Best Practices for Designing User-Friendly Personal Finance Mobile App

Many folks first used Microsoft Excel or pen and paper when they first started budgeting. It marked the end of the voyage for some. Others begin by using applications for handling personal finances –tools created by designers expressly for this reason. The truth is that a large portion of individuals, if not the majority, find handling their finances to be a tedious and often scary activity. However, if you discover the correct instrument, budgeting really does provide additional chances. Therefore, it's a losing struggle. Apps for personal finance may lighten the mood and even add fun to the sometimes dull task of budgeting. They are creating a financial product that hardly looks or feels like one, which is tricky. Let's examine the methods that may be used in the personal financial apps design in order to accomplish this. 

Check out our personal financial application development guide for further details on creating a money management solution.

The Significance of Design in Financial Applications

The Standard Web Credibility Project is a well-known research carried out by the Stanford University Persuasive Technology Lab team. The project's objectives were to determine what drives and affects individuals to believe in the stuff they view online. The design was found to be one of the most significant, with 46.1 % of respondents citing its impact on their choices. And guess what? Among all the sectors, the banking sector seems to place the most value on design. 

Although there were no apps back then, the idea was the same. Like healthcare apps, a designer's primary goal is to give the financial product a professional appearance while maintaining an accessible and easy user interface. 

The first financial product to win the coveted Apple Design Award was the Robinhood stock trading and investment app in 2015. The business initiated a revolution in the stock trading industry by making it very user-friendly, intuitive, and visually appealing. This led to it being the fastest-growing brokerage in history. A stunning and contemporary design was a component of their plan:

Why Is Financial App Design So Important?

Should you give your financial application's design a lot of thought? Our track record indicates that you need to. These are only a few of the causes.

Credibility and Trust

Users' degree of confidence in your application is greatly influenced by its visual elements. What if the budget app included a ton of information blocks and vibrant, vibrant colors? Would you be comfortable giving such an application access to your private financial information? That is all. 

An app's design is essential to a user's familiarization with it. Providing a pleasing user interface and intuitive navigation for your product helps build user trust. Establishing trust is the first step in building enduring connections between your application and your consumers.

Ease of Use and Actionability

On the first day of usage, the retention rate for financial applications hits 21.8%, according to Statista. However, this proportion falls to 6.1% after 30 days. Why does it take place? 

The fact that the already complex banking sector makes its software solutions even more complicated is likely the root of the problem. A FinTech app's typical user may need clarification on its complex design and abundance of features. 

Thus, another important reason to improve your app's design is to ensure that it is easy to use and retains more users.

Functionalities for Your User

In the highly competitive FinTech app industry, you can feel pressured to include as many cutting-edge features as possible. But overdoing it can alienate your consumers. 

Analyzing your audience's wants is essential to designing your app well. Using the appropriate strategy, you can decide which features are essential to your application and which can wait. The general appearance of your goods is the same. 

We are not saying that distinctive features and creative design are bad things. However, prioritize your consumers' demands since a well-designed user interface or user experience equals happy customers. 

Easy Language 

Another essential factor to take into account when designing your money management software is the abundance of financial words and tools. Good design entails improving the language of your application. 

By taking a thorough approach, you can provide your readers with helpful advice as well as a straightforward explanation of complicated financial jargon. It will increase the ease and enjoyment of using your program. 

Friendly Navigation

The layout ensures that your financial software is easy to use. You won't be able to explain the user interface to your clients until you analyze the user experience. If you make your app's navigation easy to use, you'll keep more users and get more use out of its capabilities. 

Now that we know what strategies they used, let's see what else we, as a mobile app development firm, can do to help.

General Guidelines to Bear in Mind While Creating Personal Financial Applications

What considerations do consumers make when choosing which personal financial app to use and which not to? There are really quite a few, ranging from the degree of clarity in the onboarding process to the App Store rating and the creators' receptivity to criticism. The major ones are:

• Data input simplicity
• Flexibility in accounting
• Family and joint accounting feature
• Control of debt
• The level of information and appearance of the reports
• The presence of a backup
• Synchronization of several gadgets.

A well-designed mobile financial app may either emphasize or provide their benefits.

Preserving the full functionality (but without going overboard)

Every phenomenon must have a rational explanation. Any product that wants to succeed needs a sizable user base. It must thus provide a solution that alleviates a user's problems and significantly improves their quality of life. Apps for budgeting often include features like bank synchronization, the ability to enter transactions via SMS and push alerts, the ability to scan QR codes, analytics for spending patterns, income, and costs, and much more. Include the option to create distinct reports based on categories, spending limits, saves, and money spent. 

You can do many things, even if the ones on the list above appear to be the absolute least for now. Your target market, the findings of your market research, which include examining consumer demands, desires, and preferences as well as those of your rivals, will determine which features to choose and how to differentiate your offering. For instance, you may save money by negotiating bills and canceling pointless subscriptions using the Trim money management service. If "busy bees" are your target market and they never seem to have time for anything, you may want to make your app even more accessible and faster to use than your rivals.

Adding more features to your software and keeping it updated could be a better choice in the future. The most essential point is that they would be able to start over with a different money management software in the future, even if it's unusual for someone to utilize all the features at once. 

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Putting Security First

Security is a crucial component Throughout the development of a personal financial app. 

You will need to ask your users many private questions and provide them with access to some susceptible data, so be sure to plan carefully how you will collect this data and what you will do with it afterward. This article goes into more detail about financial app security measures. 

Furthermore, more is needed to demonstrate to people that you have achieved the necessary technical degree of safety in terms of design. Since they wouldn't even be aware of it otherwise, let them know that you have taken all the required safety measures and that you really care. 

Tell people why things are how they are and how it will make them feel safer and more secure going forward, for instance, if extra log-in requirements might interfere with the process's efficiency. Notify them of any significant events to ensure they don't feel abandoned and reduce their fear. If you write a polite article that highlights the benefits, you can make any situation work to your advantage. 

Keeping Things Simple and Doable

 The Robinhood team eliminated detail overload, a longstanding problem with financial goods, in order to make their app more accessible to a broader audience. In any case, your app will undoubtedly include a large amount of data, a characteristic of all financial products. The arrangement is what makes a difference. It's pretty simple to develop something that is overflowing with data, falls victim to common mistakes, and unnerve consumers. The fact that you are using a mobile screen doesn't help either. A beautiful dashboard that looks fantastic on a web interface is inappropriate for a mobile device. 

A well-designed financial software gives off an air of simplicity and minimalism, giving the user the impression that everything is OK and that managing finances is also easy. In their daily lives, individuals actively want to avoid complexity. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that research has shown that users of financial apps are less happy when the app is more complicated. However, minimalism is more about how you organize information in your product than it is about flat colors and forms. With the best-designed banking applications, everything is at your fingertips. 

Being able to speak and understand the language is another part of simplicity. 

Naturally, this jargon has a purpose: to foster mutual understanding daily. However, the folks who are comfortable with this language will only make up a small portion of your audience. The others are just regular individuals, most of whom are unable to understand the exact information you are attempting to provide them. The ideal situation is when your software is easy to understand and doesn't minimize anything. Make your language using user research as the basis.  

Give everything a purpose. Even if your personal budget app is capable of doing anything complicated, its worth will be realized unless the user finds it useful. Additionally, your budgeting software will seem better if it is clear and useful and provides users with actionable forms that indicate what actions to take next. 

Successful financial initiatives lead their users through the whole process. Creating personal financial software and even a training session should include useful and educational onboarding. Consider how everything in video games appears difficult at first, but eventually, you can't even begin to comprehend what was so tough. 

Fighting Off a Lack of Enthusiasm

Once again, handling money is perhaps the most tedious and uninteresting daily task. These items often don't trill people and might even be demotivating. After the first wave of activity, it's not uncommon for users to lose interest in an app. In order to offer customers a reason to return, designers must make their products seem more hospitable and enhance the user experience. 

One aspect of designing a mobile financial app is using the principle of positive reinforcement. Make individuals feel good by telling them about decisions they made that resulted in financial savings. Try using your app as an aid and guide to assist users in developing a new, healthy habit that they would be willing to continue with. Individuals who feel good about themselves are more likely to utilize such items. 

Include objectives and goals. Goals are ingrained in today's society; we establish goals for ourselves as children, carry them into adulthood, and feel good when we accomplish them. Examining the expenses is just the first step. One of the most desired aspects of a money management app is the ability to establish goals. Include this function in your app. 

Animations, which have recently established themselves as a standard component of mobile app design, may even serve to convey a feeling of accomplishment. 

However, it's best to avoid bringing up a matter that is too trivial regarding cash. Don't make something that is essential to people's survival into a game. Users need to continue to be aware of precisely what they do with their money, the potential repercussions, and how it may impact them. 

Selecting Appropriate Hues

We are talking about financial applications, so there is no doubt that there are a lot of data pieces in them. Because of this, financial app developers want to associate critical activities and information with a rich color hierarchy by using a rich color palette. You may demonstrate whether data is more important or a component of another entity, for instance, by utilizing a range of various colors. Different colors indicate the message's kind; for example, orange indicates cautions, and blue indicates reminders. 

Unknowingly, colors may convey a lot about your goods. The following hues are often associated with financial products:

• Green is a color that often represents money dev, development, and success.
• Blue is seen to be calming, trustworthy, and professional.
• Although dark themes are still popular, and you may wish to include them as well, white is preferred since it is neutral, bright, and appropriate for the backdrop.
• You can use a vibrant color to bring excitement to the topic of money and prevent your app from becoming boring. 

Even now, gradients are common. UI/UX designers use them because they may elevate the degree of inventiveness and attractiveness and give the flat design more dimension. The wealth of approaches and sophisticated user interface will psychologically increase users' desire to explore your software further. 

Adapting and Individualizing

Enabling customization entails allowing people to use your software in any way they see fit. Personalize the field names, budget information, and restrictions. According to evaluations of personal financial apps, customers like it when an app allows them to create and personalize their own categories in addition to the ones that are already there, such as by assigning icons. Additionally, they find it rather handy when they can independently classify and subclassify their income and spending and establish a sensible hierarchy between them. 

The epidemic has changed several things for us, such as the rising popularity of customization and the rethinking of the client-service relationship. With consumers gravitating toward digital goods, there is more competition these days; thus, every little detail matters in the quest to differentiate your offering from the competition. According to KPMG's Customer Experience in the New Reality research, customization and empathy are two important pillars for engaging consumers post-COVID.  

Personalization is already at the core of certain firms' business models. It's personal money, after all. Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and other automation tools offer a tailored experience. A few aggregators, such as Credit Karma, go above and beyond by providing practical advice on raising your credit score.

Conclusion 

To become financially healthy, you must first be conscious of your income and expenses. The capacity to manage and comprehend money flow is essential for anybody hoping to maintain and grow their business. Discipline and diligence, however, are more rigid and challenging to come by. You can do this relatively quickly using budgeting tools.

As design trends evolve, be prepared to adopt the newest ones in the future to maintain the caliber of your product. However, the free version's respectable functionality, adjustable settings, and easy-to-use layout are usually appreciated in financial management applications. 

This is the personal financial app that we can help you create. Get in touch with us right now.