Ongoing redesign of Wells Fargo's public site checking pages

I lead the XD (Wells Fargo term for UX) effort to re-think, redesign, and update the Checking pages for Wells Fargo bank.

Fix the pain points

Our whole checking ecosystem push, and especially the Checking Compare page was to fix two major customer pain points. "I can't tell the accounts apart," and "I don't know what it will cost." 

User testing!

I designed multiple rounds of moderated tests to answer design and content questions, building on what we learned. We could often say, "We had the same question! We tested it, and this was the result." 

A/B testing

We try out design variations on the live site, and also back-test replaced designs to make sure we're doing no harm. Application submit rates are key, but we also look at nuances like "do people apply for the correct account?" 

Customers love the giant fee table

We found that prospective customers needed to see all the fees, and were happy to scroll past fees that didn't apply to them. I can't overstate how shocking this was to the WF design community. "It's ugly!" Well... turns out it's useful, if you're choosing a bank. 

People are afraid of surprise fees, and say so. With the table, one subject said, "Oh, these are all the fees. That builds trust." We also saw the sales value of the table, as different  people keyed into different fees: wealthier prospects talked about the waived Wire Transfer fees, and poorer people keyed right into avoiding Overdraft fees. 

SEO improvements

I take SEO seriously, not to increase page rank, but to understand my customers. When we build for the visitor, the page rank comes. We put valuable information into tables that can scraped by Google and appear in a Quick-Answer right on the SERP. Our pages moved up to #2 result for the keyword "checking account." 

Fewer pain points

In building our ecosystem, we found that there were customer pain points around opening a teen account. Teens need to open in a branch (not online), and they need to bring a parent and a birth certificate. We added the right info at the right place, and those complaints went away. 

Better usability

In testing, I saw subjects come up against a popup asking for their Zip Code. They would close the popup and get redirected to the Wells Fargo homepage! I raised this as an issue, an socialized the problem, and got the popup restricted to only pages with interest rates that depend on the zip code. 

Iterative releases

We did multiple A/B tests to validate our design contenders, and moved to make the Checking Compare experience accessible a static page, directly accessible from a Google search.  

We changed Compare page marketing bullets to actual fee tables, and updated existing product page content with SEO insights about how people thought about the concepts, then rebuild them from scratch with new layouts, imagery, and fresh content.

Outcomes

All SEO "moonshot" projections were surpassed: important keywords moved up the SERP results, and we picked up new banking keywords we'd never ranked for. 

Visitors made almost 3 times as many applications due to our ecosystem improvements. More people applied directly for accounts that best fit their needs. Getting the right information in front of the right people clearly led to more successful applications.