T. Rowe Price's Account Finder Page
Redesigning this crucial mid-funnel page led to a 49% increase in online account opens and accelerated digital transformation at an 80-year-old financial stalwart
THE PROBLEM
Now that T. Rowe Price had created online account set-up processes for nearly every account type, we needed to overhaul an integral step in the process -- the account finder page.
Nearly everyone who opens a T. Rowe Price individual investor account online interacts with the account finder page -- a single screen that allows you to choose a specific account type or enter a guided set-up process.
When my team was assigned to this project, we discovered that the content on this integral page was out of date, incomplete, and incorrect. The existing information architecture was misleading and not aligned with business priorities. And the look and feel of the account finder page did not match the brand-new account set-up process users experienced next.
Customers were confused, leading them to choose the wrong account type, call customer service, or abandon the process completely. It was crucial to redesign the account finder page so that folks could successfully continue setting up their account.
HIGH LEVEL TIMELINE
Design work -- discovery, ideation, and research -- continued for about three months.
TEAM FORMAT
The team included a design lead, a UX designer, and a UX content strategist (me).
KEY GOAL
We needed to enable users to quickly find or be guided to the right account type for their needs.
MY ROLE
As the Senior UX Content Strategist on the project, I conducted user research and created an information architecture for the account finder page. Then I teamed with the designers to create, test, and polish two versions of the page to put through the company's first A/B/C test.
I came to T. Rowe Price with a strong background in stock investing, but my learning curve was steep for all the account types and regulations that applied to T. Rowe Price's mutual fund business. I began gathering internal information from the product owner and business analyst on the project and via email with legal and other colleagues offsite.
I learned that T. Rowe Price has some unique administrative quirks that were affecting the customer experience even though they only mattered for internal processes. A huge part of my role then involved convincing long-time employees that we could organize the front end differently from the back end to remove friction from the user experience. This was a new concept for many at T. Rowe, and I'm impressed with their flexibility in adapting to change.
A detail from the original Account Finder screen
UNDERSTANDING THE USER
We identified two main user personas: the newbie investor and the savvy investor. Some already had T. Rowe Price accounts; others were prospective customers. And then there were all the people trying to do a rollover or transfer.
There was less behavioral data available than we expected. While the company had recently adopted the Adobe Experience Cloud suite as its content management system and testing and analytics platform, the existing analytics were spotty. Also, the new account set-up process was built in React outside of Adobe Experience Manager, so sometimes analytics did not carry through.
To gather qualitative data, I set up moderated and unmoderated discovery studies on Usertesting.com, screening for both newbie and more savvy investors. I wanted to hear actual mutual fund investors tell their stories about setting up new accounts and how they might go about investing a $10,000 windfall.
The design team and I also listened to calls and spoke with call center representatives to learn about our customers and what was important to them as they went through the process of choosing an account.
User research drove this project from start to finish.
Using Usertesting.com and Optimal Workshop, I conducted discovery interviews, card sorts, tree tests, and usability tests.
This gave us confidence to test two strong prototypes against the control using Adobe Target when it was time to go live.
BREAKING DOWN THE PROCESS
There are three main parts of the account set-up process and two main user personas. Multiply this by more than a dozen account types, and you can see the complexity we were facing.
My role in the project had four main phases: research, content strategy work, experience design work, and helping launch the company's first A/B/C test in Adobe Target.
I ran most of our research, including discovery interviews using Usertesting.com, several rounds of open and closed card sorts using Optimal Sort, and tree tests with Treejack. I worked with the design lead to analyze the results and then created the new information architecture for the account finder page.
It turns out naming account types is hard! The financial industry uses the same words to mean several different things (funds as two different nouns and a verb, for instance). And users have different mental models and definitions, so they get confused and lose confidence very quickly.
We decided to create purposeful redundancy in the design so that there were at least two chances to find what you were looking for, whether you started by account category or investment goal. We created two designs to test alongside the control using Adobe Target.
MAJOR FINDINGS FROM THE ACCOUNT FINDER REDESIGN PROJECT
Users want things to be simple -- maybe too simple
Long-term investing for retirement is complicated. We should try to make it as simple as possible for users, but not simpler.
Integrity is paramount at T. Rowe Price, which is a big reason I work there. We will always choose to empower customers, and therefore some choices will be more complex than some folks prefer.
Take the time to unearth tacit knowledge
Talk to lots of people in different roles about your projects and read whatever you can find in different nooks and crannies around the company's intranet, site, and design archives.
It takes a while to unearth the assumptions everyone's making, including your own.
Involve legal early and often
Our legal subject matter expert on this project is awesome (hi, Danielle!). She supported us completely in trying new things and wanted us to succeed, but she still had to say no sometimes.
By sharing ideas early on, we could save time and heartache in our content and designs -- and give her more time to come up with alternate solutions to get us where we wanted to go.
Small changes yield big results -- so keep going
It's easy to start a new project and want to start from scratch.
While we were working on our prototypes for testing, however, we were able to make some quick small changes to the existing account finder page.
This triage built trust with the business and gave us small wins to share with other groups.
You can't always get what you want, but try anyway
Enterprise-level change is slow, but it's not linear.
Sometimes it's discouraging to make compromises. But by meeting people where they are, you're laying the groundwork for faster and bigger change later.
When progress seems slow, remember that growth comes in spurts. It can surprise you!
TITLE OF THE CALLOUT BLOCK
LESSONS LEARNED
As an established enterprise company, T. Rowe Price is used to waterfall methodology. Getting used to testing and learning with live audiences -- and committing to iterating past the MVP -- is a slow process.
The more comfortable you can make stakeholders, the faster you'll be able to move. Some ways to increase their comfort with experimentation include providing feedback from unsatisfied users, finding examples of competitors trying different things, mocking things up so there are tangible artifacts to look at, and working with legal cooperatively.
It's also useful to get cross-functional team members on board because they can help build your case. For instance, migrating to new technology often means things are easier to maintain or adjust in the future. If you can prove cost savings or more efficient processes, it's often easier for business partners to accept those numbers than to believe in potential user gains.
The bottom line is be just as creative with how you approach making the business case as you are with the design itself.