What Makes a Great Mobile Banking App

The sixty-member Retail Banking Strategies Crowdsourcing Panel was asked, "What is your favorite non-financial mobile app and why?" Their selection was diverse, but provided insight into how banks and credit unions could improve their mobile banking user interface.

(Part of the 'Best of The Financial Brand' Series of articles)

By Jim Marous

Owning a spot on the home screen of a consumer’s mobile device is every app developer’s goal. But, earning that coveted location is difficult due to the increasing array of apps already available and being introduced daily.

So, what makes a great mobile experience and generates everyday use? What are the qualities consumers are looking for when determining what to download and use? Can retail banking learn lessons from the apps people prefer?

To find out, we reached out to the 60 member Retail Banking Strategies Crowdsourcing Panel to find out what their favorite non-financial mobile apps were, and why they liked them. While dozens of different apps were mentioned, the benefits of the apps fell into one or a multiple of the following categories:

• Efficiency (makes something easier)
• Effectiveness (saves time or money)
• Contextual (uses personalized insight)
• Entertaining

What is clear from this informal survey is that the demand for transaction-based apps is diminishing as the digital consumer is looking for their mobile apps to provide value that makes life easier, saves time and/or money, is contextual and potentially entertaining. What was also clear is that virtually every app mentioned had a clean, mobile-first design and was easy to use. Many only needed one or two clicks to accomplish a given task. What banks can make that claim?

For banks and credit unions to win in the mobile space, they need to go beyond providing mobile access to online banking capabilities. It is time to integrate banking apps with a consumer’s daily life, providing simple design and a user interface that is both intuitive and contextual.

( Read More: The End of the Basic Checking Product Suite )

Transactional Focus of Mobile Banking Limits Use

Gaining a prominent position on a consumer’s home screen has never been more difficult. According to the Statistics Brain Research Institute’s latest mobile phone app statistics, there are almost 1M downloadable apps available for both the iPhone and Android mobile devices. At the user level, the average number of downloaded apps per phone is 88 for iPhone owners and 68 for Android owners. Broken down by app type, the market share for the top five app categories are as follows:

1. Gaming: 23%
2. Entertainment 11%
3. Utilities: 10%
4. Education: 7%
5. Productivity: 5%

From the perspective of app market share, financial service apps are way down the list at fifteenth, with a 3% app category market share according to this study.

With regard to behavior, the 2014 Consumers and Mobile Financial Services report from the Federal Reserve found that 33% of all mobile phone owners used mobile banking in the previous 12 months, up from 28% a year earlier. This percentage jumped to 51% for smartphone owners.

While the numbers look positive on the surface, the most common activities were transactional in nature, including checking balances (93%) followed by account-to-account transfers (57%) and mobile check deposits (38%). In addition, the frequency of mobile banking use actually decreased from six times per month in 2012 to four times a month in 2013, indicating reduced consumer engagement.

Among consumers who do not use mobile banking, the reasons provided included limited usefulness and benefits as well as a concern about security.

Favorite Non-Financial Mobile Apps

It is hoped that by understanding why financial services industry leaders like specific non-financial mobile apps, we can use this insight to build better mobile banking applications.

It is clear from the outset that some of the most successful apps on smartphones today haven’t introduced new ideas, they just do them better. More importantly, the way an application looks and operates is imperative to its long-term success — if an app doesn’t look as good as a competing app, or the navigation isn’t as fluid, the chances are the user will eventually desert that application.

A great app has a mobile-first design, uses large design elements and provides a logical path to follow, making usage easy and obvious. In short, the app focuses on a primary task and eliminates ‘noise.’ Very few banking mobile apps follow these rules.

Finally, most of the best mobile apps mentioned did well in multiple benefit categories (i.e. Efficient and Contextual as opposed to only being good in a single category).

( Read More: My Digital Banking Nirvana )

Efficiency

Of all of the categories of benefits of great mobile apps that the Crowdsourcing Panel preferred, the majority made a process easier. Each had a mobile-first interface and the majority leveraged a simple and clean design that draws the user back to the app often. Not surprisingly, the apps mentioned most frequently were both efficient and contextual.

Several of our Crowdsourcing Panelists rated Google Maps as their favorite mobile application. Said the Financial Services team from Accenture, “Google Maps provides a wealth of information (from directions to local businesses) all relative and tailored to the individual user. Author, speaker, radio host and CEO of Moven, Brett King, said, “Google Maps is indispensable when I am traveling to unfamiliar locations/events, etc. as part of my global speaking tour. It helps me find great restaurants, cinemas, cafes, etc. for the downtime I have in between commitments.”

Bradley Leimer from Mechanics Bank referenced the recent acquisition of Waze when he gave two thumbs up to Google Maps, “Google’s pick-up of Waze has been a life saved – I’m in traffic enough – it’s great to know how to avoid it.”

Illustrating the multiple uses of Google Maps, David Birch, director at U.K.-based Consult Hyperion offered, “I love it because it gives accurate public transport directions, so I use buses and transit more and taxis less.” Similarly, Sandeep Deobhakta from Standard Bank in South Africa said that the app was better than the GPS in his car and he used the app often for directions while walking.

Travel organizers were favored by several of our highly mobile Crowdsourcing Panel, with the most frequently mentioned app being Tripit. Bryan Clagett, chief marketing officer of Geezeo said, “Tripit organizes all my travel plans in one tight package. It simplifies my life, but also lets me engage with other travelers and friends.” Ron Shevlin, senior analyst from Aite Group added, “It makes it easy to input data. I usually only need to forward a confirmation email from a hotel or airline to Tripit and the information is automatically loaded.” Finally, Steven Ramirez, CEO of Beyond The Arc made note of the seamless integration across devices (including desktop).

Other travel apps mentioned were the Delta Airlines mobile app (by Fiserv’s Matt Wilcox) and TripCase (by wealth management strategist April Rudin). Both Wilcox and Rudin referenced how the apps removed paper, allowed them to adjust flights, as well as allowing them to check status of flights and upgrades while providing real-time alerts.

The next two most popular mobile apps as rated by the Crowdsourcing Panel were the personalized content aggregator and sharing app Flipboard and the supplemental memory enhancement tool Evernote. Said Sam Maule, managing consultant for Carlisle and Gallagher Consulting Group, “Flipboard was on my new iPhone and I’ve become addicted. Way too easy to post to Twitter and LinkedIn and I’m addicted to the functionality that allows me to have specific topic magazines set up.” Fred Hagerman from FirstMark Credit Union added, “The reason I love Flipboard is that it brings all the news sources I want to one app, with a great tablet AND smartphone interface. It’s also easy to share content with associates and social platforms.”

Both the Financial Services team at Accenture and James Hodges, senior director at WBR loved that Evernote had the same seamless experience across all devices, and that it made note-taking “better than the pen and paper that the app is designed to replace.”

Read the rest of this 'best of The Financial Brand' article here ...