User segmentation | Longitudinal research | Mixed methods
Company: IG Group | Markets: Australia & UAE
01
Business Problem
Beyond the MVP
IG Markets had launched an MVP investment product across shares, ETFs, and crypto. As the team moved to build beyond it, the research team identified three knowledge gaps needed to be filled.
WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT INVESTOR SEGMENTS?
HOW DO THEY MAKE INVESTING DECISIONS?
WHAT DOES THE END OF END JOURNEY FROM DISCOVERY TO EXECUTION LOOK LIKE?
There was no foundational understanding of who the different types of investors were, or how they differed in behaviour and needs.
Lack of understanding of how investors discover ideas, research them, build conviction, and decide to act — or whether those journeys differ by segment.
The homepage, discover page, and portfolio section were due for redesign, but we needed to better understand what the end-to-end investor journey looked like for each segment.
Key research goals
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Map the retail investor landscape across segments and markets.
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Dive deep into how each segment actually discovers, researches, and acts on investment ideas.
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Inform what we build next and how we design it.
02
Research Approach
Who are they, and how do they invest?
PHASE 1 - QUANTITATIVE
Segmentation survey
Goal:
Map the different investor segments, how they differ and where the opportunities lie.
Method:
Large-scale survey across Singapore and Australia, designed to go beyond stated preferences to uncover emotional and behavioural drivers.
PHASE 2 - QUALITATIVE
Diary study
IG's first Diary Study
Goal:
Capture behaviour as it happens in real-time. Prior research showed investment journeys are non-linear and play out over weeks.
Method:
A two-week diary study via Indeemo with 12 participants across Australia and Singapore, followed by in-depth interviews with the same participants.
03
Key Findings
Investing decisions happen in 2 stages.
01
Conviction Building
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Is this an asset worth investing in?
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How does it fit into investing strategy?
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Are the fundamentals strong?
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Does it help me diversify?
02
Waiting for the right price
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Is this a good price to enter this investment?
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What price should I set an alert for?
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Is this the lowest it has been in a few weeks/ months?
There are two distinct types of discovery journeys to design for.
01
Finding new ideas
While the team's current priorities around discover were mostly around helping investors find new ideas, this was much less common and applied to specifc segments only.
02
Finding the right time/ price to top up existing investments.
This was the more common discovery journey. Since the user owns specific assets, conviction has been built and decision comes down to timing.
Every stage of the journey carries an anxiety.
Discover
“Is this a promising opportunity?”
01
02
Research
"Am I making the right choice?"
03
Watchlist
"What if I miss the right price?"
04
Decision
"Is this still the right pick? Is this the right moment?"
05
Monitoring
"Is my portfolio doing ok? What needs my attention?"
04
Outcomes & Impact
How the insights shaped the product
01
Homepage
INSIGHT
Monitoring leads to discovery.
Users visit regularly to check their portfolio and watchlist. Noticing what moved — a holding that dropped, a ranking that shifted, a watchlist item near target — triggers questions, sparks ideas and drives action.
INSIGHT
Three jobs when users log in.
Peace of mind (“Am I okay?”, the most common),
Opportunity scanning (“Anything I should know about?”) and
Triage and response (“Something happened — how does it affect me?”).
IMPLICATION
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Turn each check-in into a gateway: drops to add-more opportunities, watchlist targets to execution, events to thematic discovery.
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Surface what moved and why, so users can glance, then drill deeper.
Impact
The team moved from assumptions about investors to a deeper understanding of how they actually invest — and used it to set what gets built next.
PRIORITISED SEGMENTS
Data-based segments gave product, design and marketing a common language for targeting and feature priorities.
JOURNEY MAPPING
The diary study showed how investors discover, research, decide and monitor over weeks — and the anxiety that runs through every stage.
PRIORITISATION
Insights impacted feature priorities for the Homepage, Discover and Portfolio redesigns, with recommendations feeding directly into the roadmap.