Invest Jar is the main hub of the investing product inside Douugh. It houses our three main investment products live in Australia:
US Shares
Douugh offers a curated universe of over 4,500 US Shares users can invest in. Users can use the explore functions to research shares, see share information like dividend yields, analyst ratings and sustainability information. Users can save the shares they are interested into a watchlist and purchase from their trading wallet with as little as $1.
Managed Investment Portfolios
The Portfolios product offers 7 investment portfolios offered by BlackRock enabling customers to diversify their investments easily across multiple sectors, asset categories and markets with as little as $1. Through the app customers can see a breakdown of their investment, track their investment over time and see the featured holdings from BlackRock.
Autopilot
Autopilot offers customers the ability to create a custom investment plan. The customer sets the investment frequency, amount, the assets they would like to invest in and we take care of the rest! Its a simple way for users to invest regularly over time.
There has also been work for upcoming products such as Australian share trading, Crypto/Bitcoin, High Yield Savings and Super.
The Invest Jar was a completely new product within the Douugh app. At the start of the project in 2022, Douugh only offered banking capabilities in the US. So this product would mark the first product launch in Australia. To understand the consumers, I lead countless research initiatives to better understand our new market as consumer behaviours in AU were very different to our current customers in the US.
Working with our CPMO and Head of Product I lead user research initiatives during the entire project and continuing in a reduced capacity thereafter.
Starting in the quantitive stage of research with market analysis and pre-project start surveying of a broad set of potential customers in the Gen Z to Millennial age groups. We set out to understand a high level view of their lives but focusing on their financial positions (income, employment, debt/loans/credit cards and savings), their current relationship with money, their current investment habits and if they didn’t invest why and how could we help. This helped us build key customer personas for the customers we were building for.
From all of our research we realised consumers wanted three main things
- Clear and transparent fee structure
- An easy to understand interface
- Low barriers to entry to try before fully committing
Once we established what Aussie Gen Z/Millennial consumers were needing from an investment product we began work creating our three main products Share Trading, Portfolios and Autopilot validating the product with smaller user groups every step of the way. This was through the use of online surveying, in person and online one on one interviews and focus groups. Most of the people from this stage were added into a special online community where we continued in regular sessions with them until product release providing constant feedback along the way.
Throughout the entire process seperate studies were also done with recruitment done through different user testing platforms to get both qualitative and quantitative data along the whole design process. Any standout target customer was transferred into our online community for better communication.
Evolution of the product
Once the initial product launched, we moved into an iterate and grow stage where the product went from a beta product to a more fleshed out product aligning closer to customer needs.
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One major project was the KYC simplification project to try and boost KYC conversions. The issue with our original flow was the process was long and invasive where a high number of potential customers dropped off along the way. Then if customers made it to the end, some had issues with identity verification needing to go into manual review. Looking at our Amplitude data we were able to identify which areas of the KYC process where the biggest concerns and look at why.
Our KYC simplification efforts spanned multiple different solutions to be rolled out consecutively. Each one building on the other so we wouldn’t block our small engineering team as a major overhaul would take weeks away from other priorities.
KYC Part 1: Small updates
The first update to the KYC was highlighting the easiest changes we could make to reduce some of the biggest issues such as expired ID documents, missing middle name, customer having moved in the past 6 months.
KYC Part 2: Updates to the manual review process
This stage of the project was all about fixing the parts of the process that were KYC fails easily preventable and reducing the load on customer service to process manual account verification reviews.
KYC Part 3: Final Split KYC
With the introduction of Spend Jar, Douugh Pay and other products user testing showed customers wanted the quickest way in to get started with their desired product. They also wanted to see what the Douugh app had to offer before handing over their ID docs to get started. Part 3 was about creating the simplest journey possible for customers getting them as fast as possible. This is where the KYC went from all steps before getting in to basic account creation and then product based onboarding and KYC.
Overall this KYC project was one of the most important post launch changes we have made for customer acquisition. Every time someone dropped off we potentially lost a customer. Each change we made reflected in better KYC pass rates and less need for customer service to intervene.
Recognition
Hard work and good research pays off. In 2023 the Douugh app was recognised at the Finder.com awards winning two awards:
- Best Mobile App for Share Trading
- Best Share Trading app for Beginners
Douugh is awarded our best mobile trading app award. With its intuitive design, low costs and user-friendly features, Douugh's mobile app makes trading a breeze, even on-the-go.
These two awards show our hardcore dedication to build for our customers pays off.
Team
Daniel Feodoroff - Lead Research & Product Design
Mark Taylor - CPMO
Cameron Drury - Head of Product
Scarlett Evans - Head of Marketing