Hi everyone, I’m Naomi, the User Researcher currently working on Monzo Plus.
A few of you have asked for more information on the specific user research we did before launching bundles. So here’s a summary!
Earlier this year, we explored the idea of a premium subscription service and asked you what you’d expect to find in one. We had an open thread and did a number of phone interviews with existing customers. Everyone we spoke to had a different idea of what they would want to see, depending on what was valuable to them and the products they already had. We heard that flexibility was important, so we tried to find a way to build that in.
Unfortunately, it was clear from your feedback here on the forum that the model wasn’t right yet. Specifically there was confusion about what features were actually available, and you shared your concerns about getting value for money. So in July, we ran some more user research, this time to learn what we could improve on what we already had.
In parallel, we started exploring other ideas so we could bring the flexibility that customers asked for, in a way that would suit different people with different needs. That’s where the idea of the bundles came from.
During the user research session in July, we invited five customers who were Monzo Plus waitlist customers to walk through the version 1 flow to observe their behaviours and tell us what their expectations were.
We used a behaviour analysis matrix to test the assumptions we were making and identify what we needed to change. And we included ‘bundles’ as a suggested feature for Plus.
The key insights from this session were:
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Monzo Plus felt incomplete
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Users don’t want to commit for 12 months
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The entire flow was very confusing and overwhelming to users, most wouldn’t have successfully completed it in a real-life scenario
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It wasn’t clear what the custom features were
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Users didn’t expect the custom features to be an additional cost
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Generally metal cards sparked interest from all users but they caused some confusion and weren’t keen on the cost
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Monzo Plus T&C’s received positive feedback from all users
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Users think they’d be able to add features on after confirming payment
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Bundles were an interesting proposition for users
So overall, a lot of the feedback pointed to the idea that picking your own features wasn’t the best way to proceed. It wasn’t always clear what you were getting or what you could expect to pay. As you can see from the matrix, “users know how much the custom features cost” was mostly a failure. And that’s a strong indicator that we needed to change something. On top of that, behavioural research shows us that too much choice isn’t a good thing.
On the other hand, our test group gave bundles positive feedback. They thought bundles were clear and useful. So overall this gave us confidence that bundles were a good way to proceed. Here’s what some of the users had to say about bundles:
We also ran a survey with over 800 existing Plus customers to learn more about why people had signed up for Plus and what we could build for you next. One thing we learnt is that almost 30% of people already had a packaged bank account somewhere else.
So we went away and made some new designs. With the next iteration later in July, we ran another session featuring a new flow optimised around bundles.
Again, feedback from users was positive. People could find the information they were looking for and overall there was less confusion about what you’d get if you picked each option and how much it would cost you.
So from this research we left feeling confident that bundles were the correct way forward. We should have let you know about this shift in direction sooner, rather than springing it on you without any context. We’re sorry about that.
This kind of user testing is really important for us, as it lets us understand how everyday new and existing Monzo users feel about the things we’re building. You might ask if the number of users we spoke to was enough, and that’s fair! Typically, five is a good number for finding the most critical usability issues. And if even four out of five people couldn’t complete the signup flow with the original designs, that’s a very strong indication that something is wrong.
Your feedback here on the forum is super valuable - of course - but we hope this helps to show that we’re looking at other sources too. And we’ll keep running these kind of tests, and other types of research, with both existing Plus customers and new people.
We’ll be back with another update in a bit. Please keep your questions and comments coming 