AstroPay is a fintech payment application that connects 5M+ users with 500+ merchants in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe.

The company offers:

• AstroPay App – a digital wallet designed for users who need to perform real-time operations in their local currency and with local payment methods.
• One Touch – a product that allows users to easily and securely make deposits and withdrawals directly from the merchant site

Smartlook features used

Session recordings

Watch authentic video recordings of users’ behaviors on your website. Replay sessions or segment recordings to focus on the most important user groups.

Funnels

Funnels let you analyze website user behavior step- by-step. Watch session recordings of each funnel step to discover why users drop off.

Heatmaps

Check where your website visitors hover and click to spot the most popular web elements. Get a clear picture of how users engage with your website.

Events

Track every click or interaction on your website. Identify which events are the most crucial and browse session recordings to explore interactions in-depth

AstroPay wants to make more informed decisions about their web and mobile application 

In early 2020, AstroPay didn’t have much granularity in their data about how users interacted with their product. They didn’t feel that they were focused enough on feature adoption and the user journey. 

To take a more informed approach, the AstroPay team decided to invest in a behavioral analytics tool. With the tool, they wanted to:

• Analyze data about the user journey
• See feature adoption
• Detect anomalies and bugs
• Catch where users get stuck
• Stay compliant with privacy regulations 

After getting analytics data, AstroPay wanted to back every decision with relevant information. As a fintech company, they had to choose an analytics partner that was cognizant of their privacy compliance needs.

Smartlook becomes an alternative to Hotjar and Lucky Orange

At first, AstroPay chose Hotjar for their website app and Smartlook for their native mobile apps. 

But the constant switching between the tools was troublesome. Another problem was that Hotjar didn’t support native mobile analytics, which made the AstroPay team search for a tool that tracks both website and mobile app. They tried Lucky Orange, but it didn’t support mobile either.

“You know, at some point we got enlightened: ‘Hey, we had a good experience with Smartlook, and it would let us track both website and mobile, let’s implement it on our website as well.’ And I think it was a good decision – Smartlook is easy to use and we have both projects in one place.”

Milena Brum

Full stack developer at Astropay

Successful migration sealed the deal between AstroPay and Smartlook

Website tracking code implementation was as easy as on mobile back in the day. In evidence, even a newly hired AstroPay employee managed it in a couple of hours.

“I like Smartlook because it’s easy to work with – when we have a new team member, it’s a matter of hours until they figure out Smartlook and we don’t have to spend too much time on training them.”

Milena Brum

Full stack developer at Astropay

How AstroPay uses Smartlook to optimize sales funnels and product interface

Most product teams use Smartlook. They create event-based funnels, heatmaps, and use session recordings. So far, they optimized the sales funnel, product user interface, and the whole purchase process. 

Every development team followed an iterative process and supported their decisions with data from Smartlook.

“Smartlook is very helpful in understanding why some users are unable to complete certain flows, as we can see exactly what steps they followed, as well as where they see errors or decide to abandon the flow.”

Karen Bauer

Product manager at Astropay

AstroPay simplified the purchase flow for their users

Before Smartlook was implemented, it took 3 steps for AstroPay users to buy foreign currency, which made the process hard to complete. The team created a 3-step event-based funnel to analyze the purchase flow in-depth. 

They realized that the biggest funnel drop-off happened on the 1st step. With data from Smartlook, the AstroPay Website team revamped the purchase journey. 

“Smartlook helped us improve our most important sales funnel. After making the user journey one step shorter, the drop-off rate decreased by 42.72%.”

Milena Brum

Full stack developer at Astropay

More intuitive user interface with new visual elements

The AstroPay team wanted to encourage their visitors to switch to their preferred language version of the website.

The team couldn’t agree if they should add interactive flags next to the language version, or if they should leave the interface as it was. Some team members were concerned that the flags would be confused with the unrelated “gift card” feature. 

Finally, the team agreed to add the interactive flags and monitor them with Smartlook’s session recordings and a heatmap. It actually turned out that users found the visual flags easy to understand.

“I wish we knew Smartlook earlier, it would take many problems out of the equation. The tool helps us solve our team’s discussions when there is one opinion versus another. Instead of being led by hunches, we look at the user behavior data. With such evidence-based decision-making, we’re sure that our actions serve our users in the best way possible.”

Milena Brum

Full stack developer at Astropay

The Cryptocurrency team reduced buyers’ anxiety and drove conversions up by as much as 56%

Smartlook helped the AstroPay team spot problems in the cryptocurrency purchase process.

The team created event-based funnels and detected an anomaly there – a lot of AstroPay users resigned from completing a cryptocurrency purchase. 

After session recordings analysis, the Cryptocurrency team concluded users were dropping off because they had more steps to accomplish when they didn’t have a local currency in the e-wallet.

After the team added local currency as an option to finalize cryptocurrency transactions, the conversion rate grew by 56%.

Another finding in Smartlook was that users spent between 3–5 minutes searching for their newly purchased cryptocurrency inside the AstroPay wallet. Users didn’t know that the transaction was pending, which resulted in a reluctance to buy cryptocurrency in the future.   

To reduce buyer anxiety, the Cryptocurrency team provided each cryptocurrency buyer with a banner “Purchase pending.” This reduced users’ hesitation and now users buy cryptocurrencies in less than a minute. 

Partnership for the next decade

AstroPay started out from a self-service and grew to a customized website and mobile analytics project. Now, they’ve a Smartlook’s account manager that ensures they reach their analytics goals. The fintech company is one of Smartlook’s power users, getting many business advantages out of this mutual cooperation.

These are 3 key business outcomes:

1. AstroPay justifies every decision with reliable data from the analytics tool. There are no more guesses, hunches, or pointless discussions. Every decision is based on data which results in a healthier bottom line. 
2. Smartlook empowers every person in the AstroPay team. With a behavioral analytics tool, everyone in AstroPay has a chance to propose ideas for improvement. It makes their brainstorming sessions more productive.
3. The AstroPay team monitors new and existing features and analyzes feature adoption. The tool also helps them detect anomalies and build a web and a mobile app that’s user-friendly, safe, and bug-free. 

What’s important, Smartlook provides AstroPay with tools to limit collection of personal or sensitive data that may be subject to the GDPR or LGPD. The tool hides all the personal data, so AstroPay can focus on providing the safest and simplest financial app for millions of people.

“You know, we tried other similar tools before we chose Smartlook, and in comparison, there was always a bit of a learning curve. In my opinion, Smartlook is easier to grasp. And we have this personal touch, and I feel like both AstroPay and Smartlook grow together, helping each other provide better products every day.”

Milena Brum

Full stack developer at Astropay

Joanna Kaminska

is a content marketing strategist at Smartlook. She is a seasoned writer interested in storytelling, SaaS and new technologies. Her goal is to create content that is easy to understand for all. After work, she enjoys hiking and nature photography. | LinkedIn profile

The post AstroPay improved sales funnel, boosting conversions by 56% appeared first on Smartlook Blog.

Established in 2008, 4finance is one of Europe’s largest digital consumer lending groups. It provides services for customers in 13 countries, and has offices in Madrid, Warsaw, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Riga as well as in other countries. To date, the company has issued €8 billion in loans and lines of credit.

The group operates under a number of brands, including Vivus and Zaplo. The company also offers deposits, in addition to consumer and SME loans through its TBI Bank subsidiary, an EU-licensed institution with operations in Bulgaria and Romania.

The UX department in 4finance is responsible for providing a smooth user experience for their customers. How do they cope? We sat down with Olegs Jarosevics, Senior UX Research at 4finance to find out the answer to that question.

 The Interview

SL: Can you tell me a little bit about yourself? How did you end up as a UX expert?

Olegs: I started in 2012 as an UX intern and worked in a variety of startups. In 2014, I worked for Accenture as a UX architect and did a wide variety of things for them. In 2016, when I joined 4finance, I decided to narrow my focus and shifted to UX research only.

SL: You told me earlier that your company had to try 10 different analytics products before finally settling down with Smartlook. That sounds like quite a journey.

Olegs: A long time ago, we had Clicktale, one of the first tools in this category. It worked, but it had a lot of drawbacks. Then we transitioned to a combination of Fullstory and Hotjar. Since Hotjar decided to discontinue funnel functionality, we were forced to look for some new tool which provides visual funnels. We tried about 10 different tools before purchasing Smartlook. All of them were either too expensive or lacked some crucial functionality – funnels, recordings, ability to see the customer’s console, etc.

SL: Considering the number of very different products and departments that you have had to handle, I´m not surprised about your demands for analytics tools and their features…

Olegs: True, at 4finance, there is a team behind every product. In terms of analytics, the UX department is the owner and the main user of Smartlook. So, when a certain team has some questions regarding users’ behavior or product performance, we usually do tracking and analysis and provide them with some insights. Sometimes teams want to monitor data (such as funnels) themselves, then we teach them how to use Smartlook so they can use analytics on their own.

Most often, we are collaborating with product and marketing teams. They are basically interested in three things:

1. Tracking performance of their product, such as the conversion rate.
2. Understanding users’ behavior.
3. Getting rid of bugs and technical issues.

SL: What is the biggest challenge so far in terms of UX analysis?

Olegs: Our products are simple, but have many different variables depending on the individual customer, so it can be quite difficult to see the big picture. When our users are applying for a loan, they can have up to five–six different loan resolutions and depending on the resolution that is available to them, the next step in the flow will be different. At the end of the application, the user can be approved, rejected, the loan amount can be decreased, we may even require additional documents and so on. So, as you can imagine, you have a lot of very complex funnels in the end.

SL: You mentioned funnels as a crucial point in evaluating other apps. Is this feature something that sold Smartlook to you?

Olegs: Definitely one of the most frequently used features are funnels and recordings. As you know, we actually found you randomly via Google, completely unaware of your product. The first thing we liked about Smartlook is automatically generated events, that can be used for funnels or filtering without any development needed. Due to our limited development capacity, this was always a bottleneck for us.

SL: What is the relationship between SL and Google Analytics in your company? What kind of data do you strictly use Google Analytics for?

Olegs: Data from different sources are used for triangulation. But most of the time, Google Analytics is used to measure the impact of marketing campaigns.

SL: Our sales team told me that privacy was also a major factor for you…

Olegs: The main concern was to be fully GDPR compliant. Other parameters also matched our needs, so we decided to give it a go and purchase a paid package.

SL: Glad to have you on board. To fully utilize tools like Smartlook, one has to have a pretty good idea what criteria to measure. Do you have a standardized process?

Olegs: There are some KPI which we are monitoring. These are a combination of business metrics and UX metrics.

UX metrics like the number of errors per task or time spent on a task – can tell us how difficult a specific part of the journey was for a customer. Also, we are measuring satisfaction with our products. Every project is a little bit different, and we try to choose metrics based on the context.

In terms of business metrics, we focus on the number of applications, number of loans, average loan size, number of registrations, conversion rate, etc.

SL: Implementing a new UX design is always stressful and sometimes difficult to evaluate. When is the point you can tell yourself: “Good job, we did it”?

Olegs: When both the business and our customers are happy with the product!

author Petr Vecek

Content Manager

The post UX at 4finance: Why are funnels for financial products so intricate? appeared first on Smartlook Blog.