Create Mix

An easier way to create your investment strategy

Role
I worked on the high-level strategy for this initiative across both marketing and the product. Additionally, I helped create the user experience and run research.

Team & Duration
2 product designers, 1 product manager, 1 growth marketer, and 4 engineers

The Problem
Swell allowed users to completely customize their investment strategy by picking percentages of its seven portfolios to create their investment strategy (AKA Mix).

When Swell’s MVP launched in May 2017 the team believed that the primary Swell user would have the financial savvy to fully customize their investment strategy. However, with data from the live product, we learned that:

1. Most users were not financially savvy and wanted hand holding - Only 8% of users reported that they had trading accounts or other equity-based investments. Most reported having a traditional savings account with their primary bank and a 401k retirement account.

2. 20% of users dropped off when asked to Create their Mix - Because of the level of customization that Swell offered users were faced with decision paralysis when asked to pick portfolios and percentages of each.

3. Asking for financial commitment upfront scared users - Users were asked for a dollar amount they wanted to start investing with before they were able to choose their Mix. Many users found this step daunting because they had no insight into the product yet.

The Challenge
Our challenge was to create an experience where users felt confident choosing their investment strategy no matter what their financial savvy.

Research & Learnings
We began redesigning this feature one year after Swell’s launch date. Our team had gathered enough data to know that 20% percent of users dropped off during this step.

Knowing this our team set out to gather qualitative insights from non-investors that confirmed our quantitative data. We ran four rounds of research, each including seven participants who were stuck in our conversion funnel or were a product-market fit for Swell. 

Research Round 1: Test live product and had participants narrate their experience as they went through it.

User journey
user enters dollar amount they would like to start with
↓
user sees list of portfolio names and chooses percentages of portfolios they want to include in their mix 
↓
user sees completion confirmation screen

What we learned 
✗  users didn’t want to commit to a dollar amount before creating their mix
✗  users didn’t understand what Swell’s portfolios were and they made up their mix
✗  because users were not financially savvy they were only choosing portfolio(s) based on how they were performing vs. diversifying their mix by including multiple portfolios.
✗  everyone thinks math is hard - users had to pick percentages (down to decimal points) of portfolios they wanted to include in their mix. This required users to do math before they could proceed.

Research Round 2: Adding portfolio one-liners and investment strategies

User journey
user picks portfolios and sees a one-liner description about each portfolio
↓
user sees recommended mixes based on their portfolio selections
↓
user selects a recommended mix
↓
user confirms their selection

What we learned 
✓  users found portfolio descriptions helpful
✓  recommended mixes alleviated some of their decision paralysis
✓  experience still allowed savvy investors to choose their own investment %s (same as existing experience) by navigating to the Create a custom mix view
✗  recommended mixes didn’t correlate with the portfolio(s) user selected
✗  users didn’t understand Swell’s nomenclature (Mix, Portfolios and Companies)
✗  users had no way to learn more about portfolios other than the one-line descriptions
✗  users had no insight that portfolios were comprised of companies. They were excited to learn that they’d own shares of companies
✗  we couldn’t legally make recommendations based on diversification since we only offered equity-based portfolios

Research Round 3: Defining Swell’s nomenclature, recommending mixes and allowing users to learn more about portfolios.

User journey
user sees definitions of Portfolios and Mix
↓
user sees recommended mixes and selects one
↓
user learns more about portfolios (tap cards to see more info on portfolios and their companies) and adds portfolios they are interested in
↓
user confirms selected mix

What we learned
✓ users found the mix definition helpful
✓ users found that recommended mixes alleviated some of their decision paralysis
✗  users found the definitions of portfolios and the difference between broad and focused difficult to understand
✗  most users were unable to organically navigate to portfolio and company deep dives 
✗  we couldn’t legally make recommendations based on diversification because we only offered equity-based portfolios
✗  users didn’t understand why they were asked which portfolios they were interested in after we had recommended mixes to them
✗  users didn’t understand that portfolios were made up of companies and that they would be shareholders. They found this information very compelling and were excited to learn more about the companies in each portfolio.

Research Round 4: Defining what a mix is and allowing users to learn about companies and how they tie to companies by showcasing examples.

User journey
user sees the definitions of Portfolios and Mix
↓
user sees a list of companies and selects which they are interested in
↓
user can choose or learn more (tapping on the card) about  recommended portfolios based on the companies they chose
↓
user selects investment strategy
↓
user confirms the selected mix

What we learned
✓ users found Mix definition helpful
✓ users liked learning about companies and that they would be shareholders
✓ users found diversification definitions on mixes helpful 
✓ users reacted both positively and negatively to companies that they were familiar with e.g, Apple, Tesla and Lululemon
✗  users thought they were buying stocks in companies vs. learning about companies in the portfolios they’d be investing in
✗  as a business, we weren’t able to give diversification advice because we only offered equity portfolios (only have the ability to invest in stocks of companies)
✗ most users were unable to find portfolio and company deep dives (it was not evident that cards were tappable)

Research Round 5: Defining mix, portfolios and companies upfront then allowing users to choose an investment strategy and see what’s in it.