The Role of User Experience (UX) in Website Differentiation: How to Create a Seamless Customer Journey

Online media content plays a vital role in driving traffic for most industries, particularly within the fintech industry. User experience, otherwise known as UX, has proven to be one of the most critical ways to drive and keep consumers engaged on one’s site. With so much competition and digital noise within fintech, having a premier, easy-to-use website with high-quality, helpful content can help one’s fintech stand out from the rest. With resourceful content working in tandem with the usability and accessibility of the website, UX must be spot on in order for one’s fintech website to deliver organic leads and natural results.

Good UX design can often correlate to an authentic and trustworthy brand, as a flawed and rudimentary website design can often give off the impression that the financial solution offered by the company could be better as well. In order to differentiate from the competition, one’s website has to be top-notch to give the impression of a well-run website, company, and, ultimately, financial product.

With so many similar fintech companies in the industry, differentiation can be hard to find in the financial technology world. Often, companies outsource website and technology creation to a handful of third-party vendors that are very similar in the services they provide. Companies tend to implement a “follow the leader approach” in their website creation strategy, leading to fintech websites looking very similar in their UX design. If it is working for the industry leader, what is stopping it from working for its own fintech company? As a result, very few companies build their own unique website that breaks away from the pack, often choosing to use their resources and VC funding to focus on other aspects of the business. However, in an environment where fintech startups struggle to differentiate themselves from their competition, UX and website design is the first place companies can look to gain that hidden edge over their competitors.

This industry change has started to take effect in recent years as new fintech entrants are building their entire propositions on differentiation, including UX design as an essential component within their strategy. In fact, according to the FinTech Futures Industry Survey & Report 2022, 41% of financial services industry respondents believe UX is the most critical aspect a bank provides in differentiating its services.

While financial technology solutions may be complex, keeping the UX design of the financial product or website as simple as possible is essential. If a fintech product or service takes too long to set up and use, a user may decide that this endeavor is not worth their time and move on to another solution or stay with their current financial provider. The whole concept of Fintech is to introduce digital transformation to the traditional financial sector to empower ordinary people to get an optimal and enhanced financial experience with modern technology, leading to efficient and effective access to digital financial products. However, the simplicity of fintech as a concept is not enough anymore. Fintechs often forget that alongside incorporating technology and innovation, they must still keep their user interface and experience simple for users to use their financial product or service. An overly complex user experience can have the opposite effect of what the fintech is intending. User Experience (UX) is one of the deciding factors that could either build up a fintechs user base or break their business.

UX design can be a very tricky and subjective endeavor to undertake, so how can a company approach UX the right way in order to differentiate itself from its competitors and create a seamless customer journey? A refined user experience focuses on content and patterns preferred by the targeted consumers of a fintech. No matter how much financial expertise and ingenious fintech designs are incorporated into the website or application, it will not be able to achieve the goal of bringing on more users, if it is not simple enough for the user to enjoy. If these aspects are ignored, then users will find another similar financial solution or platform that does not ignore the needs of the user. By making sure to avoid the crowding of financial features into a small web space, including complex financial language that consumers may not understand, and implementing good fintech user experience practices with the creation of accessible, interactive, and consistent website designs, with clear and step-by-step user flow, fintechs are able to succeed in differentiating and standing out from their competition.