21 March 2022
Fintech UXcuses.
It’s a situation that has become all too common in the digital age. A visit to an app store results in customers downloading an app that looks useful. Then, upon running it and being greeted by a poorly designed landing screen or information overload, they close it and delete it. This is a textbook example of an app delivering a poor user experience (UX) and ultimately results in a loss of engagement.
Customers often claim that UX is one of the key determining factors when choosing whether to use a service or not. Poorly designed UX that ‘feels’ off, whether it’s di cult to use, misleading or cluttered, can have significant effects on onboarding, return rates and customer loyalty, ultimately deciding an app’s success. Findings by Forrester Research indicate that 90% of service users have previously stopped using an app due to poor performance and badly designed UX. Conversely, a seamless, well-designed UX has the potential of increasing customer conversion by 400%.
When expanding into other markets, UX localization should be integrated as early as
possible in your process. If you are considering expansion into the US, Latin America or Asia, the following information will be very useful.
The importance placed on smooth UX varies globally. A study from PwC found that just under 20% of US-based consumers would abandon a respected brand after one bad experience, suggesting that the US market is quite forgiving of issues present in the UX. In LATAM countries, that figure jumps to around 50%, indicating that UX is a much more heavily valued part of the product in these markets. Ultimately, a poorly localized UX could have disastrous effects on customer retention, especially as LATAM is viewed as a high-potential market for fintechs.
According to Juliana Quarantani Junkes, Sales Director at Similarweb, “apps are a top-of-mind choice by the Latin American consumer. They are the sweet spot for mobile growth, and a smart strategy for bigger players that want to expand into the region”. Market research providers Dealroom also comment on the potential of LATAM markets for fintechs: with massive mobile internet usage, relatively low customer counts for traditional financial institutions, and young populations, LATAM territories could constitute the perfect environment for fintech adoption. What do these customers value? A solid, easy-to-understand and use UX through mobile applications – something which requires a high level of localization.
Asia is a similarly promising market for fintechs, having the highest number of fintech users in the world with over 2.36 billion digital payment users according to Statista. It can however, pose unique challenges for companies looking to make their product available in the region. Japanese and South Korean audiences, for example, tend to be highly risk averse, and so more reluctant to share personal information through Know-Your-Customer forms before they’ve had time to adjust to new services. Adjusting the introduction stages of your offering could reassure them and help build customer engagement in these regions.
UX localization is about much more than just UX design. For many, ‘localization’ is synonymous with ‘translation’, with a heavy focus on transferring source text from one language into another for new markets. This isn’t entirely wrong, as translating text into consumers’ native languages can have a big impact on the UX. A 2019 CSA Research survey of 29 countries found that 76% of consumers preferred to purchase from sites featuring UX in their native language. 40% said outright that they wouldn’t buy from websites in other languages. Undeniably, localization of the text can build trust and have a major impact on the success of a product in international markets.
This is particularly relevant for the fintech industry: any app offering banking, savings, payments, money transferring, investing, or crypto-related solutions will have to build a strong rapport with their target audience, so a deep UX localization approach is the way to go.
The success of a product’s functionality depends largely on the removal of any friction that may lead to poor engagement. Friction may occur through awkward visual design as well as its linguistic suitability for local markets. To localize UX effectively, companies need to start looking beyond their own notions of the design functionality of their product. Some design considerations are tied into a market’s linguistic culture. In Western cultures, where text is read from left to right, the ‘back’ arrow typically points to the left of the screen. Meanwhile, in other cultures, where text moves from right to left, it faces the other way. These relatively simple differences can have a major impact on the usability of your product for international audiences – nobody wants to press the ‘next’ button when they wanted to go back a step – and can mean big things for international success.
Fintech companies are left with an important question – beyond the obvious step of changing the language, what other measures can they take to localize their products for international audiences? Companies need to take localization into account when designing their products, no matter which market they are launching in. There are some simple things that can be done in preparation which will make localization easier, especially if they are considered at an early stage of the design process.
Using as few words as possible can make the UX localization-friendly, making it easier to navigate and less intimidating for global users, limiting the need for translation. Also, considering a flexible technology stack to enable easy UX and design changes is a must to ensure that challenges in new markets can be addressed without heavily disrupting the original version when launching globally.
“A designer who doesn’t understand human psychologies is going to be no more successful than an architect who doesn’t understand physics.”
– UX and product management consultant, Joe Leech
As consumers grow increasingly accustomed to implementing digital services into their everyday lives, technical literacy has improved in many demographics. Using familiar actions such as pulling down to refresh can alleviate some of the pressure on the localization process. The use of widely recognized symbols could be seen as an alternative to text, but even here, caution needs to be taken.
The ‘hamburger’ symbols used by many Western sites to represent a menu featuring broader options isn’t in regular use among Chinese audiences, who are more familiar with a compass icon to indicate a ‘discovery’ feature. Even pictures aren’t immune to cultural interpretation, and require intimate local knowledge in order to be utilized correctly.
Special care also needs to be taken with any forms (such as KYC forms) that customers are required to complete in order to access your product. Native Spanish resources will feature two input fields for family names in order to ensure that consumers input their full name, whereas international providers often only feature one. This can lead to consumers incorrectly inputting their names and encountering issues later on, pushing them away from using the product or service again in the future.
Japanese audiences might have similar problems with address fields. Western address are typically structured over several lines, whereas Japanese addresses tend to be written over one continuous line. When greeted with Western input formats, confusion about where to input each part of the address can occur and lead to consumers losing trust and abandoning the service.
The amount of information that needs to be presented on start-up is also a key part of the UX. Some cultures prefer a minimalist design, whereas others will look for a larger volume of information to be presented immediately. According to research from UX Designer Jenny Shen published on Toptal, users from
individualistic societies tend to know what they’re looking for, and will seek out information for themselves.
A more collectivist background, seen in some East Asian countries wherein group loyalty is encouraged over the needs of the individual, could result in them wanting more information presented to them upfront, so they can see what other people are doing or reading. This could result in big differences in how fintechs present their UX in different markets – some users might look for more freedom to explore features, whereas others might be better funnelled through the various offerings.
When it comes to finance and fintech, consumers can feel very cautious about where their money is going. Branding choices such as colour can also have big impacts. While red is associated with caution and danger in many Western cultures, in China it is associated with good luck and prosperity. Putting some extra time into considering the colour scheme of products in various markets is highly likely to have a positive impact on customer retention and engagement. Putting some extra time into considering the colour scheme of products in various markets is highly likely to have a positive impact on customer retention and engagement.
Translation of text in the UX is certainly an important part of the localization process, process, but when targeting products towards international audiences, there are many other aspects to consider. In order to get better return on investment when expanding into new territories, companies should work with an expert localization enterprise with intimate knowledge of international cultures. It’s only by deeply understanding the cultures of these new markets that companies can understand how best to localize the UX beyond simple linguistic translation and take specialized design and navigation into account to ensure maximum user engagement. A global partner with full A-Z localization and linguistic services is required, presenting the most e cient means to support a global fintechs’ growth.
