Making banking approachable
Challenges
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the US launched State-specific unemployment benefits through programs like Pandemic Unemployment Assistances and Mixed Earner Unemployment Compensation.
Independent contractors and freelancers can file for and receive benefits from these programs almost immediately. After filing and receiving the compensation, benefits recipients have to retroactively prove their lost income. If they can’t, they have to pay back their benefits, and depending on the state, incur fines.
The Steady app makes the income verification process easy. Steady gathers income information from bank and app deposits to create verification reports that the worker can send to their state to prove they lost income during the pandemic.
What our research told us
Our research found that many of our users made an income through gig platforms like Uber or Postmates, but didn't know these were 1099 jobs or what the tax implications were.
In the past, many users had filed taxes by uploading their paperwork to a tax tool, where deductions were built in. They never felt like they’d needed to pay attention to adding in deductions.
We also found an overall distrust or wariness toward state governments, even if the user had received state benefits in the past. Users were anxious about accidentally filing for benefits incorrectly or accidentally misrepresenting themselves and being punished. In short, they wanted to deal with the state as little as possible.
Finally, we discovered that people were hesitant to interact with an app that wasn’t affiliated with their bank or government, but that asked to connect to their bank account. They were worried Steady would deduct money from their accounts, or that their identity would be stolen.
Creating confidence
Since taxes are daunting and our users were already skeptical, I wanted to create expectations for the user from the beginning of their journey by clearly laying out what the whole process would like. I also wanted to give them the opportunity to gather the information they’d need in advance to minimize stress.
A quick onboarding page was also effective to introduce our product’s personality to the user. Steady’s voice is friendly, helpful, and trustworthy. We don’t use bureaucratic terminology, and we break down complex topics like taxes and banking into more accessible language.
We also wanted to empower users throughout the app, by creating small educational reminders to clarify any specific terminology that users might not be familiar with. For example, “gig” is the term Steady uses to talk about jobs that exist in the Gig Economy, but both “gig” and “gig economy” are jargony. I needed to minimize any confusion about what “gig” meant while also meeting stakeholders’ needs that we include it in the UI. To do that, I worked closely with designers to provide both verbal and visual cues that helped clarify its meaning.
Steady uses Argyle to connect to apps like Uber or Postmates to pull information about income and deductible expenses. Plaid connects to bank accounts to read deposit information. Steady has paired with both to automate retrieving this information for the user, so it’s already done for them.
However, we knew that users were hesitant about connecting with third party apps they’d never heard of, especially if the apps connected to bank accounts. In order to reduce the skepticism, we introduced small blurbs about the security of using Plaid and Argyle integrations, and made sure to reiterate that Steady would never withdraw money from bank accounts or have access to confidential information.
Results
By finding moments to be transparent with our users and set them up for success, we were able to improve the trust they had in Steady. In follow-up testing, we saw an increase in overall trust in the app—where only 42% of our users felt Steady was trustworthy before, after copy changes that number increased to 71% (as validated by post-launch user interviews).
Users commented that the onboarding page was easy to follow, and that they appreciated a general overview of the process so they knew how much time they’d need to finish their report. Users also mentioned that the Plaid and Argyle blurbs made them feel more at ease about connecting their accounts, and specifically mentioned they didn’t feel like they’d get “hacked” anymore.
In our next steps, I’ll continue to validate choices in copy through both highlighter tests (to get a more detailed look at users’ sentiment) and comprehension analyses (to make sure the choices in copy help our users to accurately understand our messaging and instructions).