Monzo
Adding Universal Search to the Monzo app
Decreasing the amount of time it takes to complete core actions
CONTEXTSearch on Mobile
The goal of this initiative is to add Universal Search to the Monzo mobile app to make it easier and faster for users to find what they need. This initiative aligns with Monzo’s mission of "make money work for everyone".
In this Case Study, I will evaluate the current Monzo offering and user base to determine common pain points Monzo users have. I will then define an MVP solution that addresses those core pain points. Finally, I will set success metrics and a rollout plan to test our MVP solution with a subset of the Monzo user base.
Monzo App Home Screen (March 2025)
HYPOTHESISIf Monzo adds Universal Search to their Mobile app, then users will be able to complete core tasks faster.
THE MARKETWhat are competitors doing?
In the UK the main competitors to Monzo are the other two established ‘challenger banks’ Revolut and Starling .
Looking initially at Monzo’s biggest competitor - Revout - where their users can already perform a Universal Search straight from the home screen. The search bar is in the prominent central position at the top of the screen.
When users tap on the search bar, they are navigated to a full Search screen, with placeholder search terms presented that refreshes every (approx) 4 seconds to show the broad range of different searches that can be performed.
Revolut App Home Screen (March 2025)
Search screen with placeholder
THE AUDIENCEMonzo’s users
There are two user groups of Monzo: individuals (10m+) and businesses (600k+).
There is a single Monzo app which caters to both groups. We will focus on individual users for this case study as they make up >90% of users.
Over half of Monzo users (52%) are aged under 35.
Without explicit usage data around the use cases listed, we can make an assumption based on UI prominence that the three primary individual user use cases are:
Payments - Sending and Requesting money
Savings Pots - Helping users save towards a financial goal
Spending tracking - Helping users manage their spending
To design the most impactful Universal Search feature, we’ll solve core pain points for a target user segment based on these primary use cases.
To summarize, we’ll be focusing on users who:
Live in the United Kingdom
Are under the age of 35
Send & request money, save towards a financial goal and track spending
Use-cases of Monzo
Current Account - withdrawals and deposits
Payments - sending and requesting
Savings Pots
Spending Tracking
Card Management including freezing or blocking
Credit Cards
Loans
Budgeting Tools
Investing
Pensions
Mortgage Tracking
Standing Orders for regular payments
Bill Splitting
Payment Reminders
International Money Transfers
EEA Fee-Free Withdrawals
Credit Insights
USER INSIGHTSWhat are the pain points that these users need addressed?
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Hard time finding a contact to request money from or send money to:
The person may not be a Monzo user yet
The person’s name may be different on Monzo compared to how the user knows them
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Hard time sifting through a lot of transactions to find the one they want:
There may be older transactions that don’t appear on the Home screen or are way down on the Activity screen
Users may want to find transactions by different criteria (date/name/amount)
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Not knowing where to go on the Monzo app to find what they need:
User may not know they need to navigate to a specific tab to access certain information/features
Users may go to one tab thinking they’ll find what they need just to later discover it was in another area of the app
USER JOURNEYHow does a user find historic spend transactions?
Nancy, 26
Scenario: Nancy is addicted to the new bakery down the road and is concerned at how much she is spending. She wants to check how much she has spent there since it opened a few months ago.
Nancy’s expectations:
I will be able to find my old transactions
I will be able to see the transactions by vendor
This should only take a few seconds
Nancy sees the Activity section on the home screen has a recent transaction with the bakery.
The ‘All Activity’ screen lists out my transactions but there’s no way to filter by vendor and no totals.
I know it’s not in ‘Payments’, maybe it’s in the ‘Trends’ section??
OK here is the info on spending but it’s grouped by spending category.
OK getting there at last. I want to see the total spend with the bakery for the year.
Wow that was tedious!
TAKEAWAYMonzo is lacking an easy way for users to find what they need and complete core actions.
Competitors like revolt and many other native apps like eBay, Instagram, Venmo have universal search on the home screen.
Universal search enables users to quickly get to what they need.
Right now, core use cases like finding a contact or transaction are difficult and time consuming for users to complete .
OBJECTIVEDecrease the time it takes to complete core actions on the Monzo app by empowering users to search through all content and features from one search box.
We will focus on solving core pain points through our Universal Search feature.
By helping users find contacts to request/send money, find and manage transactions, and more quickly navigate through the app, we’re helping execute on Monzo’s mission to "make money work for everyone".
FEATURE PRIORITISATION/MVPWhat should be in the MVP?
As shown in the use-cases above the Monzo app has a lot of content and functionality. Creating a Universal Search that encompasses all content across the app would be a significant undertaking.
In order to ensure it is worth investing resources here, we want to start by testing an MVP of Universal Search.
If successful, we can continue to build out in subsequent iterations.
MVP ScopeThe feature set for our Universal Search MVP will be limited to an empty state and a results state because these states are the fewest required to provide users with context/value and allow us to test our hypothesis ‘If Monzo adds Universal Search to their Mobile app, then users will be able to complete core tasks faster.’
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We’ll add a Universal Search bar on the Home screen. Tapping on it will open Search autocomplete view with keyboard.
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Users will see Individual Contacts they frequently engages with
Users will see Merchants they frequently engage with
Users will see recent transactions
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Dynamic results to visually reflect result types (contacts vs transactions vs merchants)
FUTURE ITERATIONSWhat is out of scope?
Future iterations could increase the depth and breadth of functionality for the Universal Search as follows:
Auto-expand core options within search results instead of navigating user to new screen. For example, if a user searches an individual contact and taps on a result, we can prompt them with “Send”, “Request”, or a “More” option. This will reduce friction to complete a core option and establish Universal Search as a powerful tool.
Expanded search - for Stocks, Cryptocurrencies, Charities
Search Transactions in different ways (date, amount)
Additional routes & search terms will be evaluated based on data we can gather from early iterations. We will specifically look at users who begin searching, fail and abandon.
MEASURING SUCCESSMetrics
North Star Metric
Avg Time From App Open to Core Use Case Completion
If we are solving our user’s main pain points, we should see a decrease in the amount of time it takes for users to complete core actions. Core Use Case Completion is an umbrella metric measuring users who do one of sending money, requesting money, or viewing a past transaction
Secondary Metrics
These secondary metrics will help us determine if there are different areas of the Universal Search feature we may be able to improve/optimize.
App open → core use case completion rate within a session.
Does saving time to reach a contact/transaction/etc with Universal Search get more users to complete core use cases?
Home view → search start rate
How many users are even starting searches? Is the Search bar appealing and clear enough to prompt users to search?
Search start → abandon rate
How many users begin searching for something and then abandon?
Search start → result click rate
How many users begin searching and select a result? Does this differ by result type? (e.g. finding transactions takes more time than contacts)
Breakdown of result type clicks
Are users just searching for one type of content (contacts for example) or are they also searching for transactions and merchants?
LAUNCH & GTM STRATEGYTesting Universal Search
To ensure we are improving the Monzo app’s user experience by introducing Universal Search, we will be testing this feature. We will A/B test our MVP with a small group of new and existing users within our target user segment.
Versions:
Control: Current Monzo app without Universal Search (Start at 90% of audience)
Variant: Monzo app with Universal Search (Start at 10% of audience)
Audience: Users who…
Live in the United Kingdom
Are under the age of 35
Primary Metric:
Average time between app open → core use case completion
We will be including new users in this experiment to ensure adding a Universal Search bar doesn’t negatively impact core account setup / top of funnel metrics. We will be starting the A/B test variant at 10% of our target audience so that we can iterate without affecting the majority of users in this audience.
If the results of the A/B test are positive (primary measure of success achieved and no negative side effects) we can expand our test cohort to all users in the United Kingdom regardless of age.
From there, we will begin improving the Universal Search experience by executing additional features on the roadmap and eventually expand Universal Search to be supported internationally.
Note: If our A/B test results are negative, we will investigate potential causes, iterate, and re-run the experiment.
Control (A)
Variant (B)
CONCLUSIONSUMMARY
I’d recommend A/B testing an MVP of Universal Search with the goal of decreasing the amount of time it takes to complete core actions (send money, request money, view/manage transactions).
This MVP aims to solve core pain points that users in our target user segment face.
If the test returns positive results, I’d recommend Monzo expands the functionality of Universal Search and eventually rolls out the feature globally.
Thank you for checking out this case study!
