Amanda Wondergem | Visual Designer

🧐 The problem

Borrowell, a web and mobile app, helps Canadians achieve financial wellness with free credit scores, reports and personalized products.

Credit Builder is a product designed to help Canadians strengthen their credit history. User research revealed that 60% of applicants didn’t fully understand the product. This highlighted the need for a clear cross-campaign marketing strategy to improve product education, build trust and drive adoption.

🔎 Research

User research findings from the Product team

High trust, low clarity: 5/5 users trusted the product, but 3/5 didn’t fully understand it when applying.
Support matters: 4/5 users needed to call for clarification before completing their application.
Human connection drives action: 3/5 users relied on speaking to someone to finalize their application.
Perceived as a last resort: 2/5 users viewed the product as their only solution for better financial stability.

Takeaway: Lack of user understanding indicated a need for clearer messaging and education across product and marketing.

Common sections in competitor research include:

Hero section: Clear product benefit
How it works section: Explain the product in detail
Social proof

Takeaway: This research provided a clear starting point for structuring page content.

🚀 Design approach

Cross-team collaboration: Partnered with Product and Marketing teams to align on user pain points, personas ( <600 credit score, newcomers, students), value propositions and key messaging.
Impactful messaging:
- Clear copy: Simplified how it works and product benefits based on user feedback.
- Explainer video: Produced a video to clarify product functionality and replicate personal interactions.
- Goals: Minimize customer inquiries, improve user understanding and increase product adoption.
Continuous optimization: Through A/B testing and data-driven decisions, we optimized email copy and ad persona targeting to maximize engagement and conversions.

Building credit catches attention: 48% email open rate proves it

🚧 Overcoming challenges

Getting stakeholder buy-in

Proposed an explainer video backed by research to address user confusion. Regular cross-team updates secured approval.

Communicating effort vs. benefit to stakeholders

Used research to show how video could improve user understanding, increase engagement, and reduce support inquiries, justifying the investment.

Managing competing priorities

To balance workloads, I extended the timeline and onboarded a freelancer, ensuring on-time delivery with a projected 5% adoption rate with the video.

Pitched an explainer video to resolve product confusion

📊 Iterating

‍Ads & landing page

Fast, effective execution
- Leveraged pre-existing templates for faster delivery while maintaining brand consistency across channels.
- Impact: Achieved a 10% click-through rate (CTR) and a 4% conversion rate.
Personalization
- Tailored landing pages for specific personas (newcomers and students) to address unique needs and motivations.Impact: Increased conversion rate to 8% for newcomer-targeted campaigns.
  - Impact: Conversion rate of 8% for targeting newcomers.
Continuous optimization
- A/B tested hero copy and imagery, expanded content with a "Features" section, and spotlighted a 41 point credit score improvement as the unique selling point (USP).
- Impact: Enhanced messaging drove a 6% conversion rate with updated branding and data-driven USP.