A changing landscape requires a new mindset
By providing great user experience, a variety of money management tools, lower fees and extensive security features, mobile-first fintech apps are setting a new benchmark for handling personal finances.
While these apps grow in popularity and new alternatives appear every month, there’s no doubt that they will increasingly redefine our relationship with money. But with so many solutions on the online marketplace, one key question is what differentiating factors lead users to choose one banking app over the other?
Bitrise has recently released a report on mobile transformation in finance and banking, in which they look at best practices of leading fintech companies like Venmo, Square, and Transferwise. The paper provides insights into how mobile-first fintechs are revolutionizing the industry and what differentiation mobile development teams can make to impact user acquisition and app ratings.
Building engaging experiences on mobile
The last few years saw a rapid increase in digital-first mobile apps, with an enhanced UX, and real-time capabilities that drive more and more customers to fintechs. The top 7 most downloaded finance apps today in the US were built by mobile-first companies and the top 10 apps showed a 33% higher growth rate in monthly active users in 2019 compared to that of traditional banking.
A strong focus on a design- and customer-first approach means a technology-forward mindset that allows teams to create personalized, effortless, and intuitive digital experiences
In fact, user experience is one of the main decision-making factors for end-users when choosing a finance app. As customers go increasingly digital and adopt intuitive, seamlessly integrated solutions, they no longer rely on visiting the nearest branch to access most of the banking services they need. User experience not only has the potential to impact user acquisition, activation, and retention rates but it also pushes the quality boundaries of building the next digital banking product:
“When you’re building one of the fastest-growing fintech apps in the world, you cannot afford downtime or mistakes.”
says Nick Frandsen, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Dovetail (Creators of Afterpay)
To establish true differentiation from competitors, both fintechs and progressive incumbents need to tap into consumer insights and equip themselves with the right tools to deploy advanced solutions for their customers. Ensuring great user experience and optimizing release strategy are the best ways to achieve these goals.
Optimizing app release strategy to win in ratings
According to the report, fintechs’ wallet apps had 52 times more sessions per user per year compared to banks’ wallet apps, meaning millions of potential transactions flowing through fintechs instead of traditional banks. Such difference in the usage of apps would certainly not leave their ratings untouched, but when looking at the performance of apps in the finance category, frequent app releases also showed a correlation with higher app store rankings.
Interestingly, apps with more than 10 releases in the previous year ranked among the top 7 in the relevant app stores, while apps with fewer releases usually achieved lower rankings. At the same time, A 2-star drop in ratings can result in a 50% lower conversion rate, which in turn leads to doubled user acquisition budgets.
Determining the right release frequency is crucial when it comes to an app’s ratings and its ranking in the app stores; as the right type of release strategy can turn around a negative app rating trend or build up a positive app rating tendency.
As top trending apps engage with end-users through a more and more refined UX and put streamlined testing practices in place to avoid usability issues, today’s marketplace requires rethinking mobile development practices and adopting new technologies that companies hadn’t considered before.
Developers should take app ranking, rating trend, and the purpose of the update into account before deciding on the update interval and pushing a new version to app stores – while having the necessary tools in place to avoid downtime and make releasing an application easier.
Featured image credit: Unsplash
