Pre-arrival India Brand Page
Designing a new brand page experience for Indian customers considering banking with BMO
BACKGROUND
One of BMO’s priority segment groups at the bank is Newcomer’s to Canada, with the digital journey focusing mainly on what to do post-arrival
An opportunity existed for BMO to engage the newcomer segment group pre-arrival to Canada, particularly in the Indian market where emigration to Canada is high. Unfortunately, BMO brand awareness in India isn’t as high as other competitor Canadian banks, so the digital team was tasked with creating a hub to point prospect customers to and spearhead a multi-channel marketing strategy launching in India. To bring this project to life I collaborated with a small agile team working as the lead designer focusing on the brand page, which would serve as the poster child for the marketing strategy.
Role
UX Design
Visual Design
Stakeholder management
Team
2x Product designers
1x Content strategist
1x PM
5x Marketing/Product stakeholders
1x Scrum master
1x SEO manager
1x Software developer
1x QA analyst
Tools
Figma
FigJam
Duration
1 week
March 2024
Deliverables
1responsive webpage
Brand Page Objective
Deliver a tailored experience for the Indian market to drive consideration for BMO across all visa groups, with priority for international students
The two main pages that were required for the marketing campaign to go live in India were the brand page and a product page. Due to India's strict regulations around solicitation of foreign currency the brand page could have no mention of BMO products and would be used in all paid media to serve as the entry point for customers.The product page which would be accessed via cta on the brand page would showcase product offerings catered to specific visa groups (international students and permanent resident PR/foreign workers).
Some specific goals for the brand page were:
Build credibility + brand awareness
Prioritize re-use of exiting modules and content on bmo.com
Main call-to-action should point to product page
Market Research + Aligning with SEO Strategy
Insights uncovered from seo research shed some light on who our target market was and what influenced them
Since we had a tight timeline to deliver this project we relied on SEO market research to inform the key priorities for the brand page design strategy :
Key priorities for design strategy:
Priority 1
Prioritizing mobile-first design since 78.01% of people in India access the web from their phones
Priority 2
Vibrant page colours and lifestyle imagery reflecting target demographic + avg. search engine user age in India (25 y/o)
Priority 3
Prioritizing content that is scannable and ‘shows’ rather than ‘tells’ customers about BMO and what we can offer since Indian consumers respond well to engaging story telling and easy to digest content
Analysis of competitor bank’s site in a similar problem space helped inform some areas of opportunities for our design
After formulating a design strategy, I did a competitor analysis of Scotiabank’s newcomers hub page- BMO's biggest competitor in the new to Canada domain- noting some of the strengths and weaknesses and areas of opportunities for our brand page.
Some things I noted from reviewing Scotiabank's page was:
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Good use of vibrant lifestyle imagery
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Content is scannable and bucked into relevant demographic groups
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Opportunity: a sticky header with short concise cta (considering scrolling on mobile) driving to product page
(Click image to enlarge) Screenshot of Scotiabank competitor site
Design and Content Ideation
I collaborated with the content strategist to formulate the blueprint for a page with engaging visuals and content that is easy to digest and shows why BMO is the bank of choice
By this point I had a good idea of the direction I wanted to take the brand page, but before jumping into design I created porto-personas for our 3 visa groups to help guide ideation and keep the team aligned on who we’re designing for. Using the persona for our primary visa group I created 3 user stories touching on the themes of building trust, financial education and planning to start brainstorming what features would be part of the page. Because of the short timeline two things we prioritize was leveraging content already existing on Bmo.com and modules already in our design system library. I worked closely with the content strategist to do an inventory of the content on bmo about us page and other segment pages to find material that would speak to our audience in India. The call-out piece of content we re-purposed was the bmo brand video which we felt would be a strong opening to our page as it ties into the engaging story-telling type content preference of our target audience.
Proto- persona of international student visa group created using insights from SEO market research
(Click image to enlarge) User stories used to guide brand page features
Continuing from there I mapped out the page + content layout in mid- fi mockups before putting together the hi-fi page using modules from our design library that already had accessibility sign off and complimented our page content, making small modifications to the modules where needed.
(Click image to enlarge) Mid-fidelity mobile brand page mockups
Adding a Personal Touch Through Imagery
When it came time to putting the finishing touches on the design, imagery played a big role because we wanted our audience to have no doubt who this page was designed for. I Sourced different options of imagery depicting young a South Asian demographic and keeping in mind the avg. search engine users age in this market (25 years old) and our primary focus of international students. As I was choosing the images I also tried to go for imagery that could convey positive emotions and the prospect of new beginnings.
(Click image to enlarge) Example of imagery options for brand page
Outcome
An inviting experience introducing Indian International students, PRs and FWs to banking with BMO in Canada
The Pre-arrival India brand page successfully launched in March with a:
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Simple and engaging experience with design and content optimized for mobile
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Sticky header and several on page callouts pointing site visitors to product page to learn more
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Design that showcases BMO brand in a vibrant and trendy way
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Visuals and content that speak directly to newcomers from India, addressing who BMO is, what they have to offer and Canadian banking basics
The specific page features that resulted from the 3 user stories were:
User story1: As an international student I want to be reassured that BMO is a reputable bank so that I know my money is safe
(Click image to enlarge)
User story 2: As an international student I want to learn what banking in Canada and at BMO is like so that I feel more prepared for my transition
(Click image to enlarge)
User story 3: As an international student I want to explore banking products tailored to students so that I can plan my application and finances better
(Click image to enlarge)
Full mobile view
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Full desktop view
Next steps
Analyzing early data from page interactions will inform future design and content decisions
Even though a lot of research wasn't able to be done pro-actively, the next phase of the brand page journey will be driven by performance data and user research that dives deeper into what resonates with our target audience.
Audit page modules with least engagement
Conduct user research to validate personas and uncover more customer insights
