Improving an enrollment flow

Impact: $3.1 M in additional annual revenue in a single year
Client
Achieve
Deliverables
User Research
UX Design
UI Design
Design Strategy

As lead designer for the Home Loans product at Achieve, my team—a jr designer and UX writer—was tasked with increasing both the start rate and completion rate for the application. We moved quickly to deliver an improved experience for our consumers that exceeded business goals.

The goal
Increase start and completion rates

Current experience:

  1. After answering a long series of questions on a partner site, a user arrives on our site where they are required to provide additional, and often redundant, information
  2. They then land on a long task list of information to provide
  3. The input sections expand inline, resulting a rather overwhelming experience
Discovery
Learning from our competitors

To uncover improvement opportunities, I designed and conducted a research study that compared our current experience and our two main competitors, Figure and Better. Opportunities identified:

  • Address misconceptions and distrust of HELOCs
  • Provide context as to why we are asking for PII and how we protect it
  • Do a better job building trust in our company
  • Help answer questions during the application process
  • Provide a way for people to see how a loan would impact their overall budget
Design Strategy
Focus on the intersection of business goals and user needs

With a better understanding of user needs, we were able to focus design efforts on the highest impact for both consumers and the business:

  • Provide more context and info about HELOCs
  • Build trust through transparency
  • Provide help answering questions
  • Provide info about what to expect and next steps

I worked with engineering and product to define the scope of MVP, focusing on updating how information is collected.

Testing+Iteration
Key takeaways/design decisions
  • Chunking information into category cards was strongly preferred over a long task list
  • Stick with list of multiple choice questions rather than update to a single question per screen experience
  • Provide both a guided experience and a task list view. Creating a pattern for this turned out to be the trickiest part.
The solution
An improved experience

We were able to balance technical and time constraints to deliver a more usable, elegant experience for our users.
One of the key features was the introduction of a new pattern, a category card that allowed users to either take a guided approach or tackle items in the order of their choosing. We also moved information collection to a single screen experience, reducing cognitive load.

Impact
Exceeded target goals

This redesign shipped in Q4 2023 and was a success. We increased the application start rate by 28% and the completion rate by 36%. Achieve Home Loans saw an additional $3.1M in 2024.

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