Asto Business Capital
Asto is a fintech backed by Santander. Business Capital is a flexible way for businesses to get working capital for their business. It can be used by businesses for a number of purposes to support their short-term funding needs.
Brief
To review and analyse the usability of the current Business Capital journey through Usability Testing - reviewing the positive and negative opinion and providing recommendations for optimisation through A/B and User Zoom Testing.
THE TEAM
I worked as the Product Designer for the Business Capital squad. I worked with a Product Manager, Front-End and Back-End Developers.
BUSINESS OBJECTIVE
The journey needs to be optimised for conversion, therefore ensuring the user has everything they need to go through the application, in terms of trust, understanding the different parts of the form and being able to use the product.
Conversion is measured from when the user clicks 'Apply Now' on the asto.io website or from a specific partner website, to the point at which the user has a credit limit.
The aim is to get 9,000 Active Finance Users. An active user is a user that has drawn down at least once. Currently, there are 957 Active Finance Users.
METHODOLOGY
A series of 1-to-1 interviews conducted by using “think aloud” protocol, task-based interviewing and observation techniques. With the moderator aiming to uncover users’ needs and expectations and determine the least and most successful elements from the users’ perspective.
PARTICIPANTS
I conducted interviews with 10 participants, who were Sole Traders or owned Limited Companies. To gauge an understanding of the customer’s point of view on the process of applying for a business loan we ensured we interviewed people who had previously taken out a loan.
TEST TIMELINE
Usability report examples
Below are some examples from the Usability Report that I complied:
- Screen by screen analysis
- Themes - working well and what can be improved
- Loan application experience
- Usability Recommendations
IMPRESSION OF THE ASTO BRAND
BRAND
Participants questioned the trustworthiness of the brand and thought it looked slightly childish and similar to ‘we buy any car’ for a financial product.
There was also a mixed reaction to the brand and TOV. Some identified the look and TOV as ‘millennial’ and ‘the way people actually talk’. Others thought the graphics looked like a game which made the brand appear not professional enough to represent their business and that it would be too risky to use Asto.
PRODUCT
Disappointed and surprised that they would be asked for a personal guarantee on such a small amount.
12 months was felt to be ‘too short’ and would make payments possibly unaffordable. They defined ‘short’ term as at least up to 24 months.
No matter how easy the process they would not take the loan if it was not competitive, i.e. must better rate/fees etc than their own bank or better-known brands.
Usability Recommendation: ‘YOUr APPLICATION WAS SUCCESSFUL’ page
In testing, the majority of participants said that they would drop off on this page, as they were not able to comprehend how the amount related to one another.
LANGUAGE IS INCONSISTENT WITH THE JOURNEY
The previous step for the user was ‘Discover my credit limit’ and the page that follows ‘Application was successful’.
Users view-point – Common sentiment ‘I did not apply for this amount’ and/or ‘it shows a figure much bigger than what I expected or needed’. In testing, this made users reluctant to proceed with the application.
Participants were unable to deduce the meaning between the two figures when pressed with further questions they understood that they were given credit limit from which they can drawdown.
instructive cta
‘Configure your loan’ or ‘Verify your identity’ would be a suitable CTA as it is instructive for the next step in the journey. ‘Take your first loan’ could cause some users to think they are committing to a £40K loan when that is not what they want. They will drop out if they feel unsure what clicking ‘Take your first loan’ means in terms of commitment and have no way to ‘Save and continue later’.
Secondary CTA ‘Go to dashboard’ is confusing, users don’t realise yet they have a dashboard to go to. What a user wants is the choice to ‘Save & review’.
User Question – ‘Take your first loan’ am I committing to something? What kind of monthly payment is it if I take £40K on a 12-month loan? ‘Configure your loan’ feels less intimidating as a next step.
I designed three versions of the ‘Your application was successful’ page taking into consideration the feedback from the usability tests.
Version 1: Includes a summary of the upcoming steps ‘Verify your identity’, ‘Provide your bank details’ and ‘Choose your loan amount’. This was included in the design to set the user’s expectation of the next steps.
Version 2: Includes ‘Verify your identity’, ‘Provide your bank detail’ and Tooltip that lets users know they can save their application, leave the page and pick it up from here. I decided to include this as we found from testing that this point in the journey was a drop-off point as they would want to consult with their business partners or shop around at this moment and would like the opportunity to come back to their application.
USER ZOOM TESTING
From the usability tests we found that when users arrived at the 'Your application was successful' page the majority of participants did not want to proceed.
When questioned why this was they mentioned the following:
Seeing a large amount of money, participants didn't understand how the £40k and the £0 related to one another.
It was not clear what the next steps are and assumed the next step would be taking out the loan straight away.
There was no opportunity to save their quote, take some time out to speak with a business partner ahead of proceeding.
Card sorting
In the User Zoom test, I included a card-sorting task to find out what is the most important feature to small businesses are when taking out a loan. The top three important features were:
No upfront fees
Competitive APR
A decision in 24 hours
Design A
From this page, the following actions had the most likelihood of users to continue with:
- Read More
- Find out more about the lender through their own research
This suggests that users were not comfortable to progress with the application because they required further information that was not easily apparent on this page.
Design B
With design B participants were most likely to:
- Verify your identity
- Find out more about this lender through their own research
With some participants choosing to Verify your identity this would continue their journey to taking out a business capital loan. A hypothesis about why participants feel confident continuing is because the relevant information required to make an informed decision to continue is available on this screen.
Design C
In this design Verify your identity was selected the most by participants. A hypothesis is that this design contained all the sufficient information for the user to proceed with a business capital loan.
usability recommendations
The recommendations were prioritised bringing together the desirability from the user’s point of view with what is technologically feasible and economically viable.