Allianz Global Investor
Leading Active Asset Manager
Year
2022
Case Type
Business Project
Overview
Allianz Global Investors was established as a dedicated asset management business in 1998. A leading active asset manager with over 600 investment professionals in more than 20 offices worldwide, Allianz Global Investors see investing as a journey and we seek to create value for our clients every step of the way. They invest for the long term, employing our global investment and risk capabilities and sustainable investing expertise to create innovative solutions that anticipate future needs.
My Role
I was one of the members in the design team which included a design lead and a project manager. We were working on the UX audit in summer 2022 with the product team. For this project it is heavily research based, I also took the role as UX researcher in this project. The design process contains 16 weeks, which includes the research to high-fidelity mockup design, then the design will be delivered to the IT team to work on development.
Problems & Goals
Business Perspective
Problem😔
Allianz Global Investors as a leading active asset manager with over 600 investment professionals in more than 20 offices worldwide, is struggling with lack of up-selling opportunities with the current website. On average users only spend 120 second on their website and over 65% just to check the fund price and leave. In the past they relied on mediators such as bank investment agents or insurance agencies to sell their product.
Goals🎯
Even if an investor can’t buy the product or service directly from the website, it should be used as an important tool in the customer journey. Creating an awesome customer experience is important for businesses. Not only does a great customer experience help companies to improve their brand reputation, but it also encourages customers to remain brand loyal and, possibly, purchase more products or services.
User Perspective
Problem😔
Users have to define themselves before they enter the investment world. The website is full of terminology and information which can be scary for a beginner.
Goals🎯
Make the Next Level platform more user-friendly, creating a platform with users' features.
Research & User Discovery
Competitor Analysis
We started with a background research competitor analysis to understand the demographic and compare the experience of the same journey amongst different competitors.
User Research
As part of our testing, we asked Hong Kong residents how they felt about the six sections listed and their experience, as well as their attitude and motivations in general regarding financial making.
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Onboarding and Navigate the website:
Browse the landing page and navigate the different sections of the website
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Understand the brand and its business:
Understand the brand and business through different contents, build trust and confidence
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Discover and understand fund products:
Search and filter fund list
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Find critical information:
Understand fund detail page layout, find critical information such as past years’ performance, dividends etc
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Make financial decisions:
Read fund details and factsheet
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Learn new insights:
Explore the website and find topics they are interested
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The Benchmark Test was limited to 7 participants due to a budget cut. There was a mix of Allianz GI product owners and other investors, and their investment experience ranged from 1 to 10+ years. These tests were conducted and 5 key insights were established based on them.
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5/7 participants spend an extra 27% of time on the onboarding process in the Allianz GI website compared to other competitors.
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6/7 participants said they have a habit of checking fund price in a weekly basis.
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6/7 of participants finding difficulties in the tasks we set within section 6 (learning new insight) and Allianz GI performance is the least ideal in this part
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5/7 of participants claimed that they check investment insight or news on SNS platforms, WhatsApp groups and forums.
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3/7 participants do agree that the website is not very beginner friendly mainly due to terminology.
Design Prespectives
Seamless onboarding:
Hong Kong has two official languages: Chinese and English. Cantonese for spoken communication and standard written Chinese for formal written communication, is the language that intrinsically connects with the Hong Kong audience: 88.9% of the population consider it their ‘first’ mother tongue. This fact explained the behavioural we had observed in the user testing, one of the reasons participants spend an extra 27% of time on the onboarding process is because they tend to change the language setting either during the T&C agreement or after. More than that, based on the data provided by Allianz GI it is claimed that over 62% of visitors are from Hong Kong (others mainly include Taiwan and mainland China).
We suggested the following alteration:
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Change the default language to Chinese(traditional)
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Redesign the cookies preference design provides a Chinese and English version, while the current one is not available in Chinese. By showing all the cookies selection in the same page reduce the time to check each one of them.
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Friendly Navigation:
After studying other competitors and based on the user interview feedback, it shows that “Fund price & performance” is the most used section no matter which fund website.
We suggested the following alteration:
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Rearrange the order in the nav bar: The section “our products” has a strong connection with “Fund price & performance” so we grouped them next to each other.
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Adding subtitles in the menu: In the user interview the subtitle design has a very positive feedback. The users claim that it helps them to locate and identify the information and make sure it is what they needed.
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Redesign news/notice section: Adding the heading “News” to catch user attention. Use boxes and colours to keep the content in a more readable format.
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Create sale opportunity: Generating products based on the user's cookies/ browsing history can enhance the sale chance by showing the product the investor might be interested in. Or can use it for showing the hero product in Allianz GI.
Beginner Friendly:
The other reason participants spend an extra 27% of time on the onboarding process is they found it difficult to define their role especially on participants with lesser investment experience.
We suggested the following alteration:
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The role selection should be placed after the T&Cs and cookies confirmation to reduce the inputs users have to make and to give a shorter and smoother onboarding process to the visitors.
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Visitors should be treated as individual investors by default, and a banner should be displayed at the top with the option to change their roles. Clicking on it will display the roles and a brief description of the roles that fit the user best.
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The addition of tooltips on words that may be difficult to understand. By explaining these big words, users will have less trouble understanding the information without looking them up or guessing their meanings. It is considered that this part needs further study to determine which words are needed to add tooltips.
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Exploration of Product and Upsell Opportunity:
Based on the data provided by Allianz GI, on average users only spend 127 second on Allianz GI website and over 65% just to check the fund price and leave. Moreover, over 36% of users said that they would look into investment articles and insight on the website to gain new market vision.
We suggested the following alteration:
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Adding recommendations under the fund detailed page and insight articles, allow users to access the product related to the article as soon as they finish the reading.
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Redesign the information card layout in the recommendation.The current design lacks focus, it does provide valued information for users but the display format requires the user to look left and right to read all the data.The new design keep all the important information in bolded font and align all the information in a vertical order which compare to the old design will be more readable.
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Article tagging provides users with the opportunity to click on the tag that they are interested in reading more about; they will be taken to a library that contains the entire collection of articles with that tag.
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Adoption of Social Media:
In the user testing, over 70% of participants admitted to checking investment insights on social media platforms, WhatsApp groups, and forums. If we want them to share our products or articles, we should provide a shortcut. If they prefer, they can simply inform their investment agent of the product they are interested in. This can enhance the chance of implicit investors to bandy the Allianz GI products creating implicit deals.
We suggested the following alteration:
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Share to SNS shortcut
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Adding floating banner “send to my investment consultant” in fund detailed page
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Key Results
After we builded up the prototype, we invited other 7 participants to take parts into the usability testing to find out the adjustment we suggested it effectively improving the user experience and beneficial to Allianz GI.
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Average Onboarding time reduced 23% compare to the first benchmark test
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Participants is willing spending extra 34% of time on browsing the investment insight article
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4/7 participants clicked on to related products to check further information about the fund in insight article
Next Phrase
Moving forward, we hand off our design to the Allianz GI Hong Kong product team. While this is just the first phase of the UX audit project. We believe more feedback will be received after the iterations will be further continued in-depth in order to provide a better user experience.
Reflection
The UX enhancement project for the financial asset management company was challenging yet rewarding. The first phase involved understanding the client's needs and goals. We had to guide the client through defining the scope of the project due to their lack of clarity regarding their objectives. Through two workshops, we collaborated with the client to pinpoint key areas for enhancement, ensuring that our efforts were well-directed.
Our commitment to providing evidence-based solutions led us to conduct an in-depth and robust UX research process. We gathered both qualitative and quantitative data to support our suggested alterations. The user interviews validated our proposed changes, and the results were indeed compelling, highlighting the efficacy of our approach.
Possible alteration in 2023
Reflecting on this project, I recognise the significance of a well-structured research approach in achieving successful outcomes. As I move forward with my research methodology in 2023, I plan to refine it further. For instance, when faced with a situation where user goals are not clearly defined, I would propose incorporating an established academic framework into the research process. This framework would aid in conducting comprehensive surveys, helping to project a comprehensive user image and gain a deeper understanding of user preferences and needs.
Furthermore, I would introduce more rigorous usability testing methods such as tree testing and click testing for the revamped design. Combining these methods with usability testing allows us to obtain more diverse data for validation by casting a wider net regarding user participation. This approach will contribute to a more robust and statistically significant validation process.
In order to ensure that our proposed changes are backed by a more comprehensive and reliable set of data, I aim to enhance the research methodologies and testing procedures. This shift in approach is aligned with my commitment to delivering evidence-based solutions and achieving even more impactful outcomes for future projects.