Inheritance Data are a fintech company and operate the UK’s leading financial asset searching platform.
Bigfork were appointed to redevelop their online portal, a web-based digital product allowing users to search for unclaimed assets, missing wills, and more.
The project
Bigfork have successful worked with Inheritance Data on their portal for several years.
We’ve made many improvements and added a wealth of new features since taking it over.
However like all websites, it had outgrown its original design. Combined with wanting to add significant new functionality, Inheritance Data decided it was time to look at a complete overhaul.
Discovery phase
The start of every project begins with discovery. The new portal wasn’t just going to be a pretty design, it’s a digital product with a commercial goal, and the update had to reflect that. During the discovery phase we:
- Sat down with Inheritance Data to learn more about how their customers use the portal
- Collated customer feedback received over the past few years to identify areas for improvement
- Conducted user testing around specific objectives to spot strengths and weaknesses
Key findings were:
- In the early days of the portal there was a face-to-face onboarding process. This was no longer the case, but the portal had little information about what it did, who it was for, how it worked, or what it cost. So, we needed to make fewer assumptions and offer more information.
- The dashboard looked very dated and unfriendly, especially compared to competitors’ offerings.
- The design wasn’t optimised for mobile, even though traffic is largely desktop PC based, we don’t want to put off non-desktop users.
- Forms were long and complex. Reducing complexity wouldn’t be possible due to the amount of information we have to ask, however the way they’re presented could be improved.
From these we produced a plan and a specification for the portal update. The specific nature of the portal, and the need to be flexible with future developments, meant a bespoke development made the most sense; no off-the-shelf system came close to doing what we needed.
User-focused design
The Inheritance Data portal is aimed at both professionals (solicitors, financial advisors) and individuals (for example, someone acting as an executor).
This means some people will login to the portal daily, others might only ever use it once. And the design had to be something that would work for both types of users.
Our solution was to design a new interface that balanced requirements by having shortcuts to common functions for regular users, while offering a longer route with explanations for the uninitiated.
Forms were the other big focus area, as the form to submit a search is long and detailed. To improve the usability of this form we:
- Redesigned it as a single column (apart from where fields had a logical grouping)
- Added explanations throughout
- Clearly indicated fields that are required, and displayed detailed messages for errors
- Made certain fields appear based on previous answers to keep the form more concise
White labels, Integrations and APIs
Another key target audience for Inheritance Data are third-parties reselling their service, including solicitors and tech companies. To accommodate these, we:
- Gave Inheritance Data the ability to white label the portal for other companies
- Developed an outward facing API that allows approved companies to submit searches and access reports from outside of the portal
- Added variable pricing for different user types
Inheritance Data are also constantly improving their offering, as part of the relaunch we developed new API integrations with:
- The National Wills Register
- Argus Vickers
- Equifax
And an integration with The London Gazette is in the works, along with some other developments that are currently under-wraps.
