Connecting homeowners in need with quality Pros

Angie's List helps homeowners find quality Pros in their area based on millions of verified reviews written by other members.
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I led a redesign of the Pro onboarding experience which doubled new lead sales YoY and reduced duplicate accounts by 31%.

The challenge

Service Providers who wanted to list their business on Angie’s List had to overcome unnecessary barriers including a non-responsive sign up flow that many pros struggled to complete, and a 2-6 day waiting period to access their account online. Duplicate accounts were also extremely common, each of which the integrity team had to resolve by hand.

As the UX lead on the project I had to navigate technical challenges that required close communication between the design team and 3 scrum teams as well as regular weekly checkins with dev ops, the integrity team, data analytics, and software architecture.

UX Lead
Product Design
User Research
Copywriting

Business GOALS

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Decrease the number of duplicate accounts created during signup.

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Increase adoption by launching an all new android app.

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Achieve feature parity with web by adding group orders, favorites, and referrals.

Before

After

Understanding the Target Audience

Our in-house research team provided us with detailed personas and user journeys that would inform every aspect of the final design. We knew that 66% of business owners also took on multiple roles in their company, with 33% of them also working in the field. We couldn't assume that pros would be creating their profile from behind a desk, so I designed mobile-first.

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Craft focused

"Do you want fast, or do you want good?
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Freedom focused

"We try to make work more efficient so we have time for other things"
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People focused

“We probably do one pro bono
job every day, single mom, elderly, trying to help by giving back to the community.”

Where are we today?

The first step in any redesign is to understand where the current design succeeds and fails. A quick review of historical user research revealed some big gaps. The legacy flow assumed that the majority of Pros were already listed, requiring every user to first search for their profile before creating an account, but was that true?

Analytics told us that in reality 9% of users claimed a company from the initial search step, preferring to create a new account. We also found that the lengthy and often irrelevant list of possible matches caused a 29% drop-off, the biggest decrease in traffic of the entire flow. We needed a simpler and more accurate solution for suggesting possible matches to Pros.

The first prototype

We knew that we wanted to collect as much information as possible before presenting a list of possible matches, but we weren't sure if placing this step later in the flow would cause annoyance for our users. We also wanted to reduce friction by only interrupting with possible duplicates if we were very certain we had a match.
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To answer these, and many other questions, we had to do some usability testing.

Testing Methods and results

I worked with a colleague on the research team to craft a usability testing script. We tested our prototypes with 6 service providers for 40 minutes each. These remote usability sessions walked participants through a number of tasks while members of the project team observed.

What Worked

•  Pros expected to add a business, not search for one

•  New mobile flow was significantly easier to navigate

•   It was clear which fields were required

•   Pros had a high tolerance for duplicate screen

What didn't work

•  Adding contact info was confusing and splitting it into two steps caused fatigue

•  Some pros don't want members seeing their address

•  Some Pros wanted to add more than one category

•  Pros want to recall data entered on duplicate screen

Testing Round 2

In our second round of we tested 5 service providers for 40 minutes each with my updated wireframes.  In the previous round, some pros wondered aloud "how long is this going to take?". To reduce fatigue, I updated the wireframes so that creating the business profile took one step instead of two. I also used copy and hierarchy to make it clearer which information would be shared with customers.

The second round of testing went very smoothly and after a few more small tweaks, my wireframes were ready for handoff to a visual designer.

Step 1
Step 2
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VISUAL DESIGN

After a competitive analysis of other sign up flows, we noticed that they all looked more or less the same. We saw an opportunity to visually differentiate Angie's List from those other experiences and add a more personal touch.
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Two visual designers on the team experimented with different styles before landing on an illustrative approach that helped tell the story of setting up a business. Not only did they look great, they also aided in communicating the purpose of each step.

Step 1
Step 2
Claim Business?
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📈 Outcomes

The redesigned pro signup flow significantly reduced drop-off within the funnel resulting in doubled year over year lead sales.

The less intrusive, more accurate business search results were a huge win, reducing duplicate accounts by 31%.

Other Work

ClusterTruck

Angies List

Boardable

Graphic Design

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