USER RESEARCH

SITE IA

UX/UI

BRAND STRATEGY

This originally started as a marketing page partnership for "Googlers" + First Republic customers, but soon evolved into app onboardings and email newsletters.

Objective

Launch an efficient Google partnership site and optimize First Republic Bank’s Digital Account Application flow; reducing new user drop-off and maximizing retention.

Team

Experience Designer : Edgar James Reyes

Director of UX : Richard Brinkerhoff

Director of Design: Alex Statom

Key Takeaways

1. Eliminated 2 steps in the DAA sign-on flow

2. Presented wireframes that leverage
First Republic Bank’s customer experience

3. Utilized Google’s secure transactional
+ efficiency flows where possible

PERSONALIZED
EFFICIENCY

First Republic Bank’s (FRB) key driver and business model is to have a personal banker to assist you at every step of your financial journey.

For other financial institutions you might not have a solid banker from one visit to another; nor would they be the same person.

FRB takes pride in the time they take to know their clientele, but when a sign-on partnership with Google employees in San Francisco (“Googlers” as what they like being referred to) were in the works, FRB knew they had to re-orient the way they typically on-boarded clients to accommodate the efficient and speedy tech giant.

User Flow Audit / Site Information Architecture

Proximity Benchmarking + Existing flow Audit

I took a look at their current User flow and mapped out where we can improve the user experience to minimize churn. I then benchmarked DAA flows; first from a macro-industry level, then a micro-community level to find patterns that made the most sense for these users.

Preliminary User Flow and Site IA audit
Future state optimization planning
Contextual + Lifestyle research

Wireframe QA

Design Pressure testing

Once I modeled out wireframes based on the optimized user-flows, i took a look at confirmation emails and post flow screens to make sure the users felt the same level of attention from the first moment they agreed to sign-on as a client.

A/B Testing
Pressure Testing min and max case scenarios
Post sign-on flows

WELCOME,
GOOGLER

First Republic Bank’s Googler sign-on landing page orchestrated FRB’s meticulous attention to their clients whilst catering to the efficient needs of Google employees.

Landing Page / Post email confirmations

It’s a privilege to serve

For the design Hi-Fi’s we made sure to keep the prestigious look and feel of First Republic Bank; using their illustrations and motifs where necessary.

Additionally, we added the ease of Google throughout the process.

DAA Flows

Improving the
Digital Account Application

From our research we found that one of the key drivers for First Republic Bank’s DAA churn was the notion that opening accounts would take a drastically long time to do; even online. For the DAA improvements I reinforced clear status indicators for wayfinding as well as "recommended" flows for efficiency.

A/B Testing
Pressure Testing min and max case scenarios
Post sign-on flows

Some Numbers, if you're into that

Results

Digital Account Application abandonment dropped 22% within 2 months of launch
Funding Details abandonment also dropped a significant 16%
Know Your Customer (KYC) flow retention rose 9%

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