MSN Money
Project Overview 🔎
MSN Money aimed to enhance user engagement with its financial services by simplifying how users track stocks and build personalized watchlists. The project involved designing features to increase Daily Active Users (DAU) and improve user retention through personalized stock recommendations and taskbar notifications.
Problem Statement 📋
Research shows that users who add stocks to their watchlist are significantly more likely to return to the platform. To improve user retention, we focused on making it easier for users to add stocks to their watchlist by introducing a pre-populated watchlist and personalized stock suggestions. These efforts aimed to simplify the process and encourage users to start building their portfolios.
Our key objectives were to:
- Convert non-watchlist users to watchlist users.
- Encourage engagement through notifications and personalized stock suggestions.
- Improve the user experience with the Watchlist feature.
Design Goals 🎯
To achieve our objective of increasing user engagement with the finance platform, we set out several clear design goals:
- Increase watchlist adoption rates by non-watchlist users.
- Enhance the notification experience to deliver timely, personalized stock updates.
- Boost CTR (Click Through Rate) on Watchlist and Suggested Stock cards.
- Improve user retention by making the Watchlist a central engagement feature.
Design Contributions 🎨
1. Pre-Populated Watchlist Cards
I designed the Pre-Populated Watchlist Card, shown to non-watchlist users across multiple canvases (Prong1, MSN, Bing). The card featured recommended stocks based on user behavior and market trends.
Impact 📈
- Achieved a +94% increase in active days from users who accepted the pre-populated Watchlist.
- Converted up to 50,000 DAU incrementally through ongoing experiments.
2. Taskbar and Notification Updates
I introduced Taskbar Notifications to prompt users to add stocks to their Watchlist. These notifications included price movements, earnings reports, and sentiment analysis.
Impact 📈
- Taskbar notifications increased DAU by 4.5%.
- "Suggested for You" notifications saw a +120% CTR increase.
- Converted cold-start users into frequent Watchlist users.
3. Suggested Stocks and Personalization
I designed the “Suggested for You” feature, displaying personalized stock recommendations. My focus was on creating visually appealing cards that encouraged users to explore and add stocks to their Watchlists.
Impact 📈
- +650% increase in users adding stocks from the Suggested tab to their Watchlist.
Impact ⭐
This project demonstrated the importance of personalized financial insights and seamless portfolio tracking in increasing user engagement. By simplifying the process of creating and managing a Watchlist, my contributions helped the platform achieve significant growth in user activity and retention.
Results 📈
- Active Watchlist users increased by 485K.
- Pre-Populated Watchlist acceptance improved active days by +94%.
- Suggested for You feature achieved a +120% CTR increase.
Key Takeaways 💡
- Personalization is key to engagement: Users responded positively to personalized recommendations and notifications.
- Iterative design leads to better results: The ongoing experimentation and refinements significantly improved engagement metrics.
- Seamless integration is critical: Features like the pre-populated Watchlist and Suggested for You cards worked best when seamlessly integrated into existing workflows.
