Objective

To create a component that showcases promotional campaigns, announcements, new services, and product related features on Coinsquare’s mobile app.

Competitive Analysis

I researched the habits of our users and how they currently process announcements, features, offers on other apps they use. I looked at best practices in popular apps as well as FinTech products in order to understand the competition analyze and how they solve similar problems.  

Findings

I explored the importance of creating a solution that would be a reusable component for different announcements as well as how valuable it would be to both the business and the user. This initial exploration lead me to discover that the most common way to solve our objective is to introduce a carousel feature into our app in a highly visible area, using it to bring attention to upcoming news an announcements.

Pros

• Stick multiple announcements in a frequently visited area without taking too much space.

• Give users who predominantly use our iOS or Android app the ability to engage with content that is available on our web platform and introduce them to Coinsquare related news.

• This execution is currently used to introduce news, features, and promotions on several other products that are frequented by our users.

• Re-emphasize our branding and illustrations and provide users with a refreshing outlook on our currently stagnant product.

• Quickly add or remove content from our product.

Cons

• Users often find announcements to be intrusive and disruptive, and are likely to dismiss information if not executed properly.

• Users do not respond well to automatic carousels find it difficult to process rapidly changing content especially when designing with accessibility in mind.

• Users are less likely to go back and re-visit content once an image has changed.

• No more than 3 thumbnails-The likelihood of users clicking the next thumbnail decreases with every slide - linear decline.

Define scope

• Enable users to select a promotional banner which will re-direct them to corresponding content.

• Showcase multiple promotions that are occurring simultaneously.

• Showcase the content in a high traffic area that is visible but will not disruptive the user from their tasks.

• Viewing the slide is not enough to count as an interaction. The user has to click on the slide to calculate it as a measurable result.

• Announcements may be valid for different lengths of time, announcements and long term features for example.

• Content will lead you to; new features or promotions within the app or direct them to content existing on our web platform or external articles that relate to our product.

• Provide re-usable templates to showcase different types of announcements that can be utilized based on each use case.

Solution

• Direct users to the “Markets” page during login and showcase the carousel in this high-traffic area. Locate the component under the users list of current holdings so they will not be disrupted from their usage.

• Enable users to select a promotional banner which will re-direct them to corresponding content.

• Create templates for multiple announcement styles

• Use manual rotation where the user needs to click to move between slides.

User feedback & Implementation

• User’s found it less intrusive to showcase the feature at the bottom of the homepage in comparison to the top of the page where they view their holdings.

• Users wanted the ability to dismiss content once they had processed it, given the option.

• User’s wanted the option to go back and visit dismissed content in a permanent area app that was less introduce.