User experience is a term often used but rarely defined. Sure, most people recognize good or bad experiences when they are happening, But if it’s your job to improve your customers’ experiences then you need a bit of roadmap to identify possible solutions.

Here’s what we think about when we evaluate online and mobile user experiences for our financial institution clients. A good financial experience means that your product/service rates high on each of these components:

  • Findable: No matter what it is, it can’t be used if it can’t be found. That’s why we spend so much time looking at navigation and search.
  • Valuable: Services must deliver value by either contributing to the bottom line (or a non-profit’s mission), improving customer satisfaction, or saving time.
  • Usable: Services must be easy enough to use so that their value can be achieved.
  • Trustworthy: It’s about money. Your money. Not matter how valuable a service seems, if it’s not trusted, it won’t be used.
  • Desirable: It’s not enough to be usable, trustworthy and valuable. If there is no desire to for a service, it will die.

Bottom line: in the coming weeks and months, we’ll be showing you examples of financial services user experiences both good and bad. Our goal is to teach you how to make sure your company is on the good list.

Inspired by Peter Morville, Semantic Studios