAT NEEDED TO BE ACHIEVED
1. Grow revenue by increasing customers (to 200-300/month) & average invested (increase)
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2. Go live before May with a product ready to scale
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3. Proof of traction and conversions for investment round starting in May (i.e. Data & frictionless & delightful)
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So my targets were:
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1. Optimise all 1-5 funnels e.g. Funnel 1: Clearly explain to clients what 'Impact Investing' is and the benefits (SELL IT)
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2. Provide frictionless experiences & tools & content to read, understand, interact, engage, and ultimately CONVERT into a customer
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3. A regular data report on conversions, showing rapid improvements
ACHIEVEMENTS & DELIVERABLES
Deliverables are shown in detail below this summary... F1-5 defined in diagram below
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Video expert review of their current site and survey with UX recommendations to optimise
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Competitor Review
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Improvement of sales funnel on homepage F1 (sales argument, copy, sections) [This work I did in my own time as I believed it was imperative]
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​Review and improvement of investing forms F4 i.e. once client accepts strategy
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Design interfaces for the strategy proposal F3 i.e.. what client receives after filling in the survey showing their recommended stocks.
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​User testing of strategy proposal and implement improvements
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UX overarching plan for next 6 months
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Funnel diagram for reference from data report
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Personas
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Improvement of the investment survey F2, both simplifying questions and optimising interfaces (this work was started by another UX person initially and then I took over)
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UX data report - Initial snapshot taken which was to be done monthly
DELIVERABLES IN DETAIL:
EXPERT REVIEW (or 'BEFORE')
I created this video in Nov 2017 as part of the interview process - The founders wanted me to identify quick fixes and more fundamental problems
In summary:
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The website looked unprofessional and failed to explain what the product was and why the customer should want it i.e it failed to convert
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The survey was exhaustively long and needed to be optimised firstly down to just what the business needed to know and then for the user experience and interface to be frictionless, easy & fast
EXPERT REVIEW DETAILED ADVICE
QUICK FIXES
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DEMO your product! if you have a dashboard, show it up front (like the MVP image - but live if possible)
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Design has basic alignment issues and logo issues - if you want to look solid, the site has to be solid. The typography and other things just look ‘cheap’.
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Address is ‘care/of’ - Get a PO at least
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Sales flow on the homepage and other pages is wrong (also needs a longer fix)
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Product is not clear
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Process is not clear
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Survey form has multiple issues on many levels e.g. length, question design, visual design, too much text under sliders…. etc
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Remove careers page as it shows how ‘young’ the company is - move that to linkedin or elsewhere
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Add proper case studies with a full page including video and charts of the persons story, what they believe in, what they invested, how they’re doing now - showcase this top centre - HAVE A STORY
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Add more social buttons where appropriate and consider leading users to ‘like’ your page, not just post about it, get strategic SEO advice for much higher social media impact.
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
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Do user testing, sit with people and let them show how they approach starting to invest - what sites do they go to, how do they compare, what is the journey with competitors and how can Inyova be the best process and delivery?
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The product is not being ‘SOLD’. There is not enough description of the product. There is no incentive to fill out this survey and the survey is very long and confusing! Perhaps you need more tailored survey e.g. for an expert and beginner or intermediate level investor?
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Talk to an SEO expert early before redoing this site and get a strategy to implement to hack follows and shares to save on advertising spends.
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Who are your competitors? Is anyone standing out?
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Define the sales funnel (OR ideal on-boarding user journey)
Example of someone who does this well e.g. for selling art - https://www.saatchiart.com/whysell
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The users decision process would likely be similar to:
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Aware of the problem (need investment aligned with my values)
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Research the alternatives (Inyova is one, the site needs to grab that sale but it isn’t now) i.e. convincing case studies, what do people end up with? i.e not just in the long term but after the survey is filled out, what do they get in 2 weeks?
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Decide to try? (fill in survey) or few details and a phone call etc
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Proposal is delivered and user will compare with other alternatives - what will they have on their desk or computer? Who will contact them? How can you win here? User testing would bring this to light.
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Make the sale - user chooses inyova to invest with
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User becomes an advocate, tells all their friends, you get more business
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The investment question seems to need an investment calculator, like this
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In the surevey, the user can add free text for something they DO want to invest in, but there was no question to add things they want to avoid. I can see why you may do that, but it’s not balanced and there’s no opportunity for users to give feedback about things they want to avoid, as you could collect a lot of info about what your users don’t want to invest in.
COMPETITOR REVIEW
I created a spreadsheet of competitors and shared it with the team, noting a description of their product, i.e. whether they were just offering ETF's (Exchange traded funds) and not truly personalised folios, the countr(ies) they offered their product in, whether they offered sustainable investments and what is Inyova's advantage over each. This gave us the overview needed to create a convincing sales argument across all UX, copy and design for each funnel.
In terms of clarity of the product & process clients should go through to sign up, Inyova were well behind their competitors
Homepage Nov 2017
'Values' is an unclear word
During my work I instigated a terminology spreadsheet, so that internal and external terms were clearly defined. I advised against 'Values' because it can easily be confused with the 'value of a stock or investment or portfolio' - especially in user interfaces such as column headings, and value = monetary value is the more common usage.
Inyova Homepage March - July 2018 It's better (except that the logo disappears in this mobile view), but still FAR too wordy in this introduction and throughout. Lacks clarity and conciseness, which I repeatedly pointed out with improvement suggestions.
HOMEPAGE SALES FUNNEL (F1)
The homepage needed to support the users awareness and decision process.
The below homepage is not my work. Most users were being directed from Facebook ads to DE or EN landing pages which were worse than this. I advised that this homepage sales funnel and the landing pages users were driven to from ads, needed to be improved urgently to create user understanding and desire for the product.
I will show my new designs via a sketch file during a screenshare or interview - since it's very large and difficult to show here.
FUNNEL DIAGRAM
To gather data on the efficacy of each funnel optimisation, funnels had to be defined
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Click the diagram to see the full PDF
It was my opinion that Funnel 1 (homepage sales argument) needed urgent work since sales/conversions were the ultimate goal and the user can't convert in funnel 2 if you have not converted them in funnel 1. Said in another way, the site drove users to fill in the survey, but if the users had no idea of the result, they would not convert later (F3).
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Management saw that users weren't accepting their strategy and thought the interface was the issue, which was partly the case but most likely not the whole story.
After funnel 1 was optimised I wanted to then work on 3, 2, 4 in that order, However I was directed to work on the onboarding form (4) then the Proposal (3) and then the survey (2).
SURVEY INTERFACE
This was step 2 of the survey after it had been improved by the other UX person which was between the time I was interviewed and me starting work for Inyova
USER TESTING INSIGHTS
This PDF details the user insights from the users who started their journey at the homepage and ended at the inestment strategy suggestion i.e. list of shares they should invest in (F1 - F3)
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Yes, there were a LOT of problems - Click image to view the full PDF
AN EXAMPLE DESIGN AFTER INSIGHTS
After user testing the whole of the above survey, with my new designs for the portfolio strategy, I came up with a new design for both for desktop & mobile. Note the changes in terminology to 'Impact Areas' and 'Impact Standards' as well as the matching logos for each item which were to be pulled through the whole experience from the hompage right to the last part of the users journey (Draft, icons not yet finalised)
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There are many more designs, this is just one page of the survey.
UX DATA REPORT
So as mentioned earlier, it's important to measure improvements. This document was the first 'snapshot' of where the company was at such as where users were converting in Funnels F1 - F5 and within the sections of the survey itself. I didn't get a chance to complete this because my contract ended while I was still collecting the data.
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