Money Strategies

Year

Overview

Moneystrategies.com is an award-winning site that I designed from the ground up. I orchestrated the testing, design, and development of the site. The product has provided valuable financial guidance to our customers and offered marketers an opportunity to test and learn from user engagement to provide what the users need.

Background

Our ethnographic research team identified personas that reflected a specific audience with different needs and journeys regarding banking. Given that this was a new target for Wells Fargo, there is a desire to understand better their habits and preferences, especially their path to choosing a new financial advisor. The research broke the users into three groups based on their unique financial needs. The ask was to build an educational product to learn about these users and support them.

Understand the problem

Stakeholder mapping

I met with our stakeholders to get a clear idea of their expectations and goals for the product. I used it as a reference for navigating presentations. One group was most interested in how to learn to inform campaign marketers better to reach these users better. The other side wanted to create an engaging and helpful experience for these users to improve their relationships with banks.

Research

I analyzed the detailed decks from the research teams to understand what we knew about our customers and synthesized them for our creative teams to use for their marketing concepts.

Lack of trust in financial institutions drives these users to seek third-party guidance that better understand their needs.

Competitive research

A critical insight pulled from the research is the third-party guidance, including; Dave Ramsey, Suze Orman, Mr. Money Mustache, and The Budgetnista. Using these financial personalities as a starting point, I analyzed what they were doing well, not well, and established conventions. I focused on course structure, navigation, materials, tools, and personalization. All of the financial personalities were serving up a similar type of guidance but packaging it to target a specific group.

Content audit

With my marketing partner, we collected and analyzed relevant content on .com to create an inventory of what content to create, update, re-write, or delete. The audit was organized based on the vital user needs for financial control, security, and freedom.

Analysis

As a result of the discovery, I provided a discovery summary. A crucial part of this product will be how to differentiate from the competition by creating our personality based on our customers. I recommended we serve up the content in a single place and make an assessment to help personalize the content. I presented the features in a phased approach.

Challenge

One of the biggest challenges I faced during this design was building a site before the marketing partners finalized a content strategy. The clients were searching for a content agency to re-package the work from the audit. However, they wanted the product to move forward.

How might I design a site that

Can house unlimited content to be determined
Be easy to navigate
Have high engagement from this group of users
Provide value to our customer’s needs

Designing the solution

Card sort

Taking the information from the audit, I narrowed down a handful of topics by cross-referencing viable content. I ran a card sort to find out how our users might expect to see the information grouped to help with planning the structure and navigation.

Site architecture

Using the insights from the discovery work, I mapped out a rough site architecture to account for the feature ideas, potential navigation based on the three personas. The architecture was a perfect conversation starter and enabled the teams to change the strategy before we got too deep into designs.

Sketches

Based on the information architecture we aligned on, I quickly mapped out mobile-first sketches of how the pages and navigation might look. We were still exploring a learning management system but in a future phase.

Wires

The sketches helped out the creative marketing team, who faced another challenge to market a product that didn’t exist yet. We worked in tandem, and I continued to iterate on the design as they painted a picture through mood boards as to how we might appear to these users. There were multiple iterations on the structure, the personality, and the potential aesthetic of this experience as we waited for the content agency to join.

UI Design

I worked with the graphic designers to bring their UI designs to work on a responsive site. Taking from their visual assets, we built a prototype for a test.

Validating the solution

Usability test

I wrote a usability test to validate our product and learn areas we could improve upon before launch. I was able to partner with an internal research group to run the tests live with real customers. We uncovered opportunities on the mobile device to improve navigation, setting expectations on arrival, and where there was confusion with labels.

Development

The content agency had been onboarded and was working through getting legal approval of the content before launch. I partnered closely with the development team to test the production site.

Final work

Results & take-aways

Launched the MVP early enough to see engagement insights for the 2Q creative refresh.
Reached our engagement goals.
I used the learnings to lead a workshop with our partners to prioritize our backlog of features.
However, building a content strategy and a site in parallel to a marketing activation strategy is like trying to drive a car before being made.

Truly a bright spot in such a crazy time. Thanks to this fantastic team for getting us to this point—let the fun begin as we learn and optimize! – Product owners

…we love the wireframes and design and are signing off on them… We’re really impressed with the work that your team has done, especially since it was done without content to guide you. – Product owners

Thank you, IHA team! So exciting to see it all come together! Overall the look and feel proposed for the content feels vibrant and relevant. – Product owners

The team is extremely elated to see everything begin to come to life, from overall site experience considerations to exploring creative ways as we attempt to connect with EAs in a relevant and engaging way! – Product owners

Gramercy Institute Strategy Award

I am so excited to share with you that the Wells Fargo Money Strategies program has won a Gramercy Institute Strategy Award in the “Best Bank-Retail Services” category. The Gramercy Institute honors the best strategic financial services marketing programs and this year’s winners including J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley, BMO Financial Group, Financial Times, Vanguard, and others. You can see the full list of winners, as well as the judges list, here. Note: The page/site may be blocked from your WF browser, but the request for access is granted pretty quickly.

I wanted to extend a congratulations to this team, as we know just how much time and effort went into refining our strategy and building a program that would enable us to engage our EA customers, while gathering learnings to help us better serve them. I hope you’ll all take this a great nod of validation from the industry around the work that we’re doing as we continue to deliver and optimize! As you all know, it takes a village to conceptualize and build and optimize great programs…let’s all take a moment to stop and celebrate this achievement! Thank you!

Vivian Wuu
Consumer Segments
Integrated Marketing