HDFC Credila Experience Evaluation

HDFC CREDiLA: Experience Audit

To evaluate and analyze the HDFC CrediLa website experience, identifying inconsistencies and assessing areas for improvement to enhance its overall user experience.

My Role

Research · Experience evaluation

Timeline

1 week

Platform

Banking and education loan

Process- One week sprint

Discover

Study website to understand its architecture, content structure, user flows, and identify primary user goals.

Define

List key tasks- methods to identify usability issues, assessing navigation, UI or benchmarking other products of the same brand.

Evaluate

Use usability principles and heuristics to assess website layout, navigation, consistency, experience and users flows.

Analyze

Analyze the visual design by testing for inconsistencies in UI and brand language across the website and it's co-websites.

Recommend

Summarize issues, prioritize fixes, and provide actionable solutions for better usability and design.

Brief

To conduct a comprehensive experience audit of the HDFC CREDiLA website to identify issues in navigation paths, UI patterns and, design system, to derive insights and recommend areas for improvement.

Summary of findings from analysis

Content Discoverability

The header's missing dropdowns and search functionality hinder navigation, while the footer's redundant links and poor link practices, along with cumbersome text lists, impede content prioritization and clarity.

Consistency

Header layout varies between header and other pages, breadcrumbs lack a consistent pattern in displaying user navigation, and varying banner image sizes impact overall page transitions.

Navigation

Unexpected redirects disrupt navigation flow, causing users to lose track. The lack of continuous navigation forces frequent backtracking. Critical info, like loan interest rates, isn't prominently displayed, requiring multiple steps.

Redundancy

The extensive content pages feature repetition at multiple levels of navigation, causing user frustration as they are forced to revisit information they have already seen.

Accessibility

The website faces accessibility issues with poor visibility in breadcrumbs and banners, low-contrast fonts in the footer, and insufficient contrast in multiple areas, affecting content readability.

Presentation

Pages are unorganized with poor prioritization, visual hierarchy, and spacing, hindering content scanning. Left-column tabs lack logical grouping, affecting navigation.

User Control

Inconsistent use of blue text for links misleads users, and hyperlinks are often hard to identify. Additionally, some tabs unpredictably direct users to external or internal pages, creating frustration due to lack of control.

Form Format

Input fields lack consistent spacing and organization. The banner image misleadingly suggests a three-step process. The help icon's inconsistent placement offers no guidance, and address fields don't auto-populate content.

Functionality

The website lacks personalization features, making it impossible to track activities or monitor application status. The loan application process is unclear, with insufficient guidance and no feedback on submission.

Understanding what users are saying

"Some pages have repetitive content, and the navigation is sometimes confusing, requiring me to go back and forth."

It's frustrating when I can't just type to search for the topic I'm looking for."

"The loan application process is explained in detail, but sometimes it's hard to find key details at a glance."

"I submitted the form but I'm not sure how to track the progress, which makes me call customer support multiple times to ask for status. I am left waiting, unsure of the timeline.
It's difficult to distinguish between processes that need to be carried out online and those requiring offline follow-up."

Evaluating the visual design parameters

A glimpse of the evaluation report

Recommended improvement areas from UX audit

Navigation & Content Discoverability

Intuitive navigation patterns must be implemented for users to quickly seek information and engage more deeply.

Enhancing the header with dropdown menus and search functionality
Organizing internal tab navigation into logical groups
Minimizing information repetition
Providing key information upfront, such as the Rate of Interest, a key decision-making aspect

Progressive Application Process

Divide the application process into systematic phases to reduce the cognitive overload.

Phases: Logging in, selecting a loan plan, and further providing detailed information.
Users can upload first-hand documents for review and approval. Offer constant guidance and notifications. The user should be made aware of the application status.
This allows personalization of content that boosts user engagement and brand trust.

Visual Design & Presentation

Need to build a coherent design system and layout to enhance the UX, reinforce brand identity and fosters user trust.

Maintain balanced presentation of content and visual style
Consistency in design elements such as font styles, colors, spacing, and banners across the website and app is crucial.
Grouping information and establishing a visual hierarchy to make content easy to scan through.