Marcus by Goldman Sachs launched in 2016 as a push into the retail consumer banking market. The attractive rate of the savings account had a groundswell network effect among the mass-affluent demographic and became an immediate success. The servicing for Marcus customers was a web-only experience until the launch of the app in 2020. The mission was to make a best-in-class native app experience to service the millions of Marcus customers, as well as increase deposits. Within one year of app launch, Marcus deposits doubled from $55 billion to $110 billion, and the app currently sits in the iOS app store with 110k+ 5 star reviews.
The high-level information architecture for the MVP of the app is a simple three-tab navigation featuring the home feed, accounts tab, and profile & settings tab.
The app header was designed to welcome the customer and ease them into an experience, as opposed to displaying rows of numbers commonly found in most financial apps. Dynamic, contextually relevant content was prioritized, based on the customer's account activity. A library of background visuals rotates daily to provide a fresh experience upon app load.
The team experimented with concepts for a calculator tile in the home feed that would guide customers towards setting up recurring transfers to meet their goals. One concept featured a flower on a tree as a slider to adjust the desired savings amount, but it was not ultimately implemented. Nonetheless, it was a fun exercise for the team to experiment with.
In the account details tile, a simple and intuitive interactive data visualization helps savings and lending customers to see their progress and bring more engagement to the experience.
Making a transfer was the top job to be done. Multiple entry points make it easy in the customer journey to make it happen.
