Lifting notification setup engagement from 2% to 40%.
JPMorgan Chase / Chase notification settings
JPMorgan Chase / Chase notification settings
Chase sends important messages. Customers rely on alerts for account activity, security warnings, and transaction confirmations. But the experience trained customers to ignore us.
Research revealed customers were overwhelmed and disengaged:
Settings were ~5 steps deep, and many customers didn't know where control lived.
Too much information and too many options, organized by internal product names.
Customers wanted a sense of control but couldn't find it.
What leadership cared about: this risked trust erosion, increased servicing cost, and made customers more likely to miss or distrust fraud and security alerts.
The problem wasn't “too many alerts.” It was “control is hidden until frustration.”
Customers weren't failing to manage preferences because they didn't care. They failed because the app asked them to do hard configuration work at the worst possible time, after they were already frustrated. So instead of improving a giant toggle page, I changed the model: make preference selection easy upfront, and make ongoing management feel familiar and trustworthy.
I replaced configuration overload with three clear paths and an inbox mental model.
An overwhelming settings task became a single confident choice, with room to refine later.
Notifications and secure messages behave like an inbox, so customers recognize what a message is and feel in control.
Fraud, security, and non-user-initiated activity are treated differently from routine alerts. Less noise, same high-signal trust.
The flows we designed and tested.
The full native experience required 18+ months. Rather than wait, I got buy-in for a web-first MVP, mobile web within the app, that proved value fast while earning the right to larger platform investment.
This approach let us make significant strides within the limits of our resources and technology, while working toward the long-term vision.
The web-first MVP proved the concept, and earned investment for the broader vision.
The jump from 2% to 40% didn't come from better toggles. It came from questioning whether notification management should be reactive and buried at all.
The pattern: reduce cognitive load while protecting trust-critical communication, then ship a proof-oriented MVP that earns the right to bigger platform investment.
The Trade Desk / DealDesk
