Vibhor Bhatnagar

About

Work

Vibhor Bhatnagar

ACCOUNT UPGRADE—COAST CAPITAL SAVINGS

Enabling account upgrades through digital banking platform.

Member impact - 700+ account upgrades in the first 3 months and reduced complaints for e-transfer fees.

Business impact - 13% share of total account upgrade volume received through digital channel, projected revenue growth of $48,000 +

JUMP TO

Background

Problems

Desk research

Hypothesis

Iterations

Feedback

Final designs

Impact

Retrospective

Next steps

Go back

BACKGROUND

Our digital banking platform serves ~ 250,000 active users, with about

65% on the free tier — a segment that provides limited value to both users and the organization. To address this, the credit union recently launched new chequing products aimed at delivering more value and encouraging users to transition to higher-tier accounts.

Our digital banking platform serves ~ 250,000 active users, with about 65% on the free tier — a segment that provides limited value to both users and the organization. To address this, the credit union recently launched new chequing products aimed at delivering more value and encouraging users to transition to higher-tier accounts.

"I designed a new web experience and supported the design of app experience for digital account upgrades, capturing 13% of total upgrade volume. Collaborated cross-functionally, led rapid design iterations, and ensured design quality across platforms."

MY ROLE

Product Designer

TEAM MEMBERS

3 Developers & QA

1 Product owner

2 Legal & marketing advisors

2 designers

3 Developers & QA

1 Product owner

2 Legal & marketing advisors

2 designers

TIMELINE

3 months - Winter 2024

PROBLEMS

Upgrading account tiers required a call to the advice centre, which was a major barrier.

Long wait time on calling advice centre was a cause of frustration due to which our premium account tiers were not receiving traction post release.

Lower tier sees more complaints and dissatisfaction due to limited awareness of higher tiers.

Members pay $1.50 fee for every Interac transfer completed through the lower tier account. Premium account tiers provide free e-transfers with added benefits but they have a monthly fee.

How might we make it easier and faster for members to discover and upgrade to premium account tiers—without needing to call—so we reduce frustration, boost adoption, and improve member satisfaction?

DESK RESEARCH

Due to budget constraints, we had to do desk research, so we reviewed upgrade flows from other banks and subscription platforms, and gathered feedback from staff with limited exposure to those digital platforms.

We discovered a few things about upgrade flows in general:

Users could not understand the value of upgrading from a free to a paid tier.

Discoverability of the upgrade or change option was not effective.

Most users wanted to know if they could change their mind after upgrading or changing their plan.

Research findings

Scotiabank and Amazon Prime

HYPOTHESIS

Based on our understanding of the problems presented by business stakeholders and research, we created initial hypothesis for the problems.

#1 Self-serve digital upgrade experience

More members will complete account tier upgrades independently, reducing reliance on the advice centre and improving overall satisfaction.

#2 Improved visibility and education

Members in the lower tier will better understand their options and more likely consider upgradingm reducing dissatisfaction.

DESIGN ITERATIONS (with AI-generated placeholder content)

Goal 1: Improve discoverability of the feature

Unlike all the researched platforms, we wanted to ensure that this feature can be easily found on both the platforms.

Ideation

Improving feature discoverability

Goal 2: Educating the user

Most of the current upgrade flows have nuances hidden behind walls of text providing no helpful guidance to the user. We wanted to make sure user makes an informed decision.

Ideation

Educating the user

Goal 3: Help users in product differentiation

We wanted to use a product card format so that it's easier for the user to differentiate between different products. Designing for this goal involved a lot of feedback from our legal and product teams.

Ideation

Product differentiation

Ideation

Product differentiation

FEEDBACK & CHALLENGES

Due to feedback from legal and product appropriateness teams, more content kept getting added and the length of the page increased making it no better than other experiences in the industry.

How did I tackle this?

I worked with the content designer to reduce the amount of text wherever possible,

made account selection sticky and tried to hide walls of text behind meaningful accordions.

Challenge

Make page shorter with mandatory content

Stakeholders were still on fence about the discoverability of the feature.

How did I tackle this?

We added the feature right in the navigation menu and used tags to highlight the feature along with other promotional content.

Challenge

Easy discovery

I initially went with a vertical card layout following our existing product listing format. But it was not the best user experience for differentiation as stated by a few users who internally tested the initial designs.

How did I tackle this?

After multiple stakeholder discussions, I finally got the buy-in for the new horizontal product card comparison to improve the experience of differentiating between products.

Challenge

Product card layout

FINAL DESIGNS

Designed an experience that allows users to upgrade their account type through digital banking.

This feature release tackled pain points such as long wait times on call to get in touch with advice center, complaints regarding Interac e-transfer charges and little to no benefits of the base account tier.

Additionally, I was also able to push for a new card layout for web with an enhanced experience for differentiation which was adopted by the mobile application as well.

IMPACT

800+ digital account upgrades
448 from Basic to Unlimited

345 from Basic to Elevate

237 from Unlimited to Elevate.

Digital channel makes ~13% of total share of volume for account upgrades.

800+ digital account upgrades
448 from Basic to Unlimited

345 from Basic to Elevate

237 from Unlimited to Elevate.

Digital channel makes ~13% of total share of volume for account upgrades.

RETROSPECTIVE

Some important stakeholders tend to give late feedback and it is not easy to accommodate that feedback when the design is in development sprint.

Make sure all the stakeholders have visibility and have signed off on the design before the sprint. We have introduced a separate "stakeholder review" design file where stakeholders mark their final sign offs before we proceed to development hand off.

NEXT STEPS

Keeping track of number of account upgrades through digital channels, review any anomalies like page drop offs and identify any potential issues that can be fixed through design

Figure out a way to allow downgrading without impacting business outcomes.

Users could use a few loopholes to use the benefits of higher tiers if we allowed downgrading. So this feature was not included in this release.