Overview

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As the lead designer for a fintech B2B company Qonto, I spearheaded the creation of a financing hub that allows users to apply for loans from trusted financing partners quickly and transparently. Qonto's focus on financing was driven by three main factors: retention, revenues, and acquisition. Retention was the number one cause of feature churn, with revenues showing that over 85% of customers would need financing solutions in the next 12 months. Additionally, acquisition was one of the most cited loss reasons among leads who did not subscribe to Qonto.

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Research

To understand the user needs and best practices in the industry, I conducted competitor research on direct and indirect competitors from other industries. Based on this research, we were able to distill particular styles and patterns of constructing journeys, writing copies, and presenting information that helped inform our decisions for the designs. Our user research showed that many users found the traditional loan application process to be frustrating and time-consuming, often resulting in denial. Users wanted a fast and transparent loan application process that they could access easily.

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During our research, we received feedback from users that supported the need for the financing hub. One user stated, "I need cash quickly, minimal wait time, small amounts (e.g. 5K in 4 days)," while another user said, "Today, you’re seen as just a number, and "...with a fintech, I expect it to be smoother. The application process could be transparent, not going through many people, not too many documents required."

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User Journey

We created wireframes in Whimsical to develop a user journey that made it easy for Qonto users to apply for loans from financing partners. Users visit the financing hub, provide their business information and select a financing partner from a list of trusted providers before landing on a dedicated partner landing page to initiate the application process.

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Design

I created multiple UI compositions to present to the team, including the product manager, UX writer, and engineers. We worked together to evaluate the designs and make improvements to ensure the user experience was optimal. We created multiple prototypes to simulate different scenarios.

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Learnings and Collaboration

Our main learning was the importance of designing for multiple languages. We had to create new components and patterns to fit Qonto's existing design system and design page layouts and component flexibility to work with multiple languages, including English, French, Spanish, Italian, and German. To accomplish this, we had to create components from scratch and integrate them into the design system, which meant I wrote component documentation and had to consider various states and localization issues.

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This project was a collaborative effort across Product, Brand Design, UX Writing, Engineering, Strategy, and Product Marketing to deliver a user-centered experience that met the needs of Qonto's users. Through this project, I learned how to collaborate effectively with various people from different functions to create a successful product.

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Outcome

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The financing hub was successfully launched, and the results were positive. Users found the new loan application process to be fast and transparent, with a streamlined experience that allowed them to quickly obtain the financing they needed. We also created a component and brand library for third parties that improved conversion rates and optimized the user experience, now part of Qonto's way of working with partners.

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Conclusion

As the lead designer for this successful project, I demonstrated my ability to create a user-centered and collaborative approach that delivered increased customer satisfaction. Despite constraints like an existing CMS platform and limitations in controlling the full user experience, we were able to develop a streamlined user journey that simplified the loan application process. Additionally, we learned the importance of designing for multiple languages and how

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