Just tried this out. Excellent first version of the app. Well done to the team, this was really slick, and nicely designed, I’m impressed, and excited to see how this develops. I use HL normally so that’s my reference point.
Onboarding
- I had to be validated before using the app, but is just said there was an error - it’d be better if this screen gave the specific reason you have to wait, and a time frame (usually takes a few hours or similar) - this was a good experience though as the team were on it immediately.
- Chat in the app is great - please don’t lose that personal touch as the userbase grows - this is so important to the popularity and growth of other fintechs like Monzo IMO
- The big hitch was funding the account - that felt awkward.
App Experience
- Finding and buying shares was a nice experience and worked flawlessly so far, good job, but search could do with some work - ‘s&p’ returns the same as ‘s p’
- The % gain on shares seems odd - I spent £17.50 on Barclays, worth £17.43, and it claims I made £0.02 profit - I think this should account for all costs, inc tax - profit only comes after fees/taxes. For large purchases this could be really significant.
- Share prices in £ by default and changes in % - this is excellent, I’m glad you made these choices for us
- Share graphs - nice to see 1M chosen by default - I feel like the % change above should reflect the timescale chosen though - I expected to see 1M % up there, not daily. Does it matter to an investor what % it has moved today? Should they make decisions based on that? In a way I’d rather 1Y was chosen by default to keep the timescale nice and broad.
- Share graphs - It’d be nice to see Max show a timescale, because there is none on the graph so I have no idea what it shows.
- Profile/Account - I found it a little odd that you have both Account bottom right and what seems like an Account/Profile screen under portfolio. To me the screen under portfolio is really nice and has useful info, and the Account tab has little of interest - it could easily be a subscreen of a more general Account/Profile tab which had the nice info hidden away top right on portfolio. Also when you move to multiple accounts, I don’t see how it works, unless money comes into account then you move it manually - would prefer something like this.
- The portfolio graph I can’t see yet, but there is no indication of timescale. I’d hope that will show a long timescale by default, not daily, and ideally I’d love to see it show overall growth vs investment not just the growth in the holdings you happen to hold right now. At the moment not sure what it does. I think I mean money-weighted return
- ideally would like to see contributions, dividends, growth somewhere broken down over time. - BT tagline seems off - I’d keep them quirky and fun, but never derogatory
- I think the app may have a timer to require the pin for entry? I’d much rather just use fingerprint and only fall back to pin if that fails. It’s confusing to be prompted for the pin sometimes but not other times and it is less secure than the fingerprint IMO.
- The bank account setup experience was the only bit which was not smooth and needs work. I think a direct debit set up within the app would be better (as in the hl web app from memory). You should not have to leave the app to fund it. If DD is impossible might be worth accepting card payments (with min/max) just to smooth out onboarding and get people hooked.
- The forum is great and it’s really nice to see you soliciting opinions from customers here
Wishlist for the app:
- Direct debits to pay in
- Limit orders (without a date limit please - HL has a 90 day limit which I find pretty short)
- A revised UI when you introduce ISA/SIPP
- Search by emoji - I want to see tesla when I put in
- Allow favourite stocks with a click - though lists are good too, perhaps favourites could be a list?
- Allow filtering the universe - I’d like to be able to filter by different kinds (bond, stock, ETF), markets, criteria like dividend cover etc
- As someone else suggested, I’d love to see sharing of user generated lists of stocks too - this social aspect could be really interesting, and could be developed while keeping you execution only (which I understand is the direction you want to take)?
- Would be nice to see a longer history of stocks - up to 10 or 20 years would be interesting, and more background info from trusted sources over time