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Saga Investment Services

Designing a new investment service for the over 50s

Services

Information Architecture, Interactive Prototyping, Responsive Design, Stakeholder Research, Usability Testing, User Experience Design, User Research, Visual Design, Wireframing.

Duration
9 months

Investment management firm Tilney Bestinvest and popular over 50s brand Saga created an investment service geared towards Saga’s 2 million+ customers.

Powered by the investment expertise of Tilney, the web presence is designed to promote Saga Investment Services through an engaging and informative marketing website; driving acquisition, whilst also providing a market leading customer portal for the management of investment portfolios.

Saga tablet and mobile designs

Brief

There were 2 distinct but heavily dependent challenges to this project – the marketing website to promote the products and services and the investment platform that clients would log in to view, buy, sell and manage their investments.

Saga wireframes

The key design areas were:

  • Engaging, conversion centred landing pages
  • Ecommerce platform showcasing 2000+ funds allowing clients and prospects to easily browse and buy investments
  • ‘How to’ guides to help investors make investment decisions
  • Calculators to enable prospects to determine what the implications of their investments might be
  • Account sign-up and onboarding to enable the smooth creation of client accounts
  • Dashboard presenting the portfolio summary in a logical and easy to consume way
  • Management of investments via streamlined buy/sell/switch interface and workflow
  • Investment evaluation through a ‘robo-advisor’ style application in the ‘my account’ area
  • Personal balance sheet feature allowing clients to record the full extent of their assets and investments including property and standard savings

This was an exciting challenge for the Vector team, not just because we were designing an entire pre and post-login application and investment platform, determining end-to-end user journeys but also because we were working with 2 clients and 3 separate development teams in 3 separate locations.

Saga research

Approach

Communication was critical to the success of the project and our proactive approach utilising tools such as Basecamp, Slack, JIRA and Hangouts to manage and communicate during the project as well as our policy of working on site with the client as much as possible ensured decisions were made quickly and outcomes deliberated effectively, keeping the project moving along an ambitious 6 month timeline.

Saga mobile designs

Research & planning

Working closely with stakeholders to ascertain the requirements of the project was key to its success. Basing ourselves at Bestinvest’s Mayfair offices enabled us to run design workshops to tease out the key objectives of each part of the website as well as determining the overall scope and phasing for the project. Further workshops were undertaken to determine branding, information architecture, feature sets and interaction patterns.

Prototyping

Early prototyping of key areas such as the marketing landing pages and the ‘my account’ dashboard enabled us to test assumptions quickly and iterate designs accordingly. We were then able to connect together multiple sections of the ‘my account’ area for example in an interactive demo so that key stakeholders could test and get a sense of how the application would function.

Visual design

Determining an overall look was the first major milestone for visual design and this phase of work ran in parallel with the prototyping. Saga had a huge library of people-focussed stock imagery which we were keen to take advantage of. Design patterns were then created and in the case of the ‘my account’ area this required substantial supporting documentation to enable development teams to realise not just the look but the interaction and behaviours which were integral to the user experience.

Saga desktop/tablet designs

Results

The full website was launched on time which was a tremendous achievement considering the 6 month timeline particularly with the complexity and testing required around the investment management platform. Since launch, client sign-ups have steadily increased week on week with Saga adding several user engagement features over the course of 2016.