Putting Martin Lewis in the pocket of UK consumers

Founded by Martin Lewis in 2003, MoneySavingExpert.com is now the UK's biggest consumer website, with more than 16 million users visiting the site each month. It’s dedicated to cutting its users’ bills and fighting their corner with journalistic research, cutting-edge tools and a massive community – all focused on finding deals, saving cash and campaigning for financial justice.

MSE’s initial brief was simple. It wanted to elevate the MSE experience by providing its community with more personalised money saving opportunities via a new mobile app. Its vision for the app was that it should better serve its community of users by providing them with more tailored content - including weekly tips, content and tools - that would better reflect their individual financial circumstances, habits, goals and interests.

MSE is a fiercely independent consumer champion built on an underlying trust and respect with its loyal community. It practises what it preaches by operating via an iron-clad editorial code which can’t be influenced by outside advertising spend. In order to deliver a flagship product for the client, it was important for xDesign to immerse itself in MSE’s brand values as well as familiarise itself with its whole market approach. It also needed to become embedded in MSE’s intricate network of stakeholders to ensure its work delivered on the needs of the brand's editorial team, Martin Lewis himself, and on the wider aspirations of the Group.

Having worked to understand the MSE brand, xDesign set about collaborating with key stakeholder groups to understand their unique visions for what the new app should be. Running a number of workshops, we worked to understand what existing architecture and solutions the client was operating; supported them in understanding what users would need from the app; whilst advising them on what tech was required to make their aspirations a reality. A key part of this preparatory work was to align our plans with the Group’s own platform strategy too - ensuring commonality across all of its core tech initiatives. Having synthesised a single vision for the app, we then got to work on supporting the client to develop an Open Banking tender along with supplier selection. This would allow the brand to unlock some truly powerful features for its community.

Not only did we successfully develop an app that delivers MSE’s full web experience on a mobile platform, we were also able to make it more responsive to the needs of users. MyMSE To bring greater personalisation to the app, xDesign leveraged Open Banking functionality via TruLayer to drive content recommendations and related actions to users through the MyMSE section. As a result, individuals now receive more relevant money-saving opportunities - meaning they get to keep more of their hard-earned cash. For those users that haven’t consented to Open Banking functionality, the app still provides them with a number of options where they can select the interests and financial goals that best suit them. As a result, MSE can better serve users via its content and tips. Personalisation of MSE Tools & Calculators Greater personalisation was also delivered to the ‘Tools’ section of the app. In becoming a MyMSE member - and giving consent for MSE to use Open Banking data - users can get more accurate and tailored outcomes from certain tools within the app. We launched the Bill Buster tool during the worst cost of living crisis in living memory. It uses Open Banking data - in tandem with an in-app experience - to offer users personalised alerts and switching recommendations for mobile and broadband contracts. The Regular Payments Detective helps users to spot what money is dripping out of their account. Both are great examples of how xDesign has been able to empower the MSE community even more via smart design and the application of sophisticated tech.

Within just 6 months, xDesign delivered the mobile project end-to-end helping both the MSE brand and the wider Group reach a number of important firsts. The new app would be the first time a core MSE product had made use of log-in capabilities for members. In addition, our unlocking of Open Banking capabilities meant that the MSE brand and wider Group would go on to use the tech across a whole host of other products and tools for the very first time too.