Angela Chou�2017
Investing & retirement
Hi. I’m Angela.
You can find me around SF rocking out, dining out, and petting doggos and kittehs.
Today we are going to talk about...
Vision
A world where everyone makes financial decisions with confidence.
Mission
Provide clarity for all of life’s financial decisions.
Company north star: Completed decisions
That’s a whole lot of financial decisions!
Life events | Spending | Money management | Family finances | Work Life |
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We established a framework for assessing which new markets to pursue.
Based on this assessment, we honed in and prioritized the top markets for us to pursue:�
Let’s start with Investing!
Objective: |
Help users build, grow, and manage their money to achieve their long-term goals. |
Strategy: |
Win free acquisition channels.�Acquire high intent users at scale first through SEO. |
Deliver free, personal, and holistic advice. �Become the trusted advisor and resource to grow your money. |
Seamlessly connect consumers with the best financial products.�Connect the right users at the right time. |
The opportunity: Ok Google, what should we build?
The humans are searching for �“retirement calculator”
Our target consumer: The optimizer
Imagine our user as Dev
from Master of None
Meet the optimizer
A show about a 30-year-old who has trouble making decisions.
The (retirement savings) struggle is real
The consumer problem
Am I really saving enough for retirement?
The consumer problem
Let’s help Dev and other optimizers plan for retirement!
“We’re putting money away so for now, we think we’re on track for retirement...it’s just so far away.”
Based on NW’s Consumer Insights research
The consumer problem
We took a hypothesis, build, measure, learn approach #hbml
Our hypothesis
We believe that consumers need a personalized and automated retirement planning solution.�
We will validate this by building a retirement calculator as a main onramp to the retirement planning product.�
We will know we have succeeded when we have generated enough demand through free acquisition channels.
Step 1: Build MVP and start ranking.
We got scrappy and based off a competitive analysis, a whiteboard session with design, we timeboxed development to a 2 week sprint and shipped an MVP in Feb 2016 in order to start ranking and build traffic.
Step 2: Measure: 20x traffic from December to March
We had an existing content piece about retirement and we replaced it with the calculator. We managed to 20x traffic.
We started to rank for “retirement calculator” and began climbing up the ranks in March.
Feb 9 �Launch v.5
Step 3: Learn: Research before Adventure
Research
Adventure
Retirement Study
We conducted 8 in-person user interviews to learn more about their attitudes and behaviors toward retirement - how they planned, what types of accounts they had, and how they thought about their savings.
And we also tested proof of concept with these users
Goals for new onboarding pattern
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Goals for new onboarding pattern
easy to skip
Signature interaction: Nerdy insights/tips allow for more explanation. Memorable!
*Not final mock - for illustration only
Congruence & context: anchors & orients the user from various traffic sources �(internal, search, marketing)
Flow expectation setting
Progress indicator - shows state and feedback to completion
Shows the promise of the results in exchange for information
Retirement themes
Our conversations unlocked several themes around retirement which we used to inform new ideas for our new retirement calculator and future products.
Step 4 Build: Design & develop the experience based on user feedback
How we measured success
Acquisition
Engagement
Next action/completed decision
Step 5: Go to market! PR writeups: Lifehacker
Step 6 Measure: Sparked traffic 6x since launch
April 12�Launch v.1
April 28�Lifehacker
Step 7: We validated our hypothesis!
Based on our success criteria, we proved we could acquire users and that there was a need for a full-fledged retirement planning product.
We should build a retirement planner! So how do we do that?
Retirement calculator continues to be a core acquisition product.
Branded keyword search in Google autocomplete!
Hundreds of backlinks from top tier media and blogs.
And it drives the majority of membership signups into our retirement planning product.
What did I learn? How has it made me a better PM?
How to guide a team that had never built a product from zero to one.
Getting the team to fall in love with the problem and be part of creating solutions. �
Questions?
Appendix
Let’s start with Investing! �We’ll begin by defining our objective and product strategy.
Investing objective: Help users build, grow, and manage their money to achieve their long-term goals.
Strategy | Tactic | Metrics |
Win free acquisition channels.�Acquire high intent users at scale. | Best-in-class educational tools and content. Dominate SEO and grow audience through social, PR, and trusted partnerships. | Acquisition: Visitors SERP ranking |
Deliver free, personal, and holistic advice. Become the trusted advisor and resource to grow your money. | Holistic view of my money. View and track my entire savings. Provide automated optimal allocation for my personal goals and preferences. | Activation: # of Members Retention: Monthly Active Members (MAMs) |
Seamlessly connect consumers with the best financial products.�Connect the right users at the right time. | Financial product marketplaces. Build robust financial product inventory via APIs and direct partnerships that help users decide on the best financial product for them. | Revenue: Conversion rate (CPA, CPC) |
Whiteboarding/Sketching
Initial wireframes - Results page
General flow
Search
Content
NW homepage
Entry points
Onboarding
Results
Content
Other tools
Talk to an advisor
Other products/services
Onboarding for retirement calculator
Search
Content
NW homepage
Entry points
Answer series of questions
Goal
Walk users through a guided flow that will help educate them and provide a more personalized experience.
Final onboarding design
We created a framework for guided decision calculators:
Learn
Help our users learn along the way (onboarding, insights, educational components)
Play
Allow user to easily edit their inputs and see different scenarios relative to their current situation
Act
Provide results/feedback as they answer each question/fill out form
Help a user understand their results and take next steps through custom recommendations
Home affordability calculator
Process
Iteration happens throughout