cinch — car ownership: finance application tracking

Shifting focus from purchasing to retaining customers — part 4.

Introduction

From launch to today (Wednesday, 28th February), 64% of customers who purchase on the cinch app use finance to pay for their orders. When applying for car finance, cinch shows details such as the lender, APR, loan type, loan amount, and monthly payments. However, after order completion, customers need help to view or manage their finance application. Their only option is to access the finance lender’s portal, such as Blackhorse.

Offering a native solution supports cinch’s business objectives for customer retention, as it provides a compelling reason for customers to return to the app.

Usability testing (1)

After reviewing the cinch finance offer page and the Blackhorse lender portal, in collaboration with the research team, I wrote test plans and analysed results to establish the following:

• Expectations for finance application visibility
• Importance of finance details

Expectations for finance application visibility

We asked participants to sort finance details according to where they would expect to see them, whether on the cinch app profile page, in your finance lenders portal, or both.

90% of participants expected: my order (age, make and model) in their cinch profile only.

Over 50% of participants expected: payments left, e.g., 12 of 24 — estimated, term length, e.g., 24 months, start date, settle my agreement, next payment amount, next payment due date, manage direct debit, agreement type, e.g., PCP or HP and outstanding balance — estimated, both in their cinch profile and lender portal

40% of participants expected: make a payment and optional final payment both in their cinch profile and lender portal

60% of participants expected: APR, e.g., 15.7% only in their lender portal.

Fig 1.1 — Agreement matrix for R1 usability testing.

Importance of finance details

According to the study, participants identified the top 5 most crucial pieces of finance details:

1. Next payment amount and due date
2. My order details (age, make and model)
3. Start date and term length
4. Make a payment and manage direct debit
5. My finance agreement documents

Fig 1.2 — Ranking question summary for R1 usability testing.

Design tennis

My colleague and I exchanged designs and progressed solutions using design tennis, based on research insights, through continuous iteration.

Fig 2.1 — Finance application tracking design tennis low-fidelity wireframes.

Usability testing (2)

Using low-fidelity wireframes, the second round of usability testing validated:

• Comprehension of finance agreement details
• Understanding of estimated details
• Requests for additional information
• Expectations for clicking the ‘visit lender portal’ button

Fig 3.1 — My profile / finance application tracking low-fidelity wireframes for R2 usability testing.

All participants were pleased with the clarity of the agreement and payment tabs. They also were able to understand the estimated payment details. Participants requested information on their finance agreement’s end date and outstanding balance.

Next steps

The next step is to convert low-fidelity wireframes into hi-fidelity designs, which can be refined once prioritised in the backlog.