As a fintech startup creating consumer products, Arro’s onboarding process would make or break the company and its mission, demanding a streamlined, transparent, and trustworthy user experience.
Director of Design
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Roles & Processes Included: Product Design, Mobile App, Design Generative & Evaluative Research

4 phases

Arro’s onboarding process consisted of three critical phases, each with the own challenges and dropoff risks:

  • Account Creation
  • Identity Verification
  • Bank Connection
  • Application Submission

Through the onboarding flow, usability testing revealed customers’ disinterest in reading verbose instructional copy and the tendency to skim through screens that didn’t contain specific calls to action. Therefore, the flow underwent significant analysis by the team—supplemented by comparative studies—to streamline its contents and lean on commonly understood design patterns rather than expository copy.

Onboarding flow architecture

architecture

The team structured Arro’s backend architecture as a modular system, where individual components could be optimized as needed without disruption to the overall business processes. Customers’ onboarding would weave much of this architecture into its flow, including many external partners to handle such critical tasks as:

  • Cloud Services
  • Loan Origination
  • Identity / Fraud
  • Credit Verification
  • Bank Connection
  • Credit Account Creation
  • Physical Card Creation
Onboarding partners flow

app launch screens

Earlier iterations of the app’s launch / sign-in process included verbose value proposition information housed within a compulsory carousel. Usability testing revealed these to be largely superfluous, with many customers skipping right through the content without reading a word.

But not everybody, and critical details like fees needed to be disclosed immediately. So we opted get the best of both worlds—we’d offer clear calls to action for signing up or signing in, but allow the value prop content a place to live (just make it pithy and worthwhile reading).

account creation

Since customer account creation was our #1 goal in achieving a successful product, the process must be as simple and streamlined as possible. We would favor minimal copy, commonly recognized interaction patterns, and bare-bones inputs (email, phone number, password). We would obtain consent for Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and Electronic Consent, as well as emails and SMS permissions, in order to open up paths of continued engagement right from the start.

Earlier iterations used summary screens to give feedback on where customers were in the onboarding process, but testing revealed these to be tedious and unnecessary, and we eliminated them. Other elements such as address auto-fill and a clear and legible progress bar would round out the simplified experience.

i.d. verification

Given that identification verification and credit reporting requires customers to provide their SSN and DOB—a high-trust interaction—such a request risks massive drop off for potential users. We viewed this possibility as a mandate for carefully crafted visuals and language, describing requirements clearly, explaining value propositions of continuing through the process, and establishing a sense of ease iconography, branding imagery, and non-technical, even entertaining copy.

application submission

Once customers have surpassed the tricky step of providing very personal I.D. information, the final (and most important) hurtle must be overcome: the credit application submission, agreement to terms, and ultimately, conversion.

Using friendly language and enticing product imagery, we gently led customers through a process of checkboxes agreeing to terms (which includes a compulsory read of Cardholder Agreement document and a warning toast should the click the disabled checkboxes and call to action) and presenting their approved credit line and APR. A subsequent pre-prompt to allow push notifications would reserve opportunities later and thus avoid the one-time-only iOS notifications modal.

Finally, customers are taken to their Home dashboard, and prompted to see immediate progress in their credit journey by completing their available activities.

conclusion

Arro's onboarding process involved a lot of complexity and consequence for the company's future. Only by means of intensive team collaboration, customer engagement, and experimentation were we able to design and build an optimal flow (at least with the pre-launch knowledge and wisdom we could muster). Through increasingly large product releases following this design, we would analyze usage and experiment further, testing the variables presented above and many more.

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