OVERVIEW
Sundae helps people sell their dated house for the best price in an auction. Typically, selling your house as-is to a cash buyer is a manual, offline process. Homeowners often find themselves relying on phone, text, and email communication with individual buyers, navigating the journey one tedious step at a time.
Recognizing the need for a more streamlined and transparent approach, I collaborated with a small team to design and launch Sundae's first digital experience for sellers. The portal provides greater visibility to homeowners, transforming the selling experience into a more efficient and user-friendly process.
ROLE
I collaborated extensively with the Director of Product and a lead engineer throughout the entire project. In the absence of a dedicated research capability, our direction was informed by research conducted by an external agency. This partnership allowed us to leverage insights and ensure a well-informed approach to the project.
RESEARCH & BACKGROUND
Through a combination of surveys and interviews, we gained valuable insights into the experiences and needs of our sellers. Key findings highlighted that sellers highly valued fairness, transparency, and speed in the selling process. Notably, negative experiences often arose from unmet price expectations and a lack of prompt communication follow-up.
To supplement this external perspective, I engaged with our internal sales team, tapping into their direct interactions with sellers. This revealed significant challenges, with a notable concern being that homeowners perceived working with Sundae as akin to a black box. The disconnect between conversations with our sales team and the lack of visibility into the auction process until its conclusion was a recurring issue.
APPROACH
As a startup, our focus was on agile development to create an MVP that effectively addressed the primary needs of our users while aligning with our business goals. Building on the insights gathered from research, I facilitated a brainstorming session to generate diverse ideas. Our evaluation criteria included assessing ideas for their potential impact and the required effort.
Given our commitment to enhancing seller transparency and expediting the process, our standout idea was to develop a homeowner portal. This portal would empower sellers to gain a comprehensive understanding of the Sundae selling process, take self-directed actions, and receive real-time updates on the status of their home sale.
INITIAL STEPS
Knowing that what we would design and build could be something that would be the foundation and starting point for our seller experience, I initiated the process by crafting user flows for both our envisioned future experience and the attainable features for the MVP.
In order to effectively convey our product vision, I also created conceptual, high-level designs, providing stakeholders with tangible representations. This not only facilitated a clearer understanding among stakeholders but also guided us in determining the functionality to be included in our initial launch.
DESIGNS
Having reached a consensus on the features for our inaugural homeowner portal, my focus shifted to refining conceptual designs into their final iterations. Expanding our design system originally tailored for investors, I added additional components and icons more suitable for homeowners.
Facing constraints in our QA environment's test data, we made a smart decision to release the code into production while limiting access to our internal team. This allowed me to conduct design QA, ensuring alignment with the specifications I prepared for the engineers. I tested multiple scenarios, providing prompt and prioritized feedback to enhance the overall implementation.
LAUNCH
After the launch into production, we aimed for a quick and insightful assessment of seller engagement with the portal. I designed an analytics module integrated into our Salesforce instance, providing our internal team with a real-time view of user interactions. It was gratifying to observe some sellers visiting the offer page over 100 times, demonstrating a keen interest in auction activity related to their homes.
Notably, we witnessed a 15% increase in conversion for sellers actively engaging with the portal. Feedback from our sellers highlighted their appreciation for the ability to effortlessly monitor incoming offers, offering them a sense of relief.
POST-RELEASE
As a fast follow, we targeted sellers on the fence about working with Sundae. I worked on functionality allowing them to view homes sold in their region. Applying a similar efficient approach, I designed a solution that was not only user-friendly but also streamlined for easier implementation by our engineering team, leveraging the marketplace experience established for investors.
