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McKinsey’s consumer behavior study found that 75% of consumers have experimented with various brands since the COVID-19 pandemic began, and digital banking applications are no different.
In the past, banks usually completed by promoting their size and reputation while attempting to deliver the finest financial solutions. Now, as most consumers have come to expect great design besides superb product functionality, banks can no longer ignore the banking designs if they want to remain competitive.
Instead, they confront a new challenge: developing an excellent usability finance design that works in tandem with distinctive consumer requirements within a well-structured digital environment. In this post, we will walk you through 6 mobile banking design trends anticipated to shape the future of banking products.
1. Empower a thriving digital ecosystem with efficient design systems
Starting with a robust mobile design system is essential if banks want to create a well-functioning digital environment. Digital financial solutions are becoming more complex since most involve thousands of screens designed by hundreds of specialists across multiple countries. Thus, the design system plays a massive role in ensuring rapid and efficient digitization.
One way to think of a design system is as a road map that leads the product developers and stakeholders through a comprehensive set of UX insights, UI assets, design statements, frequently used visual components, and style guides for the specific design.
An atomic design system is one of the popular approaches to modern UI element design and development. KMS Solutions used this methodology for the collaborative project with CII. The design system includes:
- Atoms: the building blocks of all the atomic design elements such as buttons, sliders, chevrons, toggles, etc.
- Molecules: an assemblage of atoms bonded together. They are formed utilizing the most basic elements and make bigger components like input fields, list items, simple cards, menu items, etc.
- Organisms: incorporates larger groups of atoms and molecules, usually containing contact forms, charts, calendars, tab bars, headers, menus, etc.
- Templates/Pages: templates emphasize more on the page’s content structure than the page’s final content. They are similar to low-fidelity wireframes. Meanwhile, pages are specific templates that illustrate what a UI looks like with actual and finalized content.
- Dynamic components: as you build your apps, list all the reusable features you can deploy across your design and start building dynamic components out of them.
2. Making a jump to a whole customer journey design experience design
Despite mobile banking apps becoming the main banking channel to cater to the large majority of consumer needs, some banks’ financial apps still have very little functionality and offer a poor user experience.
Clients, for instance, are compelled to use the desktop solution to filter their transactions or set up their e-bill payments to pay on a specific date. Not to mention that several financial services are still exclusively provided at branches. To vastly improve the customer experience, financial institutions should perform a thorough design audit of the mobile banking applications. This ensures remote consumers can access the full range of services and features.
An inspiring example of this is the mobile banking app by Capital One. The application rated the highest in online banking satisfaction among national banks as per the 2022 JD Power Online Banking Satisfaction Study.
Aims to provide a seamless and frictionless customer experience, the bank offers 22 features in five categories: payments, expense management, security, savings and investments, customer support, and security. Among those, the most five distinct features include:
- Disposable virtual cards
- Credit card transactions disputes
- Recurring bills, subscriptions, and memberships
- AI chatbot support
- Fully digital account opening
3. Simplicity over complexity
The deadliest enemy of your mobile banking UX design is overdensity which concerns the number of elements in the interface and the variability of their visual characteristics. The excess of colors and shapes will undoubtedly generate a chaotic impression. Maintain a consistent and holistic aesthetic creating straightforward design language.
All interface elements might be positioned following the user’s priority. It’s essential to evaluate their function in the consumer activities execution and decide their priority on every screen. Accents like font size, color, shape and icon can be applied with different visual means. This will make it easier for the user to understand the interface logic and flow.
The element grouping holds in the same way. Proper interface space zoning will aid in arranging the elements to conform to the critical user scenarios. Interface design must also build according to the usage patterns.
For example, consumers expect to see a search bar next to the profile or login option in the upper left corner. Overlooking user habits and designing something unusual can result in an extended learning curve and app failure.
A financial service that did an excellent job at this is Zero. Heading for an innovative debit-style experience, the company employs a strong logotype, crisp typography with personality, and a variety of bright colors and patterns with references to world currencies. To bring a clean and organized feel, its mobile banking app adopts a minimalist aesthetic in its visuals and content. The effective use of white space also helps Zero establish a sense of lightness and emphasizes the most important elements.
4. Deepen customer relationships with emotional UI/UX design systems
When the fight for brand loyalty gets more brutal and customer expectations keep swiftly increasing, emotional intelligence is more important than ever to win customer loyalty. However, it appears that the banking industry often shies away from emotions as if they would somehow decrease their prominence.
In fact, emotional branding is proven to produce a 52% higher lifetime value and reduce customer attrition rate by 78%, as per Mostista’s research white paper.
In addition to usability and UX, banks should consider integrating personalized, positive experiences into their digital banking experience to build an emotional connection. Examples include color schemes, iconography, appealing visuals, and interfaces.
The mobile design correlates with enterprise goals and consumer requirements. Doing so can enable it to become a remarkable and distinctive element of brand identification and allow banks to gain a competitive edge.
Such emotional and user-friendly design is employed by Dave the bear. To make stressful and uneasy finance activities joyful and exciting, they have incorporated a personality to their product in the form of an animated bear.
The character serves as a supportive figure to guide the user through the personal finance process and provide personalized advice, fostering a sense of safety and belonging.
Additionally, the lively Ka-ching sounds, the unexpected pop-up of confetti, progress bars and growth charts can be added to create wow experiences.
5. Moving from mono-functional to versatile digital financial products
Open banking is currently broadening the range of possibilities for integrating other services, enabling more functionality in any financial product and resulting in the birth of multi-functionality mobile apps.
As digital financial solutions are growing more complicated, convenience has become a winning factor for banks, and multi-service platforms are gaining popularity. Thus, banks are progressively partnering with financial technology companies to develop neobanks or super apps that offer exceptional usability and overcome the UX of mono-functional mobile apps.
To succeed, financial institutions need to know how to strike a balance between consumer needs and the capacity to fulfill them in an easy and user-friendly manner.
Financial corporations often strive to include many ‘’contemporary’’ functionalities in their offerings since they believe this will differentiate the product from its rivals. However, this might cause customer dissatisfaction due to the obnoxious design.
Clients are searching for extra features crucial to the brand’s specific demography. Hence, most successful financial solutions are seen to be built based on the unique demands of the brand’s audience.
Prominent players in the financial market have already started to shift toward developing the banking ecosystem from within super apps. Revolut, for instance, is actively expanding its banking ecosystem by incorporating new services and products, including those offered by third-party enterprises. Besides basic functionalities like payments and savings, its financial super app also offers cryptocurrency trading, budgeting & analytics tools, pet insurance, and lifestyle services with travel and donation options.
6. Gamification-driven design is looking promising
Gamification is a solution that employs gaming techniques and executes them in non-entertainment settings. For many clients, banking can be viewed as a stressful and dull activity. Gamifying the experience is an intriguing innovation to keep users interested and entice them to spend more time using the online services.
Not all gamification involves making a whole app into a game. Instead, banks can offer timely insights and individualized information in an enjoyable and rewarding way by implementing gameplay principles, design elements, and methodologies.
Banks can also utilize game mechanics to create customized experiences and enlighten customers about their product attributes and benefits. For instance, banks can design virtual characters that guide clients through different online banking processes and features.
Another way is to frame this as a challenge, with clients earning points for tasks accomplished and trading them for movies/sports/theater tickets, shopping vouchers, etc. Otherwise, users can acquire points for online purchases, which they can later redeem for various items given by the bank.
Momo is one of a few financial services that has implemented a gamification strategy and gained remarkable success. Targeting young users, the super app provider has built multiple game campaigns with impressive prizes. ‘’Momo Jump’’ is one of its most popular games. The players will have to control the game character to jump correctly in boxes that appear on the screen to collect points. Afterwards, points can be exchanged for various rewards. To get more game turns, participants need to complete challenges like making money transfers, paying phone bills, etc. The game campaign attracted millions of people, increasing the app traffic by 1.5 times and payment transactions by 10 times.
Nevertheless, it should be noted that certain users prefer a level of seriousness in financial affairs, which the concept of gamification may undermine. Considering the strict regulatory framework in the banking industry, financial institutions need to strike a delicate balance and ensure that they select the right banking elements to gamify and are delivered at the right time.
But where to begin?
Here are six popular banking design trends that financial institutions can consider for their upcoming action plans. Yet, the goal is not to compel you to adopt all the design trends. One strategy can match one type of enterprise while wrecking another.
The critical point is to monitor the movements, evaluate your business and assess your customer demands. If you are wondering if any approaches fit your organization or how to get started on the implementation, KMS Solutions is here to help.
With deep expertise in financial services and highly skilled IT experts, we’ve helped consult and deliver numerous digital projects to giant banks like ANZ Australia, Prudential Vietnam, Asia Commercial Bank (ACB), MB Bank and many more.