UX Design for Banking. Everything You Need to Know

Industries today are thriving with online services, and banking is no exception. But what gives life to digital platforms? Elaborative banking UX design is critical. This is where you communicate with the customer, and it's in your best interest to make it evident. The experience your clients will get depends on the quality of your product, so it’s vital to pay enough attention to developing an excellent online platform. 90% of users stopped using a service due to poor performance. Based on this, you can ensure UX design is part of your success.

Banking UX is a customer-oriented process to help provide qualitative services for bank clients. UX design is responsible for user behavior with an app or a website and interactions with content. A thoughtful user experience creates the ability to research an app freely. 

Banking user experience is crucial for user satisfaction level with your financial institution. A positive and seamless UX can increase customer retention and revenue for the bank. The perfectly done UX is based on the user’s psychology. You must understand the client’s needs to build a coherent product. Create a caring atmosphere and study customers’ behavior on the platform to make them stay. 

Gapsy Studio offers many UX/UI design services for your banking platform.

Financial platforms must build products that are understandable and interactive. This is why customer-centered banking UX is crucial. Developing decent UX takes time and attention. It is about more than attracting users. It studies clients’ needs and views on the product from their perspective so that the psychology behind the process is complex. The analysis of user behavior helps designers thoroughly develop a beneficial outcome. Let’s look at some reasons why the banking user experience is essential. 

Makes finances more inclusive

A user-friendly platform can expand financial literacy and provide clients with easily accessible services. A clear UX increases financial accessibility among all customers. Digitalization has become part of everyone's life since the pandemic's beginning. Nowadays, it’s easier and faster to make some clicks than go to bank branches. As a client-oriented platform, guide your users throughout the process. If they choose you, make everything to be genuine. 

Self-service features, such as funds transferring, paying bills, and checking deposits online make it easier for customers to manage their finances without the need to visit a physical bank.

Builds the bank's identity

Having a digital platform that perfectly reflects its identity is a significant benefit. Moreover, a functional and comprehensive app or website strengthens the brand. Good UX builds trust among the customers. Your task is to portray the bank’s personality online. Analyze clients’ behavior so that you can improve the performance of a digital product or see what features are not much popular. A bank's identity encompasses its values, mission, and unique characteristics, and UX design plays a key role in communicating this essence to customers. When users interact with a bank's digital services, they should be able to recognize the brand's personality and understand what it stands for. This way keeping in touch with existing customers and attracting new ones won’t be a problem. 

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Strengthens relationships with customers

Your users can represent any generation, and it is essential to meet everyone’s demands. Remember that banking UX design makes finance more accessible, so create an enjoyable space for clients. Nowadays, banks are oriented toward the millennials and the younger generation. People who got used to scrolling through their phones all day expect you to meet their expectations. Based on this, make it a goal to create a fast, smooth, and intuitive platform. This way, the customers are more likely to stay. 

A cohesive UX design strategy helps to establish trust among customers. Personalized UX design deepens relationships with customers by providing individual experiences that meet their requirements. A well-designed user experience increases customer satisfaction by making it easy to accomplish their goals efficiently.

Increases revenue

Excellent UX design helps drive revenue growth. The more satisfied users you have, the higher income you get. A well-designed banking UX helps customers understand and access the services offered by the bank. Customers are more likely to use and adopt these products if they are more visible and accessible, resulting in increased revenue. A positive user experience builds customer loyalty and reduces the likelihood of customers switching to a competitor. This way, banks can retain more clients and generate more income over the long term. 

Read also: How to Create an Outstanding Mobile Banking App Design?

It is vital to understand the importance of UX design. Your user experience should be focused on clients’ psychology; this way, you reach a mutual understanding. A seamless UX helps you to become more profitable. To gain this, ensure all the processes are functional and simply delivered.

Look at some pivotal factors to improve the quality of a platform.

Eliminate complexity

There is no place for redundancy in UX design for banking. Simple logic is the key to creating a versatile digital product. The abundance of elements may disturb the users from the main point, specifically if you expect to take a particular action from them. Create the informational hierarchy to offload the pages of unnecessary stuff. All the interface elements must be located according to their priority for users. 

Interface simplification allows users to achieve better result with less effort. Use diverse visual elements to accent users' attention. Different font sizes, icons, shapes, or colors increase engagement in the process. Direct and understandable user experience is the way to communicate with clients. Simplicity helps make the service obvious.

Provoke emotions

Design is the first thing customers pay attention to. The user wants to feel emotionally connected to the product, so create a pleasant service. Thoughtful design makes you closer to the clients, so you benefit from it. Design thinking is about choosing the right colors and the psychology behind every process. So understanding human behavior and what emotions you may evoke makes the client stay with you. Remember that design is about what the users feel. 

Finance is a serious topic, so why not bring more joy to it? You can design interactions that provide feedback and response. For example, using micro-interactions, animations, or haptic feedback to create delightful moments can evoke positive user emotions. Well-designed interactions enhance users’ emotional experience.

Ask opinions

User research opens the door to building a holistic banking UX. Mainly, companies use this method if the businesses’ and clients’ perceptions differ. To avoid possible misunderstandings, you are free to enforce this beforehand. You’ll know if the product will be used as planned, whether the performance is good, or what features are not utilized. Feedback will help you see any difficulties with using a platform and increase efficiency. Let’s look at the ways you can get users’ opinions.

• User interviews. It’s one of the most commonly used UX research methods to understand users’ motivations, behaviors, and routines when using a financial product. The best thing about communicating with clients is you can implement it at any stage of development. In the early stages, interviews provide insight into whether the forthcoming product will be used as planned. For an existing product, you’ll see where users have difficulties or why they don’t use certain features on your platform.
• User personas. This method is great for understanding who your end users are. User personas are created characters representing a distinct type of user identified through stakeholder interviews, polls, or field research. This approach helps create a user-oriented product, understanding all the possible pain points in the UX design for banking.
• Usability testing. Usability testing is a valuable method for identifying areas for improvement. Designers can gain valuable insights into how their product performs in real-world scenarios and make informed decisions to create more user-friendly products by involving real users in the testing.

Create a consistent design 

The usage of an online financial platform is expected to be at the highest level. To appear as a reliable service, lay out the user experience logically. What we mean by that is your UX must be smooth and consistent. Creating an intuitive product is a complex process, starting with the design itself and finishing with the principles. Jacob’s Law of UX states that “users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.” It means that people already have a mental model in mind and expect your platform to be familiar. Studying the possible UX layouts and the logic behind them helps to build consistency within the application. Do you want to impress your clients? If so, you must deliver a delightful experience that is clean, simple, and intuitive. As a result, the adoption rates among users will increase putting both parties in a profitable position. 

You may be interested in: UX Patterns You Should Center On.

Make personalized content

Users want to feel comfortable using your product. Give them the freedom to create a little world inside the platform. Personalized banking user experiences make finances more accessible by tailoring the UX/UI to the needs and preferences of individual users. Businesses can grow their revenue by 15% through app personalization. Customized content can meet unique clients’ needs, and there are many ways to do that. For example, you can embed individual offers, messages, or solutions based on user data. This is where feedback comes in handy. Use customer analytics to know their requirements better. Don’t forget about design-wise features: the opportunities of choosing a dark/light theme, customizing the tools, or changing the background are some approaches to show that you value the user.

Provide secure services

Security concerns are among the most common reasons people don’t use digital banking. It’s crucial to create a secure platform that users can trust. All sensitive data must be encrypted to prevent unauthorized access. It includes data such as passwords, personal information, and transactions. Banks should provide users with resources to use the system securely, such as avoiding scams, protecting their personal information, and using strong passwords. It helps build trust with customers and protect personal financial information.

Banking UX design has become increasingly important as customers demand seamless and intuitive digital experiences from their financial institutions. However, designing effective banking UX comes with a unique set of challenges that you must navigate. Banking user experience must consider a range of factors when creating user-centered designs.

Gaining user trust

Trust in digital banking is a fundamental aspect. Users’ trust in bank UX enables value to remain stable in the industry. The design should give users the necessary reassurance and meet their expectations to build confidence in your product. Technology is constantly evolving, so the UX design needs to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and security measures to ensure the platform remains trustworthy. 

Moreover, user trust can be enhanced or decreased based on the visual looks, interactions, or copy written on pages. A balanced design is your success.

Communicating on financial aspects

Designing for a diverse range of users with varying levels of financial literacy may cause some issues. Overloading users with piles of text won’t help the situation. The clients want their questions solved quickly, so it’s your responsibility to provide the solutions. Here are some tips on this cause:

• Use simple language (utilize easy-to-understand terms that are familiar to the average user)
• Add tooltips (provide explanations for financial terms or concepts that users may not be familiar with)
• Visualize data (use visual aids such as charts, graphs, or infographics to help users understand information more)
• Provide context (show context to financial info to help users understand the significance of the presented data)
• Personalize data (customize financial information to the user's specific needs and preferences to help make it more relevant and understandable)

Think through all the possible problems users might face while using the financial platform. Thorough primary analysis helps you eliminate them. 

You may be interested in Bank Website Design.

Turning all-digital 

Today, customers expect to be able to do everything online, to have a fully digital experience when opening accounts, making payments, and enrolling in new services. While it appears to be a great opportunity to take your banking business to the next level, the process is demanding. Many customers want to see the best self-service possible, including features like:

• biometric authentication 
• step-by-step guides
• online customer support
• online forms 

Imagine what it takes to create a multifunctional and trustworthy online banking platform. However, there are successful neobanks all over the world that you can look up to when designing digital banking products. All-digital banks are accessible, convenient, and time-saving. Users expect it from you, so consider possible challenges and start now. 

Optimizing for mobile

Mobile banking is becoming increasingly popular, making it more crucial to optimize your platform for smaller screens. Based on this, it can be challenging to present all the necessary information and features clearly and concisely. Remember that optimizing for mobile is not necessarily developing an app. There are various types and sizes of devices, making it difficult to create a consistent user experience across them all. 

Mobile screens have limited space, so the design should prioritize simplicity and clarity in the user interface that must be responsive on all devices. Avoid cluttering and use visual cues in this case. You can leverage mobile-specific features such as touch gestures, location-based services, and push notifications to enhance the user experience. Usually, mobile users expect fast load times, which may impact the development process. For example, touch-based interaction design takes more time. You should consider the size of touch targets, the number of taps required to perform a task, and the use of gestures to navigate the platform.

The credibility of your company directly depends on the UX design. Digital services are here to stay, and users are looking for a platform they can trust. Businesses are challenged by customers’ demands every day, but this is what creates a trustworthy service. Users are your main focus. Create a client-centered, accessible, and secure product for enhanced user experience. Follow the advice in this article to build an excellent platform. 

Contact our team to improve or build the banking UX design from scratch. Have a look at our portfolio on Dribbble and Behance. Gapsy Studio is ready to collaborate with you!