Scotia Advice+
Redesigning the Advice+ homepage to educate customers wherever they are on their financial journey
Client
Scotiabank
Year
2024
Outlining and defining the user experience and visual design of the page
Collaborating with the Content Designer to discuss the content hierarchy, SEO & primary CTAs.
Coordinating with the Digital Experience Manager authoring the page, to ensure the design was feasible
Managing stakeholder expectations and presenting designs
Scheduling accessibility reviews to ensure designs met A11y standards
Responsibilities
Jump to
Advice+ is a financial advice service that Scotiabank offers to its personal banking clientele
Overview
Advice+ offers free resources to empower new and existing customers seeking financial advice for variety of milestones for example buying a house.
Stakeholders wanted to redesign the homepage to improve content discoverability and engagement.
The previous Advice+ homepage felt overwhelming, with many articles thrown at clients with no clear narrative
Discovery
To establish a baseline, I interviewed project stakeholders and reviewed an April 2024 performance report of the Advice+ homepage.
After reading the report, I audited the homepage to see what was currently working, identify gaps in the existing user experience, and familiarize myself with the design system.
Items I noticed during my design audit of the previous homepage
1.Misleading hero banner copy
The current copy in the hero banner didn’t mention the name of the page or provide an overview of its purpose. Instead, it featured copy promoting a campaign targeting senior clients with a primary call-to-action (CTA) that took users to Scotia’s Senior Resource Center.
2. Missed opportunities for content engagement
Instead of showing featured articles, the page included a subtle banner that redirected to the Advice+ featured article page. In my opinion, this was a missed opportunity to create engagement with visitors and give them a structured overview of the content we have to offer.
3. Lacking of filtering and search capabilities
There were no search and filter capabilities to help readers organize and sort through content to quickly find what they wanted.
4. Cognitive overload with articles
There were too many articles on the page which created an overwhelming experience, especially for users browsing on mobile, where the majority of users (68%) access the page.
I analyzed 6 Canadian and American competitors to identify design patterns to boost engagement
Competitor analysis
I reviewed 6 competitors to understand the following:
What cross-sell opportunities were shown on the page, if any?
What components/design patterns did they use to boost engagement? How ‘sticky’ was the page overall?
How do competing FIs structure their content?
How can users search and filter content?
What keywords appeared the most often?
What were their primary CTAs? Where did those appear in the experience?
What concepts and topics FIs choose to explore?
One of the competitors that I looked at in-depth was RBC’s Money Matters. I liked how they highlighted the search functionality at the top of the page, giving users the flexibility to immediately find articles related to the topics they cared the most about. I also liked using their quiz component.
Unlike Scotia’s quiz component, RBC’s showed users how their answers ranked against others. I think it was a smart and simple way to introduce elements of competition and gamification - making the component more engaging.
How might we create opportunities for personalization and make an engaging experience for customers looking for financial advice while highlighting the various Advice+ tools and resources?
Problem Statement & UX Strategy
Taking what I learned from the competitor analysis , performance report and my audit of the previous page, I explored some strategies to increase engagement.
Strategy 1
Customers are shown specific content in certain areas of the page based on their previous browsing data. For example, if a customer is coming from one of the credit card pages, we could have articles in the featured section that speak to how clients can get the most benefits or getting out of credit card debt.
Strategy 2
Customer likes to browse relevant topics to see a high-level view of the all content that Advice+ has to offer.
I set up some co-working sessions with the content designer to discuss my ideas for the page. I wanted to align with them on the content strategy in terms of concepts to prioritize on the page, appropriate CTAs to use and best placement, and the top keywords for the page.
Refining the designs and sharing my recommendations with stakeholders
UX/UI Design
Following discussions with the content designer and digital experience manager, I realized the first strategy I outlined wouldn’t be possible for the project timeline. Using components from Scotia’s existing design system, I decided to focus on a layout that would allow users to explore Advice+ content in a way that wouldn’t cause cognitive load.
After refining the designs, I scheduled a design walkthrough with the design and content team as well as the marketing and business stakeholders to review my designs and share the following recommendations:
Design Recommendations for Advice+
1.Featured articles on homepage
Having a featured section at the top of the page allows marketing to rotate content out depending on that month’s campaign.
2.Highlighting the main 3 Advice+ sections along with the featured articles
This would encourage users to explore the Advice+ content and boost traffic to the category landing page.
3.Including a section for trending topics
We weren’t able to implement robust search functionality due to technical constraints, so having a trending topic section helps to highlight content in a simple way. Stakeholders would also have the option to change the order and visibility of the topics based on analytic data e.g. which topics are getting the most traffic and engagement.
4.Keep high-performing components
Based on data from the April 2024 Performance Report, the quiz component is great for boosting engagement. I also recommended highlighting the money styles quiz, which was an existing Scotia Advice+ financial personality quiz that wasn’t featured at all in the old homepage design.
5.Having an evergreen section for fraud content
This section features security and fraud-related content to empower users, especially seniors, on how they could better protect their finances. In my previous role at BMO, I’d seen statistics and reports that showed security and fraud as big concerns among banking customers.
Compromising with stakeholders without affecting the discoverability of the content
Design Feedback
The feedback from the business line was mainly around choosing more neutral colours, streamlining the trending topic section and adding more visual interest. There was also feedback to explore using carousels like RBC to display the trending topics.
I took in the other feedback but pushed back on the carousel for the following reasons:
It hurts discoverability and adds unnecessary friction for users who want to see an overview of all the possible options.
2. While carousels can help display content like product features and reviews or an image gallery, they tend to have low-click through rates when the content is unrelated or not compelling (source)
Previous Design
As a compromise, I reduced the number of trending topics to 10 items that received the most user traffic overall - after reaching out to the senior experience manager to pull the related analytic data. I designed the section to feature 5 topics on default with the remaining 5 hidden under a “Show more” button, with iconography for visual interest.
Design following feedback
The Advice+ homepage was launched on Dec 4th 2024 to improve user engagement, content discoverability and wayfinding. Since launch, the page has seen a 54% increase in content engagement.
Outcome
