Explore consumer banking application experiences that convert | Blend
Preview of the 3 consumer banking application experience ebooks

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Delivering a best-in-class consumer banking application experience that converts

Application abandonment is a tough hurdle for lenders to overcome. We’ve compiled relevant pieces of content to break down what’s happening in the application cycle and how you can support your customers throughout their journey. See how offering an easily accessible and consistent experience can help get your customers to tap the “submit” button.

Download our three ebooks for a deeper look at transforming your application pain points into an experience that converts. For an introduction, continue exploring below.

Get the full ebook

Explore the key takeaways

We’ve pulled out key highlights from our three ebooks to help you navigate application pain points on the go. Use the section headers below to dive deeper into the specific areas that interest you.

Our short ebooks are here to help you dive deeper into three common pain points around the application experience:

  • Underperforming submission rates
  • Inconsistency across product lines
  • Measuring up to consumer expectations
Illustration of steps leading up to a mobile phone

Making sense of low digital conversion rates

The abandonment rate for online account opening is 19% — an often-frustrating figure for financial institutions that are trying to nail their application experience. The top five factors that influence abandonment rates are:

  1. Applicant fatigue
  2. Ineffective user design
  3. Ease of omnichannel interaction
  4. Interconnections between products and tech stack
  5. Increasingly competitive environment

Optimizations around any of these factors can help differentiate your digital self-serve experience. When addressing drop-off, don a customer-centric lens, supporting customers with the following five principles:

  1. Support customers wherever they are
  2. Respect consumers’ time and attention
  3. Make customers feel known
  4. Align processes with the stop-and-start realities of daily life
  5. Provide a guiding hand, digital or otherwise

Achieving a high-converting application is a process. It’s only one piece of the puzzle on the customer journey, but it sets the tone for how the remaining process will unfold. Start by examining how mature your digital application framework is. Was it designed with the entire customer journey in mind?

Preview of the digital conversion guide
Download the ebook on application submission rates

Tackling digital inconsistencies

Customers expect consistency across interactions with their financial institution. A disconnect between product application experiences can damage your potential to deepen relationships with current clients and the ability to attract new ones.

Lenders often employ point solutions, which may provide great individual interfaces but are frequently siloed, resulting in application processes varying greatly between products. Digital Lending Platforms can help offer consistency.

A consistent experience helps reinforce your brand identity and shows customers they’re interacting with one, united company – not just shifting through a bunch of products.  Consistency breeds trust with your customers, which can translate into two major benefits for your business: increased application completion rates and higher customer lifetime value.

Wondering where to make improvements? Look to the following areas:

  • Product information and pricing: Ensure details are the same across channels, no matter how customers inquire about them
  • Information collected on applications: Populate data already provided by customers in previous applications
  • Support and help tools: Provide the same information and level of support across touch points
  • Lending decisions: Offer decisions, including pre-approvals, quickly and consistently
  • Building relationships: Deploy systems that support both customer and banker across these journeys
Preview of the first three pages of the ebook
Download the ebook on cross-product consistency

Best practices for consumer banking applications

Borrowers have a wide array of options when it comes to choosing a financial product, so we investigated how you can stand out amongst your peers. To understand the state of the industry and create a measurable rubric, we benchmarked five factors which are critical to the success of consumer banking applications:

  1. Consistency
  2. Ease of use
  3. Clarity
  4. Efficiency
  5. Mobile-friendliness

We measured these factors across 50 small, medium, and large banks and credit unions. Overall, they scored well in when it came to:

  • Offering a quick way to access and and begin a deposit application
  • Having a consistent brand identity with unified colors and logo

There was room to improve in terms of:

  • Mobile optimization and accessibility
  • Matching application domain to brand
Ilustration of the best practices ebook
Download the ebook on application best practices

Delivering applications that convert with Blend

Blend’s Digital Lending Platform delivers on all five of the factors we discussed, helping you create a seamless customer experience that impresses borrowers at every step.

  • Consistency: Brand your experience in a uniform way across channels
  • Ease of use: The intuitive experience allows customers to start and complete applications across channels and devices
  • Clarity: A conversational interface includes in-line FAQ answers
  • Efficiency: Single sign-on authentication can enable pre-fill of information previously provided by customers
  • Mobile-friendliness: The application provides a best-in-class mobile experience

Because of these advantages, Blend customers have seen up to 3x increases in application completions.

“A few years ago, many financial institutions were ahead of the game by merely offering a digital application on their website. Those days are long gone. The digital application is one stepping stone within the larger customer experience journey, but it is a momentous opportunity for lenders. This touchpoint allows organizations to impress borrowers and build trust from the start.”

Barry MayHead of customer success at Blend
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