A Bold Step Forward: Designing the New NerdWallet Experience

After establishing the vision for a personalized NerdWallet experience, my team and I turned our focus to designing, building, and launching the first release of the product. Our goal was to transition from a content-driven company to a full-fledged product company that provides users with a deeply personalized experience across all their financial decisions. We aimed to transform NerdWallet from simply a source of financial advice into a trusted, everyday companion, guiding users throughout their financial journeys.

To achieve this, we designed a comprehensive product experience centered around four key features: a Personal Discovery Feed, which would serve as a dynamic, user-centric homepage; the ability to connect and track financial accounts for deeper insights into spending and savings; Financial Goals, enabling users to set and work toward personalized financial milestones; and an improved onboarding flow that streamlined user engagement from the start. These elements worked together to create a clear, actionable roadmap for the new NerdWallet experience.

The Challenge: Aligning Multiple Roadmaps for Action

With the vision in place, our challenge was to align the organization and design the first release of the new product. I was tasked with building and leading the product design team while collaborating with cross-functional teams to define roles and responsibilities. This included leading alignment sessions with teams across credit cards, mortgages, insurance, banking, and investing to stress-test the new concepts and ensure we were on track to roll out key features like transactions, the personal discovery feed, and financial goals.

The Solution: Turning Vision Into Action

With the foundation set, the team shifted focus to executing the features that would bring the vision to life. We zeroed in on four essential components to create a truly personalized NerdWallet experience:

1. Transactions & Accounts: We enabled users to connect their financial accounts, providing a centralized view of their spending habits and balances. This expanded their financial profile beyond just a credit score, giving them a fuller picture of their financial health.
2. Personal Discovery Feed: Serving as the homepage for logged-in users, this dynamic, relevancy-based feed displayed tailored insights and updates based on users' unique financial situations. The feed was designed to evolve alongside the user's financial journey.
3. Financial Goals: A feature that allowed users to set and track specific financial milestones—whether it was paying off debt or saving for an emergency fund. These goals were integrated directly into the discovery feed, giving users a clear, actionable path toward achieving their financial aspirations.
4. Onboarding Experience: We overhauled the onboarding process to quickly communicate NerdWallet’s value, helping new users understand how the platform could meet their needs while encouraging them to engage more deeply with the product.

The Impact: Shaping NerdWallet’s Future

The launch of the MVP in October 2017 marked a significant milestone in NerdWallet’s transformation into a more product-driven company. The work we did not only delivered on the vision but also laid the groundwork for the company’s 2017 strategy and roadmap. The focus now shifted to creating a stronger membership experience for users, reducing dependency on SEO, and investing in deeper, more personalized product experiences that would build lasting relationships with consumers.

Key impacts of our work included:

• A More Personalized Experience: With the introduction of the personal discovery feed and financial goals, NerdWallet evolved from a resource site into a product that deeply understood its users' financial needs and aspirations.
• A New Strategy for Growth: Shifting away from SEO-driven traffic allowed NerdWallet to build a more sustainable, product-based growth model, focusing on creating long-term value for users.
• Improved Company Alignment: Through extensive collaboration and alignment with cross-functional teams, we created a shared understanding of the company’s new direction, ensuring that everyone—from marketing to engineering—was on the same page moving forward.

NerdWallet’s MVP laid a solid foundation, and as the platform continues to evolve, the company is well on its way to building deeper, more meaningful relationships with users by focusing on personalized financial clarity and actionable insights.