Understand
I spent the first month examining the research to understand the targeted customer segment. I also took time to speak with business representatives to understand the nature of the service. Zillow offers strives to provide a service that takes care of repairs, re-selling, closing, and finances. From a user standpoint, all you have to do is agree to a selling price and sign papers. The research did work to understand the motivations behind the customers who show interest in the service.
Business
Unlike flipping homes, Zillow is not transforming homes to sell at a much higher price. Zillow is instead looking to buy homes from sellers, make repairs, then use their own resources like agents and market analysis to re-sell the home fast.
What about the cost? A typical real estate agent may charge a commission fee of 5% to 6% of the purchase price, whereas Zillow commands 6% to 9% Fortunately, this fee includes the cost of any repairs and closing costs. At the end of the day, the seller may see a difference of 1-2% more from selling traditionally. The benefit in the service is the quick turnaround, no out-of-pocket costs or relationships needed with a buyer's agent.
Our customer segment are homeowners looking to sell within a 3-5 month timeline. Users may become aware of Zillow offers and competitors through marketing, searching for homes online or from word of mouth. Research has outlined 3 primary customer motivations:
Make it Convenient
These sellers wish to avoid showings, repairs and preparing homes for listings on the open market.
Make it Certain
These sellers value a certain sale (no consent negotiation) and having control on closing date over maximizing price.
Make it Competitive
These sellers wish for an offer within the expectation of their home value and struggle to compromise. While Zillow's offers may not seem competitive, they're within 5% of the sales price 90% of the time. Based on our internal research, the main issue is around sellers' perception of home value. Unfortunately, home value is based on market trends of recently sold homes. Home facts that play the biggest role are sq footage, and a number of beds and baths, but not things like year built or hardwood floor. In addition, Susan may realize she is not interested in the value prop of connivance, speed, certainty if it means losing a 1,000-3,000k.
The user journey
After looking into the customer segment, I took a thorough analysis of conversion rates to see what the experience suggested or where it fell short. I soon realized there was a major dropout rate for most customers. I worked with research to illustrate the customer journey to identify where customers were dropping out and piece together the issues at hand.
The most significant point of drop off is at the initial offer where Susan is presented with the market value of the home which is based on similar homes recently sold. This is a high, intense moment where a customer is told the value of the home they have been living in for x number of years. It can be emotionally tough to hear it's any less than the perceived value. To make matters more challenging Zillow has made its mark on predicting home value with the Zestimate, an algorithm that uses recently sold prices in the area to calculate an average home price in the area. A Zestimate is a number based prediction that can not take in facts, features, or condition of a home. All is to say a Zestimate may differ from a precise market value which can change month to month.
The most significant point of drop off is at the initial offer where Susan is presented with the market value of the home which is based on similar homes recently sold. This is a high, intense moment where a customer is told the value of the home they have been living in for x number of years. It can be emotionally tough to hear it's any less than the perceived value. To make matters more challenging Zillow has made its mark on predicting home value with the Zestimate, an algorithm that uses recently sold prices in the area to calculate an average home price in the area. A Zestimate is a number based prediction that can not take in facts, features, or condition of a home. All is to say a Zestimate may differ from a precise market value which can change month to month.
The MVP product
After looking at the customer journey and potential challenges I also looked to the current dashboard experience customers had as a reference point. Considering we were undergoing a re design there was opportunity to understand why in relationship to the user interface.
The goal of the dashboard: is keep customers informed and aware of the home selling process. While the MVP provided an overall view of the process, how the process was positioned seemed confusing, language like "Requested offer" and "Advisor call" has no real meaning or provides any net new information. The image below provide a further breakdown of the critique.
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Design sprint
To kick off the re-design we got everyone involved in a design sprint. The goal of the sprint was to look at the research, customer journey to best understand the customer pain-points when selling their home to Zillow. Then we started brainstorming solutions for those pain points. We ran different activities to get people thinking from a customer perceptive while having product and engineers help determine constraints.
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Considerations moving forward
After the sprint we complied concepts and themes that came out of our collective thinking.
Solutions to consider moving forward:
- Offer more tools and information to empower Susan when selling
- Reposition the title of each step in selling process to give better context to the selling/buying relationship with Zillow
- Provide a more transparent explanation for how home value is calculated also in relationship to the Zestimate
- Work with the support team to create more opportunities of transparency
Design
The strategic plan for design was accomplished in the design sprint and further followup. Now was the time to create a flexible layout, an interactive indicator, new content strategy, and app design in extension to the web. In collaborating with other designers we co-designed the indicator and content, then I focused on the market value and evaluation page and translating the entire dashboard in ios & Andriod.
Layout
The layout allows to quick access to any step in the selling process. Each section has an outline of what Zillow is doing and allows users to tap into more information such as comparing traditional home selling costs with Zillow Offers service.
App
Having a dashboard solution in app allows for quick and easy status check. The main action to move forward in selling is a sticky button at the bottom of the screen. The design differs slightly in create ios style and compatibility for example haptics are used when a user taps a progress circle in the header.
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Interactive indicator
The anchor of the experience is this tab like progress bar that allows urs to staty up-to-date and navigate views.
The user experience
Currently the digital experience is not enough to relay the selling process. Having only a digital representation makes the experience seem almost too easy. For every step in the process a Zillow support agent walks sellers through the details. Once the call is fished users have a dashboard to reflect at a later time.
One of the main entry points into the Zillow offers experience is the landing page as well as "Apply now" CTA's through out the Zillow experience. I worked with another product designer and well as the marketing team to observer and give feedback on the messaging and framing of the page. Once a user taps "Apply now" they enter a questionnaire to give more information on their house and selling journey. Once submitted Susan receives a push notification and email to navigate them to their dashboard experience. A customer support agent calls with in 24 hours to answer questions and understand the seller more.
Another designer worked on the questionnaire, so having close collaboration with both designers helped create a seamless end-to-end experience.
Once the user navigates to their dashboard they can review the information they entered in the application, call support and get an overview of next steps. Similar to tracking a package having insight into the timeline helps keep important mile stones in per view.
The next stage is viewing the market value of the home with the comparable homes used as reference displayed. The user can dig deeper and see the fees that eventually comes into play at a later stage to prep expectations. Customer support calls first to discuss the value over the phone to ensure a human connection before the dashboard loads. Stakeholders at Zillow insisted this human connection as a key enabler.
After the user understand their home value they need to schedule a home evaluation to have an evaluator check the condition of the home. This step is curtail in deterring a final offer to customers. Customer support will call if Suasn doesn't respond. There is an evaluation checklist that gives insight into what the evaluator will review.
At the final stage, Susan gets an offer with the break down of fees with a net proceed in green. This is esstientally the contract in digital form. The customer can sign in person or digitally through doc-u-sign. The support agent calls to walk through the umbers.
Learnings
The biggest challenge and opportunity was working on an experience that changes the mental model of users. We introduced a new way to sell a home which is exciting but also scary. It was imperative, I worked closely with research to maintain an understanding of user pain points in the traditional selling journey as well as the ones introduced in the new model. It was exciting to bring new ways of doing things to people but also disappointing when we didn't meet expectations. A true rollercoaster.
The biggest improvement in the dashboard experience was allowing customers to see the recently sold homes in the area to draw an anchor to price reasoning.
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