Core Digital Media
Core Digital Media was established to empower people to improve their financial well-being by providing personalized savings and efficient comparison shopping. As a UX/UI designer, I played a major role in optimizing financial user experiences. Leveraging our internal tooling system, I conducted strategic A/B tests across various websites and collaborated closely with software engineers and product managers. Utilizing HTML and CSS, the focus was set on refining user journeys related to mortgages, insurance premiums, and credit card fees.
Beyond design ideation, my hands-on role included the implementation of changes based on A/B test results. This collaborative process ensured a seamless integration of user-focused design solutions. Core Digital Media's commitment to data-driven UX/UI strategies not only enriched digital experiences for millions but also met individual financial needs at every step of their journey.
Role
UX Designer, UX Researcher
Duration
2022, 3 days for design & 2 weeks for A/B testing
Background
Refily was one of Core Digital Media’s products that I maintained as a UX/UI designer. Refily was created to help people find companies that could help them refinance their homes. For this project, I focused on redesigning, modifying, and A/B testing the OCP (Order Confirmation Page) with the help of our copywriters and product manager.
The OCP is located at the end of our funnel and we list the top matches for our clients refinance needs. We wanted to redesign this section because we identified a conversion drop-off in the OCP.
“Our websites provide consumers valuable information and company connections as you navigate life’s biggest financial decisions.”
Discovery & Research
While I am not allowed to provide the exact conversion rates and statistics, the copywriters conducted user interviews to identify what clients want and need. In addition, we investigated if they encountered issues when navigating this page.
We discovered that some of the copy was not clear to the clients. For example, “Cash Out Amount“ was not as clear to them as “Cash Back“. Clients also ranked each section differently. They placed comparison charts lower on the importance scale since they felt the information provided was overwhelming. They preferred viewing the first recommended lender details and reviews. In addition, adding the comparison chart felt like it made more sense in terms of organization.
For the mobile design, clients had the same issues as above but they also had difficulty navigating the page since it was long and contained a lot of detail. They did not know that this bar:
was a navigation bar for both mobile and web. It did not help that it was not locked to the top of the mobile screen as they started scrolling.
With these findings, I started on the redesign of the OCP page. We did have limitations on time and resources so the changes we made had to be simple yet impactful to the clients’ experience.
Design & Development
For the redesign, we changed the copy to be clearer and buttons to be more actionable for our clients. We reordered the sections so that the primary recommended lender’s details are at the top of the page and the comparison of lenders and recommended type of lending is towards the bottom. This was at the request of the clients who felt overwhelmed by the information at the top and wanted the details to be more organized and dispersed.
We also made the categorization clearer so clients had the visual categories of the recommended lender, comparison, and recommended refinance product.
The simple yet most effective change was adding the navigation at the top of the page. We made sure that the navigation page would scroll with the client so they could easily navigate the page. It helped minimize confusion in scrolling since most of our demographic were in their 40s - 60s.
Once we developed the newly designed pages, I conducted an A/B test to compare our old designs with our new designs and see if it addressed the drop-off happening at the OCP. We had data points from page to page during our funnel so we were able to see if conversion rates increased.
After conducting the A/B test for 2 weeks, we discovered that the new redesign was a success and we saw a statistically significant increase in conversion rates. Once the test was complete, we officially rolled out the new changes we made to the OCP.
Key Takeaways/ Learnings
The biggest takeaway from this process was how to make targeted changes to maximize the impact on the demographics that were struggling the most. We were able to see from our analytic tools which page users struggle with the most and their age range. Using that information we were able to effectively conduct user interviews with those demographics and identify key issues.
Through these insights, we were able to make a significant impact on the conversion rate of the page despite being extremely limited in time and resources.
