IIFL Securities
GemRush: A marketplace for all types of stock market recommendations
Mobile App
B2C Platform
Aug 2021 - Feb 2022
The Team
The team involved me as the Lead Product Designer alongside 1 Product Manager and 2 Developers. The key stakeholders involved the CEO, Sandeep Bharadwaj, and the CDO, N.K. Purohit of IIFL.
Tools used
My Role
As the solo and lead product designer, I managed the project and led the end-to-end experience for GemRush, a marketplace for all types of stock recommendations within in the IIFL securities retail broking mobile app. My involvement spans all the way from product envisioning to development support.
Product Envisioning & Strategy
Process & Scope Management
Sprint Planning
UX Architecture
User Flows & Journey
UI Design
Micro Interactions & Motion Design
Development coordination & Support
About IIFL Securities
IIFL Securities is one of the leading retail broking apps in India, with over 2.5M+ daily active users
IIFL Securities is one of the largest independent full-service retail and institutional broking house in India. They offer several services and powerful research tools, such as screeners, stock baskets, etc., to cater to a wide range of investor personas.
Background
Leveraging their robust team of researchers and analysts, IIFL launched a stock research & recommendations platform
Backed by a robust team of researchers and analysts who were certified by SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India), IIFL launched a stock research and recommendations platform called IIFL Ideas.
The business objective
IIFL Ideas was launched with the objective of increasing trade transactions and user engagement
IIFL Ideas was launched with the objective of driving higher trade transactions by providing users with actionable, well-researched investment recommendations.
Convert new users to active or long term traders
Increase the frequency of trade transactions among active and advanced traders
The Challenge
Despite its launch, IIFL Ideas and other research tools failed to capture the desired user engagement and transactions
IIFL faces challenges with low user engagement, poor transaction conversions, and limited discoverability in its research section. The design fails to attract users to explore investment recommendations, requiring a more engaging experience and improved discoverability.
Enter GEMRUSH
We helped rebrand IIFL Ideas as Gemrush and brought upto 40% increase in daily user engagement, leading to increased trade volumes
Due to the success of trading products delivered by Them Consulting, IIFL collaborated with us to audit and envision a product strategy to enhance trade conversions and engagement on their platform. As a part of THEM Consulting, I was picked to lead this project.
Initial analysis
Based on our initial UX audit and analysis, these were our conclusion
Poor discoverability & navigation
The design lacks discoverability and fails to attract users to explore valuable investment recommendations and other research tools when required.
Difficult for new or amateur traders to comprehend
The information and visual communication were more oriented toward seasoned investors. Rendering complex for others to use the section.
Lacks the motivation to engage
Despite shifting IIFL Ideas to the main nav bar, it still saw poor engagement as the design lacked the excitement to encourage exploration or engagement.
Lacks the motivation to take action
Increasing transaction conversions is crucial. The design elements in the existing designs do not have enough persuasive elements to build the motivation to trade.
Lost opportunity to personalize content
The current designs fail to attract users to explore valuable investment recommendations and other research tools when required.
Determining the success factors
Defining the product goals
Drive engagement
Improve discoverability
Motivate users to transact
Establish trust & credibility
Personalized content
Establish a unique value proposition
the decision to rebrand
Rebranding IIFL Ideas to GemRush: A Strategic Design Decision
We rebranded the research section as GemRush, leveraging gaming app inspiration and associating gems with high value recommendations to captivate user's attention and entice exploration.
Growth strategy: Reducing the barriers for decision making
Investing made smarter and more actionable
Simplifying the experience of finding the right stocks to invest with curated watchlists
Readily available watchlists in multiple categories aids in faster onboarding & decision making. One of the major pain points users face initially is going through the cumbersome process of selecting the right stocks for their watchlist.
Easy to start
HIGHER INITIAL TRADES
inCREASE IN Confidence to invest
HIGHER ACQUISITION
Reducing constant navigation by contextualizing key decision-making factors
New events/opportunities are shown upfront, on the top, are curated from multiple watchlists. This reduces cognitive load and the need to constantly switch between different watchlists, driving more trade.
rECOGNITION OVER RECALL
Motor load
Faster decisions
Increase in Trade conversions
Providing clarity and building trust by simplifying trades and providing sufficient context. This made the app flexible towards diverse trading styles.
Users can trade directly from the watchlist and other key areas. The product fosters trust and reliability by streamlining trading journeys with clear context, minimizing ambiguity, and enabling seamless switching between modes and styles of trading.
Trade conversions
tRUST & RELIABILITY
eASE OF USE
Growth strategy: Increasing app engagement
Building commitment to engage
Dynamically curated content
Dynamically curated content such as watchlist, opportunities, recommendations, news & research, etc. serve as a variable reward to check new updates on the app.
Notifications & alerts provoking action
Surfaces crucial opportunities and insights. Builds excitement and behaves as a trigger to take action.
App widgets: Visibility triggers action
This surfaces crucial opportunities, screeners or aspects that concerns the users. The nature of improved visibility of app widgets trigger FOMO and demands users to take action.
Contextual and adaptive nature of the app
Contextually surfaced information makes Wave 2.0 uniquely stand out in the brokerage market. Additionally, the nature of the app to learn and suggest preferences aligns more with user behavior, making it the preferred choice. Reducing the chances of switching to competitor apps.
Catering to seasoned investors
Reducing the friction to research, thereby enabling more trades
Traditionally, researching the stock market is a cumbersome process. However, it is very time-consuming and exhaustive. The simple yet insightful nature of Wave 2.0's market research makes it more discoverable & actionable.
Discoverability
Ease of use
higher trades
Options trading more scannable and actionable
A new paradigm for options trading
Designing for easy customization & Modularity
The Moon Design System. 250+ components. 4x faster design. Multiple features for brokers to pick from.
Fast design & delivery
We built a design system for designers and developers to just drag and drop components to put together mobile and web screens. This is used even today to design and write code for new features at speed.
Modular structure. Future-proof designs that's also easy to update
The design system has a flexible architecture to easily adapt to future changes and additions. This also allows brokerage firms to customize any component as per brand requirements.
Auto adjusts colors, contrasts and fonts as per brand
As a B2B2C product, it is crucial to ensure that the design of the product caters to different brands needs. The design and development team devised a typography and color system that is super easy to adjust as per the brand.
Cross-platform framework
We leveraged the Ionic Framework for cross-platform development, aligning our design system with Ionic guidelines to improve developer coordination.
A Success story
The numbers surpassed our expectations!
The outcomes of this innovation have surpassed expectations, showcasing remarkable results that highlight the success of this product.
Apps created
Trades per day
Trades per year
Avg. peak user session
*The rise in numbers are an approximation based on the data from the period of 2021 - 2022.
The Process & Scope of project
How was this project executed?
Lessons learnt
Reflections & key takeaways
Maintaining a balance between fast-paced iterations and perfectionism
As I delved deeper into the product, I made constant crucial design improvements when needed. However, some challenges couldn’t be fully solved within the timeframe, and that’s okay—we achieved the best possible outcome within the limits.
Working with ambiguity
Initially, I was focusing on doing the research, constantly testing and seeking perfection. As I progressed, I learned that ambiguities may always exist. Sometimes it's OK to take a wild guess based on prior experience and strong intuition.
Design for value and behavior
It's an innate nature for product teams to bombard the app with multiple features. However, it's the pain point, context, and behavioral understanding that shape the value of a product. So do not hesitate to ask critical questions. Asking questions your super power.
Ownership and diligence
Being a lead Designer, strong ownership, diligence, and effective decision-making were some of my core responsibilities. However, it's the critical thinking and growth mindset, that facilitated me to do my responsibilities.
Work as a team to enable each other
one of the most important responsibilities of a team member is to understand each other's challenges and find ways to enable each other as a team. Creating a safe space for team members to share vulnerabilities enables a growth mindset.
Other work
Not enough? Here is more.
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This could be the start of our journey!
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