Trust will make (or break) your fintech product
I’ll bet that you and I do the same thing when searching for something on Google…
Say I’m looking for a new bank, I type “banks in Boston”, hit “enter”, and start scrolling.
I scroll down until I get to the first result that doesn’t look like an ad. In this case the first result that isn’t an ad is a Smart Assets link. I skip that one, too.
Why is that? I’m not intentionally trying to avoid advertisements but I can’t help myself. I just don’t trust anything that looks like an ad.
Trust. It’s one of the best kept secrets on the internet. It’s why we choose to click on links, buy that shirt, or sign up for that new service. We don’t engage with things we don’t trust. And the bigger the stakes, the more important trust becomes. I might follow clickbait once in awhile because it seems interesting. There’s a chance I buy something from a questionable website because it seems like a good deal. But I’m not opening a bank account unless I have an immense amount of trust in the website and the institution I’m dealing with.
If you’re building a digital experience in a field like fintech, you may be asking: how do you build trust virtually?
Leveraging Human Nature to Build Trust
Humans are pattern driven by nature. Our brains form patterns to create efficiency as we navigate through an increasingly complex world. These patterns create expectations, or mental models, for how we engage with an experience. It’s an incredible adaptation that allows us to decrease our cognitive load, operate on auto-pilot, and save valuable brain power for novel experiences or high-stakes tasks.
These patterns generate trust in a virtuous cycle. When we see something we recognize, our guard goes down and things feel effortless. We’re able to move faster and more efficiently through a process, reinforcing our recognition and trust over and over again.
This is easy to recognize in your everyday digital tasks. Things like checking your email and scrolling through social media are literal no-brainers, you don’t have to think about it. But not all experiences are like that, consider the finance account you check only once a month or the social media platform you rarely ever log into. These aren’t as intuitive. Your brain is required to exert more effort to perform basic interactions.
Understanding key user needs can drive designs and experiences that generate trust, but poorly designed features can lose that trust even faster.
When a user experiences a delay in navigation or a button CTA that doesn’t match what they’re looking for, the result can be distrust in the underlying functionality of your product.
Creating familiar patterns isn’t about creating the same patterns as every other website or app. It’s about understanding user mental models and applying them to software experiences in an intuitive way. Not necessarily to drive daily use, but to ensure that the experience builds trust and is easy to use whether it’s your first time logging in or you’ve been doing it daily for years.
Understanding key user needs can drive designs and experiences that generate trust, but poorly designed features can lose that trust even faster. When a user experiences a delay in navigation or a button CTA that doesn’t match what they’re looking for, the result can be distrust in the underlying functionality of your product. There’s a tendency, called the “halo effect”, for an impression created in one area to influence opinions in another area. It may be why we’re still wary of the brands that advertise in the top spots on Google when we see their organic results further down the page.
Trust is the Difference
There’s nothing more important in financial technology than building trust. It doesn’t just make a difference in how users interact with your product, it’s the difference between a successful business and one that never gets off the ground. No matter how well-intentioned you are or how incredible your product is, the actual experience of that product needs to match.
Start by talking with your customers to understand their pain points and where your product isn’t building trust. If you aren’t sure how to get started, let’s talk.
Let’s discuss your next project
We Look Forward to hearing from you.
