Senior Product Designer @ BlackRock
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Saving for VAT in QuickBooks Business Account at Intuit
Small businesses struggle with saving enough money for their VAT. We launched an improved QuickBooks Business Account that included a VAT budgeting account, which informed customers of their VAT in real time and encouraged them to regularly save.
Duration
6 months
Role
Lead product designer, support from content designer
Impact
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10+ hours of interviews
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19 customers onboarded onto the second alpha stage
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37% of these customers funded the account
Process
1. Onboarding to the project
US QuickBooks teams had launched the QuickBooks Business Account in the US market earlier that year. Our team wanted to leverage this work, launch an account in the UK and break into the challenger bank market. The team identified that users really struggled with saving enough money for their VAT. So they decided to go really narrow in solving a key customer pain and deliver a slice of benefit that will provide industry differentiation.
After launching the initial alpha last month, the team focused on developing the VAT budgeting account functionality, which would help customers save in real time.
2. Localising the UI design
We adapted the US designs of the VAT budgeting account based on the needs and expectations of the UK customers. We aligned the target dates to the VAT quarters. We also added contextual notifications to inform users about their VAT and to encourage them to regularly save throughout the VAT period.
Some of the adaptations below
3. Launching the second alpha stage
We launched the second alpha version of the QB Business Account to 19 QuickBooks customers.
4. Understanding in-product behaviour
I worked closely with the PM and product analyst to track and understand whether users were using the VAT budgeting account and funding the account. 37% of 19 customers funded the business account. After the initial onboarding, usage remained relatively low. 4 customers created the VAT Budgeting Account but only 2 funded it.
5. Interviewing 11 users
I decided to run customer interviews to dig deeper into the low usage. I led interviews with 11 users to understand why they didn’t create the VAT budgeting account and whether the enhanced business account provided value.
We realised that users struggled with sign-up and navigation. They had expected the account to work like the challenger banks they were using.
6. Facilitating workshops
I ran 4 workshops with engineers, PM, PMM, analyst and Customer Success so that everyone could share user insights from their day2day. This not only established alignment across the team but helped team members stay empathetic to the user. Given our observations of low usage, I used these sessions to also provoke the team to narrow down on our unit of one and identify what we can improve for the next release.
QuickBooks Business Account was deprioritised in the UK