While the leaders are watching each other, the other market participants are also developing - and sometimes they come out of the blue in the Top3. This case is exactly about the product team of a brokerage app ordered a market survey in time to understand whether to continue comparing ourselves with one competitor or whether other serious market players have appeared on the market.
We regularly conduct comparative studies of brokerage apps for our clients (if you want to order this service, contact us now). Usually they concern only one main competitor, but in recent months other brokers have also been actively developing services, improving the digital experience of clients and attracting new ones. In this regard, we hypothesized that other brokers have entered the market that:
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The primary issue was to evaluate and enhance the competitive positioning of investment services offered by financial institution. The goal was to understand how different players in the market stack up against each other and identify key opportunities for improvement.
Tasks were as follows:
Are you looking to enhance your investment services to stay ahead in the competitive market? Looking to discover growth points for a brokerage app? Need new benchmarks to add to your backlog?
At Markswebb, we specialize in conducting comprehensive competitive analysis of investment services, helping financial institutions identify market opportunities and improve their strategic positioning. Our expertise spans evaluating key products and securities, user onboarding processes, and advanced investment features to ensure a seamless digital experience for your customers. Markswebb provides in-depth analytics, auditing, and benchmarking services to help your organization excel.
For more information on how Markswebb can assist your organization, feel free to reach out to us. Our thorough competitive analysis services are designed to meet your specific needs and drive business growth.
We employed a comprehensive competitive analysis approach, including market research, benchmarking, and evaluation of service offerings. We implemented this basic methodology in the Digital Investment Rank research.
This methodology involved a full and deep evaluation of digital investment platforms. Key aspects of this approach included:
By the way, we're proud of our research methodology, which excels in comparative analysis by meticulously organizing all gathered data to enable objective comparisons between various applications. We decompose services into their essential elements, assign weights according to user significance, and derive a score that truly represents the quality of the user experience. If a function is in demand among the audience, it carries more weight in the evaluation system. This way, the product team prioritizes task blocks that are important not only for internal business goals but also for users.
First of all, we took into account the market changes related to the 2022 crisis. This affected, firstly, the choice of platform - we surveyed the customer's apps and their competitors only on Android, and secondly, the criteria regarding features unavailable due to sanctions. In other words, we did not identify customer journey issues as problems here and did not take this into account in the app evaluation.
The following products and scenarios remained on the final list of products and scenarios (project perimeter fragment):
Key products and securities in the audit perimeter:
Blocks of user scenarios in the audit perimeter:
We start by modeling client scenarios. The off-the-shelf Digital Investment Rank benchmark helps us with this. The newest wave of the study didn't come out until February 2024, but when using any of our benchmarks, we always update it to fit the goals of the specific project and the client's digital service. We wrote a bit about how and why we adjusted the perimeter above.
Next, we note how successfully the client goes through the scenario. To do this, we use the mystery shopper method, gaining access to brokerage accounts and securities and acting like normal customers. Passage is described not by the subjective feelings of the researcher, but by the binary system "Yes/No"; additionally, a correction is made for the priority coefficient of the task.
Let's show a fragment of our benchmark:
Every digital service study is built on hundreds of similar criteria
This is how we evaluate the completeness and quality of the UX of the proposed solution in the customer's application and its competitors.
Physically, the metric is a table with formulas where numbers from the survey results are pulled in. This makes it possible to build graphs that show how well the application closes the user's tasks, taking into account their priority for the user.
An example of one of the graphs - the customers receive such graphs in their reports:
The graph clearly shows in which tasks a particular service is lagging behind or leading - this allows you to get a qualitative helicopter view
For those user tasks where there is a gap, we have formulated a pool of step-by-step recommendations for correction. As an illustration, let's show another fragment of the same report that the customer received at the end of the project. You can see that the bank's application is the leader in the group of scenarios related to document request - but individual tasks need improvement.
This example illustrates well the virtues of Markswebb's evaluation system: even if the overall level of user experience is higher than competitors, we can drill down to individual scenarios to improve those too.
Even leading the group of scenarios, the broker always has something to refine in specific tasks - to maintain the first positions in terms of user experience.
The result was a structured report in which we clearly outlined all of our findings. A report is a document that can be used by almost any specialist on the customer's side:
Having confirmed the hypothesis that the two banks do demonstrate a quality digital experience, we included them in further benchmarking analyses on an equal footing with the "traditional" competitor. To date, the customer has taken on board the improvements we suggested at the end of the study.
This case study showcases the transformative power of a strategic, comprehensive approach to enhancing investment services. By leveraging Markswebb consultancy services to implement a tailored, market-specific strategy, financial institutions significantly improved their investment offerings, securing a competitive advantage and reinforcing their commitment to innovation and customer satisfaction.
For more information on how Markswebb can help your organization with comprehensive investment services solutions and achieve a future-proof competitive edge, feel free to reach out to us. Our thorough competitive analysis services are tailored to meet your unique needs and drive business growth in the ever-changing market.
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Every year we conduct up to 15 studies of digital services. These are industry benchmarks that reflect the state of the market and trends.
