Investor Activation

Timeline

Main Findings

Here is a summary of the findings regarding factors affecting investor activation.

1

Factor Affecting Investor Activation

Friction within the Product Discovery phase has a major impact on investor activation.

Research Performed

Analytics, client interviews and usability testing were performed to help me identify this factor.

Analytics (from Amplitude)

I analysed the count of events that had occurred at each step of the user journey from arrival at the homepage until placing an investment, in order to see the drop-off rates at each step. As shown, majority of the drop-off occurs between browsing of the STO (Product) Details Page and clicking of the "Invest Now" button (which is on the STO Details page).

Although analytics show that the drop from Homepage to the Product Offering Listing ("POL") page (27% drop)is higher than that from the POL page to the STO page (21% drop), I consider the latter more significant because Homepage traffic can be split multiple ways depending on why the user log into his / her account, whereas when user reaches the POL page they typically intend to find a product to invest.

This data shows to me that an emphasis need to be placed on both the POL Page and the STO Details Page - I consider the viewing of these two pages the "Product Discovery Phase".

Client Interviews

I interviewed 25 approved investors from the investment platform. Using affinity analysis, I have summarised the strengths and pain points experienced by the clients along the activation funnel.

With regards to the Product Discovery phase, feedback were gathered specifically for the POL and STO Detail pages. The high level pain points are highlighted in red rectangles in the diagram below.

In addition, multiple clients had said that they found the amount of information on the STO (Product) Detail pages overwhelming, and that the layout of the page made it difficult to pick out information needed for decision-making.

Usability Testing

More information on the outcome of the usability testing for the STO Details page can be found in the STO page improvement case study.

Usability testing of the Offering Listing page was also conducted, and the main feedback can be found in the diagram below.

Recommendations

I recommended a redesign of the STO Details page as a priority - the detailed recommendations can be seen in the STO page improvement case study.

The redesign of the POL page was also recommended, although with a lower priority. Some suggestions included:

• Display offerings by categories – e.g. asset types, investment focus, subscription status, which will make it easier to have an overview of all the offerings available

• Enable a product comparison functionality on certain product attributes, such as target return, duration, risk level, minimum investment amount

2

Factor Affecting Investor Activation

Investor Confidence investor activation.

Research Performed

Motivations and Obstacles to Investment

Using data collected from the 25 Client Interviews I conducted, I have collated a list of motivations and obstacles behind why investors decide to, or not to, invest.

It occurred to me that there is an overarching theme to these motivations and obstacles - Investor Confidence.

Here is a summarised list of factors that were impacting Investor Confidence:

1. Concerns regarding the risks of investing through the platform and legal implications if the platform or fund invested liquidates

2. Familiarity with the issuer or fund manager

3. Product or asset class knowledge

4. Being able to try out investment with limited outlay of funds

5. Social proof (referral, word of mouth, success stories, no. of people invested)

6. Platform Transparency – fee structure, historic returns, risk, processes​

Investor Personas

Prior to me joining the company, they had engaged the management consultancy McKinsey to advise on their business strategy. McKinsey had shared a set of High Net Worth Client personas they had previously created using data collated from hundreds of high net worth clients for another financial institution.

After performing affinity analysis on the data gathered from my 25 client interviews, I was able to align certain traits to those High Net Worth personas, which allowed me to create four Investor Personas bespoke for the company.

Here are the four Investor Personas:

Having shared the above personas with management, it was decided that we would target the two personas who were relatively more knowledgeable about private market investments - “Proactive Paula” and “ Savvy Sean”.

Recommendations

Based on the traits and investment behaviour of the two targeted personas, I came up with ways to address the concerns and needs they may have in terms of confidence in the platform and its products.

I then proceeded to rank the recommendations by their ease of implementation.

In order to better visualise these recommendations, I also performed competitor analysis on 7 other investment platforms to find examples on how these were implemented by competitors. These were shared within the Design team as well as the wider Product team and Front Office team and Marketing team, as some of these ideas require cross-functional input.

Here are some examples of how competitors tackle investor confidence:

3

Factor Affecting Investor Activation

Attractiveness of the investment product relative to other products on offer in the public market.

Research Performed

Of the list of motivations and obstacles to investing through the platform I collated from the client interviews, a number of points related to the investment products on offer and the attributes of those products.

Examples of motivations:

• Having well-known businesses or funds made the platform

• Incentives that encourage first-time investments, e.g. zero-fee campaign, lower minimum investment amount, referral for credits campaign

Examples of obstacles:

• limited product range

• Complex fee structures (in addition to fee charged by the Platform)

Recommendations

Since these were outside of the scope of UX, I shared the feedback and recommendations with the Front Office team responsible for curating products for the platform.

Impact

Below is an illustrated summary of the impact of this research project.

It is worth mentioning that, the underlying source of data that had brought about these outcome was the largest scale investor interview campaign ever conducted in the history of the company, initiated by myself. More information can be found in my Building a Research Function case study.