Consumer Funnel Optimization at Even Financial

Some of the most impactful projects I worked on at Even Financial revolved around their consumer facing product, ‘Multi Product Search’ or ‘MPS’. MPS was built on top of the Even API to provide front-end user experiences for all of Even’s financial product offerings. It was created as a simpler integration method for supply channel partners to leverage the Even network and provide their consumer base with financial product recommendations. With MPS, partners were able to embed the experience within their site or link their users to a co-branded Even hosted partner page.

Before doing any work toward a solution, I started by doing research to better understand the user, determine pain points, and find opportunities to improve the overall user experience. My goal was to help narrow focus and determine the minimum scope necessary to make a significant impact.

User Research

I began by digging into the data to learn more about the users and determine where we could find the biggest gaps. I looked at the demographic data, funnel conversion rates, and did some qualitative research, getting direct feedback from users.

User Flows

I found similarities and patterns to segment the data based on different user origins and created specific sectors to group similar traffic sources together. Some partners, for example, captured the bulk of their traffic via email campaigns while others leveraged their online financial content adding links within articles to their partner page.

Through this process I learned a few important things:

• Submitted app rates were around 31% on average
• 65% of leads bounced from the application without filling out a single field
• 73% of all Even consumers encountered the Even experience from the following mobile screen:

Knowing that the vast majority of Even consumers landed on this page and would leave the page immediately, it was clear where we should focus our efforts and make the greatest impact.

Competitor Analysis

Once I had a better idea about how the users were interfacing with Even’s consumer product, I went to see what our competitors were up to.

I learned that nearly all of these user experiences segmented the lengthy application form into individual steps for each field. They offered the user with additional context and education for sensitive inputs, and kept the user apprised of their progress throughout the flow.

Validation

With this ‘step by step’ application flow in mind, I worked with engineering to see if we could prove this concept with minimal development effort before committing to an entirely new complex flow. We came up with a simpler ‘Multi Step’ flow, splitting the form into 4 steps based on the existing field sections.

Developers produced this variation in a few days and we ran an AB test to compare with the existing experience. The result: submitted app rates increased by 2 percentage points.

Prototype

At this stage, I began working on a new design for the application form that would help navigate users through a long form in smaller chunks while making them feel accomplished along the way. 

After collaborating with the engineering team, we devised a phased plan to reach the final design that would to decrease time to launch. This was the first iteration, compared to the original: