DESIGN @ KOTAK

Designing the buy journey of

mutual funds

ROLE

Product Designer

DURATION

8 weeks

TOOLs

Figma, Miro, JIRA

SKILLs

Research, Affinity Mapping, Visual Design

CONTEXT

Kotak Cherry is a platform by Kotak Bank that allows users to invest in mutual funds. With a user base of over 2M people from across India, the older UI felt outdated and wasn’t intuitive enough for users to easily make investments or set up payments. It also wasn’t visually appealing and was especially difficult for first-time investors to understand.


We decided to redesign the buy journey to make the app more intuitive and easy to use, while adapting to a new design system. I conducted the research solo and collaborated with 2 other designers to wrap up the visuals.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

User selects a

fund to explore

Fund details

are displayed

User clicks

"Buy Now"

User reviews

details

User makes

the payment.

Investment

is complete.

DATA

Based on our data, we have approximately 1,000 users logging into our app daily on average.

  • 900 show interest in purchasing a mutual fund by spending time on the details page.

  • 500 users click the 'Buy Now' button and proceed to the Buy page.

  • Only 10 users successfully complete their investment.

This results in a drop-off rate of approximately 98%.

UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM SPACE

We asked our users to walk us through their buying journey and share their thoughts along the way. This helped us uncover key problem areas that hindered their experience.

DESIGN QUESTION

How might we streamline the buying process to enhance user satisfaction and reduce friction?

PRIORITY MAPPING

In this exercise, we surveyed a group of 60 users to rate each feature on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the least important or least used and 5 being the most important or most used. Here's what we found out:

Feature name

Both

Feature goal

It’s an investment option that enables users to invest in both lump sum and SIP simultaneously, with the flexibility to use different amounts for each.

Feedback

  • 52 users rated this feature 1 out of 5.

  • They found it confusing and hesitated to proceed, as it wasn’t common in competitor apps.

  • Users struggled with payments due to the different procedures for SIP and Lump Sum.

Feature name

Folio

Feature goal

A folio number is a unique ID for each mutual fund investment, allowing users to create their own folios for better money management.

Feedback

  • 35 users rated this feature 1 out of 5.

  • Some users reported confusion about the meaning of "folio," while others found the feature unnecessary, preferring to see their investments grouped together in one place rather than divided separately.

REDESIGN GOALS

Quick and Easy investing.

  • Enhance discoverability of the the main investment modes.

  • Reduce redundancy by focusing on essential information that directly impacts user understanding.

  • Simplify navigation ensuring that every step of the process is intuitive for our users.

FINAL DESIGNS

Keeping our design goals in mind and after a lot of iterations, we came up with the following designs.

BUSINESS OUTCOMES

The redesign simplified the user experience, resulting in measurable business improvements:

  • Smoother transactions increasing total investments by 20% in a quarter.

  • Reduced drop-offs by 32%, keeping users engaged through the process.

  • 13% rise in average investment per user.

LEARNINGS

More is not always good.

  • Having an abundance of features doesn't necessarily improve the user experience. Many of our features were left unused because they weren't aligned with user needs.

  • Features must be intuitive and user-friendly, focusing on the actual needs and behaviors of users to create meaningful value.