This case study is still a WIP

Background

Capitalize offers free rollvers and earns a commission when users roll over their 401(k) to a partnered financial institutions. The product works with any institution, but the business only gets paid when users select a partner. Getting that selection right — without feeling pushy or confusing — was one of the most important UX problems in the funnel.

Previous tests on the partner selection page had not moved the needle, and some had hurt conversion. Stakeholders came to me with a clear request: build a page that grouped all institutions into categories. I wanted to determine whether that was the right answer.

• Timeline: Q2 2022
• Role: Lead Designer
• Team Composition: Product Manager, Engineer, CEO
• Company: Capitalize Money

Goals & Requirements

• Increase monetized rollovers
• Reduce Drop-off
• Don’t negatively impact overall conversion

Process

Questioning Assumptions

Stakeholders wanted to show every institution at once, organized into labeled groups. The logic made sense on paper: give users full information, organized for comparison. But I wasn’t sure that was how people actually made this decision. Before designing anything, I wanted to understand what users were optimizing for when choosing a provider, and whether showing everything helped or overwhelmed them.

What Research Told Us

• Adding options did not help them choose, it just added noise. The (The Paradox of Choice) research (Iyengar & Lepper’s jam study) backed this up: more options, less action. We can assume if we reduce the number of choices a user has to make on this page, we will see higher conversion.
• Users weren’t comparing. In UserTesting sessions, they picked the first logo they recognized and moved on (“See Fidelity, pick Fidelity”). They weren’t reading the full list or making an informed choice.
• Users described their goals in plain language, not financial jargon. Three clear types emerged from how people talked about what they wanted from an IRA — set it and forget it, do it yourself, and invest in alternatives (their words). Seeing the choice reduced to the simplest terms (instead of needing to do research on companies) made for quick choices.

Outcomes

• 350%+ increase in preferred partner selection from the logo wall (!!!)
• No decrease in conversion, NPS, or product satisfaction; we shaped demand without degrading the experience

Users weren’t being pushed toward partners — they were being helped to find the one that matched what they wanted.

Next Steps

This was a great solution when we had only a few partners. As we partnered with more IRA companies, we needed a way to scale this concept (this case study is on the way next!)