How to Improve Nerdwallet

How would you improve Nerdwallet's Homepage?

(This relates to a design exercise I worked on in 2017.)

Goals & Constraints

Before I dive into solutions, let's first understand what Nerdwallet is trying to achieve with their home page today.



Highlighted in the image, three things are clear:

1. The primary goal is - as the header says - to help people compare options across different financial products. With that said, Nerdwallet specifically wants to help people figure out better options for credit cards. Just look at the header in the top left highlights credit cards, and...
2. The second box highlighted also shows that Nerdwallet wants to compare credit cards.
3. The third goal seems to be to get users to join or sign into Nerdwallet.

Now that we know what the home page is trying to achieve today, let's think about what we would like our redesign to accomplish tomorrow.

What is the purpose of the redesign?

There are the business objectives:

• Increase in revenue - currently, credit card signup referrals
• New user acquisition
• Monthly/Weekly/Daily active users
• Continued collection of (signed-in) user data

There is also the product objective:

• Mission - helping users find the optimal product for their situation

I'd propose looking at monthly active users. I want to explore ways to get users to better engage with Nerdwallet. If we can do that, we can also get them to sign up and sign in more often. This will eventually lead to greater revenues down the line.

User & Use Cases

Next, I want to have a customer in mind for the redesign. There are a couple of personas that come to mind: 

• The newsreader.  This is someone that likes to do their research before making a decision. They spend a lot of time comparing all the options. They haven't thought about "buying" a financial product yet, but they know they will some day and like to keep informed.
• The shopper.  This is someone that is ready to "buy" a financial product. This person wants quick facts to confirm what it is they want. 
• Any segment by age group or stages in life:  
• College students and recent graduates who are trying to manage debt.
• Young professionals who are learning to budget and save. 
• Married couples who are planning the rest of their lives.
• Parents who are looking to start a family. 
• Retirement-focused people

I'm going to focus on the newsreader. 

The newsreader may come back often throughout the course of several months. Any financial decision is a big one - it often results in a relationship that last years (with a bank or some other institution). 

Top use cases for the newsreader

1. They're looking out for needs they didn't know they had. Life changes and it changes quickly; a father of two may not know they need life insurance.
2. They're keeping tabs on new financial products they didn't know about. There might be a credit card expert who is coming back to Nerdwallet for any new credit card products that might exist.
3. They want to get inspired. Dealing with your personal finances is really hard; there's a huge emotional component when dealing with money. Sometimes people need to read something that will give them that encouragement to make a change.

For improving engagement, I think we want to focus on helping people keep tabs on new financial products. People are attracted to novelty; new things keep people coming back; and there are definitely, new financial issues that can come up every week.

Visual Solution

(Again, this is a full design that I completed for a different blog in 2017. However, I think the general design can still be applied to Nerdwallet.)

Here's what I envision in a mock-up. As you can see, there's a similar break out of different kind of financial topics -- Budgeting Tips, Checking & Savings, and more. However, the new design (a) highlights just the "Latest" articles at the top and (b) the most recent articles for each category in the middle section. In the third section, we highlight other topics that the reader may not know about; the topics, in turn, may highlight more products that are worthwhile to explore.

Finally, at the bottom, there's a CTA (call-to-action) for readers to sign-up for a newsletter. We can easily change this to a sign-up or log-in CTA. This way we can convert casual readers to more engage users of the Nerdwallet.