CASE STUDY

Optimizing the buy now pay later (BNPL) flow in BMO’s retail banking app for higher plan creation and completion

Overview

Product: BMO PaySmart - Buy Now Pay Later

Role: Senior Content Designer

Impact areas: Higher plan amounts, lower operational costs to contact center, improved feature comprehension, cross-team alignment

Problem statement: How might I help customers afford large purchases while being informed of their commitments when using the buy now pay later feature on the retail banking app.

Project Stakeholders

Design team

  • Content designer

  • Interaction and visual designer

  • Design researcher

  • Design manager

Partners and Stakeholders

  • Product owner

  • Business line partners

  • Engineers

  • Quality engineers

  • Compliance and legal partners

Context

  • Buy now pay later was recently launched and most customers weren’t yet aware of how it worked

  • There was no connect between branding in marketing materials and the in-app branding

  • Plan completes were low as customers didn’t understand the plan offering, fees and terms

  • Plan cancellations were high as customers didn’t fully understand how and when to best use the plan and the limitations on how many plans they could create

The business, product owners and product design teams decided on an update of the language and branding of the buy now pay later flow, as well as exploring new entry points across the retail app to the buy now pay later flow.

The Challenge

The challenge was to develop brand awareness and recognition while providing educational content within the constraints of the flow.

A process-related challenge that came up during the project was that QA would flag copy discrepancies between copydecks and testing environments, despite no new changes having been made. This was because our engineering partners would sometimes use live site copy instead of the copy deck when making iterative changes.

The final decision

  • Update the language on the buy now pay later tab in the retail app to increase brand awareness and create a cognitive connection between marketing initiatives and the in-app experience

  • Add additional tooltips in the existing flow to increase education around buy now pay later

  • Explore and include new entry points to the buy now pay later flow within the app

  • Use real-estate on the home screen to highlight marketing offers related to buy now pay later

  • Create specific content for buy now pay later flows where customers get fee-based offers on specific credit products or geography

My Input

  • Looked at the current buy now pay later flow to identify:

    • Content inventory and style

    • Gaps and opportunities for building brand awareness

    • Existing content around educating the customer

  • Collaborate with multiple stakeholders for feedback, especially product owners and business lines

  • Partner with UX researchers, interactive and visual designers, product owners, to create a set of new entry points and user experiences

Initial Audit

I started my project by collaborating with UX researchers, designers and product owners into key areas that would drive the content strategy:

  • Understanding customer pain points and feedback on the buy now pay later flow

  • Understanding the customer’s actions and patterns in the flow

  • Understanding current metrics around plan starts, plan completes and plan cancellations

Increase product offering awareness

Based on the initial audit and key findings, we found:

  • Customers didn’t associate the in-app BNPL tab with the brand name marketing was using

  • Customers didn’t understand the plan dollar value limits, fees, and how often they could use BNPL, leading to plan cancellations

We recognized the need to update the language on the buy now pay later flow to bring the branding at par with marketing to build brand awareness and recognition.

I kept the focus on 2 areas:

  • Content: Educational, actionable, equitable

  • Functionality: Enjoyable, responsive, accessible and inclusive

Optimize the existing buy now pay later flow

  • Making the introductory content and the main call-to-action on the tab clear and visible at first view

  • Updating the BNPL flow to ensure plan terms and conditions were visible and scannable in terms of design and content

  • Testing multiple designs and text for notifications to make customers aware of when the next BNPL plan would be available for use

  • Ensuring language across desktop, mobile web and mobile app was consistent as user research found users don’t differentiate the user experience by device

  • Collaborating with interactive and visual designers to create specific design and content for flows specific to credit card products that cross-promote with BNPL

  • Collaborating to create specific content design for customers based on geography and fee vs. interest plans

Create and update entry points across the app driving to the buy now pay later Flow

  • Updating entry points outside the main flow with tooltips to educate on buy now pay later functionality

  • Testing and strategically placing calls-to-action across account flows to drive to BNPL flow

  • Crafting content to utilise premium real estate on the home screen to drive specific marketing offers for BNPL

Optimization of the content to engineering Delivery process

  • Brought all content at parity across copy deck and testing and live environment

  • Creating a single source of truth copy deck and implementing a process of iteration to this single source of truth based on release cycle

  • Facilitating always-on communication through Jira and Teams between engineering, QA and design partners to ensure timely resolutions of issues

Outcomes

  • Usability tests showed positive sentiment from users

  • Increase in plan completion rate to 61% - where plan completion is defined as a customer creating and paying off a plan in full

  • Increase in average $ value/ transaction above the plan’s minimum requirement of $100/transaction

  • Increase in plan creation rate quarter-over-quarter in F23