Investor Portal Login Redesign
Product Manager | Blackstone Technology & Innovations | April 2020
Key Responsibilities:
Competitor Analysis, Process Flow Documentation, UI Design, HTML/CSS Review, Launch, Troubleshooting
The Challenge
First impressions rarely come with second chances. A Limited Partner’s (L. P.) experience logging into the Blackstone Investor Portal —his introduction to Blackstone’s digital footprint— was in dire need of polish.
L. P.s commit millions in capital to Blackstone funds and regularly visit the Investor Portal, BXAccess, to monitor their investments, download fund documents, manage legal preferences, and respond to capital calls. Redesigning the login experience would facilitate existing L. P.s performing these actions as well as attract new ones.
As a Product Manager on Blackstone’s Investor Portal team, I asked myself: how do I position Blackstone as a technology-forward, trustworthy firm that offers hassle-free, reliable investment* opportunities?
*investments ending with an unbelievable number of zeroes
The Solution
I modernized the Blackstone Investor Portal login experience with subtle but effective design anchors to promote feelings of trust and enthusiasm in L. P.s.
Aware that L. P. trust is rooted in security, I coupled the redesign with the launch of 2-factor authentication (2FA) via Twilio, enabling L. P.s to protect sensitive data. To launch this brand-new feature, I collaborated heavily with Engineering and L. P. Relations.
Fueling my own recommendations, I studied login experiences of competing Private Equity firms and identified patterns in UX across the industry. I created low- and high-fidelity prototypes and process flows* on Adobe Illustrator and Lucidchart while designing a friendlier user journey of logging into BXAccess. Finally, I surveyed L. P.s to validate our redesign and quantify impact.
*due to confidentiality agreements with Blackstone, I cannot publish early prototypes
Out with the Old
Prior to 2020, the BXAccess login page was functional, but it was not beautiful or trust-inspiring. It did not constitute an experience so much as it extended an avenue for task completion.
It offered self-serve username and password recovery features but lacked 2FA capabilities and FAQs, instead directed to Blackstone’s Help Desk.
The presence of Blackstone’s brand was minimal at best.
Competitor Analysis
I inspected the login flows of 6 of Blackstone’s competitors and composed a feature comparison matrix:
| Brand Presence | Grand Background | Centered Inputs | Username Recovery | Password Recovery | "Remember Me" Toggle | General Help | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KKR | Strong | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Apollo | Weak | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Thoma Bravo | Weak | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Carlyle | Strong | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| TPG | Weak | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Warburg Pincus | Average | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
I converged on elements that are consistently leveraged across the most inviting login pages:
Grand Backgrounds
Large investments are more palatable when linked to grandeur, great fulfillment, or substantial influence. Wealth management firms, then, benefit from evoking broader senses of purpose in investors.
Majestic backgrounds featured in KKR’s and TPG’s login experiences evoke broad senses of purpose at the onset. Powerful visuals transport investors to dazzling settings. Immediately, they are led to associate commitments with wide-reaching impact.
Username/Password Recovery Flows
Empowering users to instantly and independently resolve conflict during login journeys minimizes chances of distraction and abandonment. Speed and self-sufficiency are undeniably valuable to investors.
All of Blackstone’s evaluated competitors provide online password recovery flows, while all but KKR and Carlyle provide username/email recovery flows. Though Apollo readily extends both username and password online-reset flows, 1-on-1 support is also easily accessible.
I also identified design choices that create friction in the login journey:
Weak Brand Image
Standard placement of a firm’s logo in the top-left of the screen is appropriately controlled but delays users’ association of a webpage with the relevant firm. This detracts from users’ confidence and likelihood of investment.
KKR and Carlyle effectively utilize the center of the screen to boldly proclaim their brand names. As a result, users are reassured that they’ve landed where intended and are interfacing with a proud firm that embraces its reputation.
Missing “Remember Me” Toggle
With speed pre-established as valuable to investors, shrinking the effort of reentering basic credentials during login is critical. A “Remember Me” checkbox capitalizes on this exact value.
Further, a “Remember Me” checkbox casts the act of logging in as a routine, low-barrier process and, over time, reinforces that saving login credentials with a given website is harmless, building trust between investors and firms.
In with the New
We did it! After intense collaboration and iteration, my team and I launched the redesigned Blackstone Investor Portal login experience in April 2020.
In addition to incorporating proven UX tactics like grand backgrounds, we:
Added links to customized login experiences for investor sub-groups (e.g., BX Unit Holders, BCRED Shareholders)
Implemented 2FA to increase trust and security (with information on updating 2FA devices conveniently located in the FAQs!)
Research showed that investors typically logged into BXAccess via desktop, but we channeled spare resources into a mobile-friendly login experience to prepare for occasional edge cases. We were keen to exhibit consistency and accessibility. The same findings above drove our redesigned login experience on mobile.
L. P. Satisfaction Survey
At last, the team circulated an L. P. Satisfaction Survey to over 6,000 Blackstone L. P.s to understand the reaction to the redesigned login experience and identify areas for improvement.
The login experience was not the sole focus of this survey, which also encouraged high-net-worth individuals and multi-client investors to opine on overall UX of the Investor Portal, but it disclosed sentiment around the balance of ease and enjoyment in the login flow.
84%
of L. P.s find BXAccess equally or more intuitive than other portals
300+
responses received
90%
of L. P.s find BXAccess equally or more detailed than other portals
Key Takeaways
Design is subjective. Research is objective.
Each contributor has unique and worthwhile opinions about visual, spatial, and emotional elements of a design. One may champion rounded buttons, serif fonts, and a surplus of whitespace, while another may champion the opposite. Only tangible, objective research on tried-and-true design tactics, conducted outside of a project’s inherent scope, combats this well-intentioned subjectivity.
Simplicity isn’t simple to create.
My guiding principles in redesigning the BXAccess login experience were simplicity and ease-of-use, yet, there was no shortage of design nuances to accommodate. While it may seem that a username field, a password field, and a login button are the only non-negotiable components of a login page, we identified countless forks on a login journey. Expecting the unexpected in advance helps designers proactively, thoughtfully create simplicity.
No detail is above documentation.
At times, what felt like a glaring CSS error to me was hardly noticed by my developers, and what felt like a blatant oversight in specifications to my developers was a “Duh!” moment to me. Collaborating with Engineering to revitalize the BXAccess login experience taught me that it’s unfair to expect others to find obvious the same details that I do, and it’s unproductive to construct or consume documentation with several gaps. Explain as much as possible in the first go.