Finance Application Form

Optimising a multi-channel B2C journey for conversion, clarity, and scalability

Overview

The Deko Finance Application Form was the company’s core product experience, enabling consumers to apply for finance across multiple channels, including online, in-store, phone, and email journeys.

As an omni-channel product, the application needed to provide a consistent and seamless experience across different touchpoints while serving a diverse ecosystem of users: end customers, merchants, and lenders.

The project focused on redesigning and optimising the application journey, with a particular emphasis on improving mobile experience, reducing drop-offs, and enabling faster product iteration.

My Role

Product Designer

I worked within a cross-functional product team, contributing to:

• end-to-end UX and UI redesign of the application journey

• user research and testing across multiple user groups

• defining a mobile-first design approach

• collaborating with engineering on scalable front-end architecture

• supporting the introduction of A/B and multivariate testing capabilities

Team Structure

The product was developed within cross-functional teams consisting of:

• Product Designer (my role)

• Product Manager

• Frontend and Backend Engineers

• QA (introduced in later stages)

Multiple teams worked in parallel across different product areas, requiring strong alignment and coordination.

The Problem

Through both internal and external feedback, we identified several critical issues within the application journey.

Despite the majority of users being mobile-first (approximately 65%), the experience was not optimised for mobile devices, resulting in significant drop-offs. The form lacked clear feedback and guidance, creating confusion and increasing friction during completion.

Additionally, the technical setup limited the team’s ability to run experiments and iterate quickly, slowing down learning cycles and reducing confidence in releases. This contributed to regressions in functionality and increased operational overhead, particularly in the form of customer support queries and lender calls.

The ongoing company rebrand created an opportunity to revisit the entire experience, aligning both UX and UI improvements with a broader product transformation.

Users

The product served a multi-sided ecosystem:

• Consumers applying for finance (primary focus)

• Merchants offering finance options

• Lenders providing financial products

The initial phase of optimisation focused on improving the end-user (B2C) experience, where the most significant friction and drop-offs occurred.

Research & Discovery

We conducted a combination of:

• usability testing sessions

• user interviews and surveys

• analysis of behavioural data (Google Analytics)

• feedback from customer support, sales, and account teams

• external reviews (including Trustpilot)

This multi-source approach allowed us to identify key drop-off points, behavioural patterns, and recurring user frustrations.

Insights were synthesised into a prioritised list of problems and hypotheses, which were then tested through iterative design and prototyping.

Design Approach

We adopted a mobile-first strategy, recognising that improvements on mobile would naturally extend to desktop and other channels.

Rather than focusing on isolated fixes, we approached the application as a holistic user journey, improving clarity, guidance, and efficiency throughout the flow.

Key improvements included:

• introducing clear progress indicators to improve orientation

• simplifying form structure and removing unnecessary fields

• improving error handling and inline guidance

• integrating services such as address lookup and ID verification

• refining content and microcopy to better explain the process

• redesigning the document signing experience for clarity

At the same time, we worked closely with engineering to enable A/B and multivariate testing, allowing the team to validate changes and continuously optimise the experience.

Technical & Product Foundations

Beyond UX improvements, the project also focused on product scalability and maintainability.

We reworked parts of the front-end architecture to:

• support faster iterations and safer releases

• enable experimentation and data-driven decision-making

• reduce long-term maintenance costs

This shift was critical in moving the product towards a more mature, experimentation-driven model.

Impact

The redesigned application form delivered measurable improvements:

• +10% increase in mobile conversion

• +1% increase in desktop conversion

• Reduction in average completion time (~16 seconds)

• Significant decrease in customer support queries and lender calls

The learnings from this work were later applied across other channels, improving in-store, email, and phone-based journeys and creating a more consistent omni-channel experience.