Credit card benefits (Experian)

Overview
The Experian mission statement is "Financial power to all." In practice, this looks like leveraging smarter technology and data to make life easier for consumers, allowing them to access all their credit and financial info in one easy place.

With this project, the ask was to create an experience that allows our users to see the credit card benefits associated with their financial accounts. However, figuring out what credit card (ex. Chase Sapphire Preferred) corresponds with the user’s financial account (ex. Chase account **5309) is a tall ask for our software, and we only get it right about 83% of the time.

The project
Create an experience that easily allows users to confirm or change what card is associated with their connected credit card account so they can see accurate credit card benefits.

My role
Content Strategist at Experian for all things Finance, working collaboratively with UX Design and Research, Developers, Product Owners, and Legal and Compliance representatives.

Requirements

Design content that successfully addresses the following questions:

  • Do users understand how to change/hide their card benefits for matched cards?

  • Do users understand that their primary account will stay connected?

  • Do users understand how to find their card if there’s no auto-matched card?

Partial flow: No auto-match; correct card available

  • User selects "Find card"

  • User selects card

  • User selects "Confirm"

  • User can see card benefits

Partial flow: Auto-matched to incorrect card; correct card unavailable

  • User selects "View card benefits"

  • User selects "Change card benefits"

  • User selects "Don't see your card?"

  • User selects "Got it"

  • User defaults to empty state

User research

UXR performed a moderated usability test and discovered the following:

1

Users thought the list of credit cards they saw on the “card search” screen was actually a list of their own cards.

2

Users assumed the "Change card benefits" meant they were just switching between all their own cards.

3

Users were alarmed by the "… since this isn’t your card" language in the confirmation dialogue. Since they believed all the cards on the “card search” screen were their own, this messaging raised some suspicion and skepticism.

4

Users didn't understand why they would hide their card benefits on the “benefits” screen. One user was hesitant to hide benefits, fearing this action wouldn’t be easily undone.

In collaboration with UX Design, I restructured the flows to address user feedback:

  • We added a “Confirm card” function on the first screen, as we believed users would understand the concept better with early adoption. This also allowed us to minimize the presence of the “change card” feature on the card benefits screen behind a meatball menu.

  • I recommended we remove the “Hide card benefits” function entirely, and only hide the card benefits if a user goes through the “card search” and determines we don’t have the correct card.

  • I changed “Don’t see your card?” language to state “Don’t see the correct card for this account?” and added a header to the “card search” screen to clarify that the user was seeing more than just their own cards.

Partial flow: No auto-match; correct card available

  • User selects "Find card"

  • User selects card

  • User selects "Confirm"

  • User can see card benefits

Individual screens: Auto-matched to incorrect card

  • User can select "Change card"

  • User confirms the wrong card

    Selects "Not the right card?" from meatball menu to resolve

  • Updated confirmation dialogue

UXR re-test results

1
Encouraging users to confirm their card when they first visit their credit card account significantly increased user comprehension of how their credit card benefits are tied to their account.

2
Users understood that the “card search” screen included all available cards, not just their own.

3
User still had some confusion about the “remove card” dialogue (“We’ll remove the current card since it isn’t the right card for this account.”)

Conclusions

  • In many cases, we as UX writers are asked to solve UI challenges with copy. I felt that CTAs (“Change card”, “Remove card”) would always be confusing to users no matter what they said, and the solution lied in changing the UI/UX to allow this message to be communicated differently. Fortunately, changes to the UI were a viable option in this case. When it’s not, clarity can still be improved (but maybe not perfected) with good UX copy.

  • As a next step, I’ll recommend that we remove messaging from the “remove card” dialogue. Instead of informing users that we’ll remove the connected card from their profile (“… since it isn’t the right card for this account”), I recommend we simply remove the inaccurate info without additional communication to the user. It seems that additional context in this scenario simply adds to the user confusion.