A common myth is that you can look at a successful service, replicate it and instantly achieve the same measure of success. There have been thousands of unfortunate attempts to repeat the successes of LendingClub, Wealthfront, PayPal, Credit Karma, Mint, Acorns and Robinhood. Blindly copying financial interfaces from a popular service will obviously not work.
The uniqueness and success of the product are determined by a number of factors that are not just related to the design of the interface. It is necessary to understand what exactly is behind this success.
Some of the copy/paste attempts have been truly successful. However, if we look closer, their founders discovered a unique niche, created their own business models and invested considerable effort into product development by switching from copying to creation.
Design of a digital product involves multiple factors. You need to analyze and take into account everything that makes your business and product unique and ultimately capture a long-term competitive advantage.
Of course, the interface of popular financial services can become a powerful source of inspiration and a good starting point. This can save some time at the start, but the user interface design is only a part of the user experience design.
Usually, people need time to try a product in order to appreciate it. Despite the fact that digital products often see faster results, they are still subject to the market rules. This means that success depends not only on the product but also on how and when it is introduced to the market, what support is provided to users, what is offered by competitors, on what terms service operates and many other business factors.
In addition, you should not forget that UX design is an iterative process, and it does not stop after the product is launched. In the future, the service needs to be optimized and improved based on feedback from customers and usage data. This will take some time, but it’s the only way to achieve maximum compliance with market demand.
The most famous internet entrepreneurs on the road to success have spent years preparing, developing, testing hypotheses, correcting mistakes and searching for solutions that are in demand.
Our company had a client who developed a very thoughtful and pleasing financial service, but the customers were not ready to pay a high price for it. The founders decided to change the business model by setting a price that depended on user results, which rocketed the product onto the market.
Of course, proper architecture and functionality of the product, as well as a user-friendly, intuitive and attractive interface, increase the user involvement, frequency of use, user satisfaction and the desire to recommend it to friends. This will highly increase the chances of product success. However, it is important to define areas of responsibility, since the design alone can’t guarantee a working business model and immediate growth.
It is important to understand what kind of ideas are behind the design of a particular financial service and how it creates a user benefit and solves the real customer problems. It is wiser to offer the world your own generated solution for an important problem.
In this way, your service could become a new standard and a source of inspiration for millions.