Develop a new experience which helps homeowners find the right loans for them

Homeowner loans - Compare the market 

Finding out what customers want and need. In order to identify problems, I looked at our feedback system and our customer operations team. After creating four personas with diverse needs, wants, and situations, I focused the designs around their journeys and situations to make sure they worked for everyone. Using a journey map, I identified one persona's in-depth needs and wants, focusing on opportunities versus current situations.

Having looked at who are customers are and how they would use this new experience, i decided to map out the experience to display back to stakeholders to show them what the best experience could look like and how it would technically work. 

This project presented many challenges, including ensuring that the correct customers went on the right journey. Since most customers look for a personal loan, it was important that the new link to the homeowner loans journey wasn't distracting or misleading for customers. As a result of discussions with the project manager, I determined that this message would only display if the user selected that they were a homeowner and wanted to borrow over £25,000. In order to make the message less distracting, I decided to display it below any personal loan results cards the customer may have displayed. There was an idea to embed some questions from the homeowner loans journey into the personal loans journey so users could see both results, but due to the technical and legal constraints this would be very difficult. 

Having decided to design a results card that displays the link to the new homeowner loans journey as well as displaying information about what customers can borrow and for how long. Below is an illustration of the whole process of a customer who comes to the results page and then opens up the homeowner loan in a new tab for legal loans.

To provide the new homeowner loans journey, we worked with a third party that runs the system, and then we white labelled their questions. As some of our users have already completed the personal loans journey and now have to complete another journey, I thought it was important that users had some information prefilled from their original search which they could then alter, since the URL string is not secure, this would exclude PII. As a result of pre-fill, the number of questions decreased from 13 to 8, a 38% decrease. Following that, I looked at the questions from the third party and decided to make them a few per page since this has been tested to be the most effective way to ask questions. To ensure the users know exactly what PII information is handed over to the broker rather than guessing 10 minutes earlier, I grouped the questions and added all the personal details questions at the end. 

To provide the product manager and devs with ways of navigation through the journey and small interaction design aspects, a prototype was required. This was created on Figma and showed the two ways a customer can aspect the journey, through the landing page and via the loans card on the enquiry page which redirects to home owner loans. 

As this project is yet to go live it is hard to measure the impact but the estimated value to CtM is 2million from the new homeowner journey with the customers who click through from personal loans to homeowner loans being measured when going live.Metrics where accessed and gathered at the beginning of the project with goals being set accordingly in order to increase conversion rate and improve the customer experience.

Goals outlined at the start of the project

To make homeowner loans more visible for the right customers who want a loan over £25,000 and own a home or have a mortgage

Success Metric

Users will be able to easily move from personal loans to the home owner loans journey with clear direction and messaging.Leading to a 5% increase in enquiry presented visits on homeowner loans and increased interaction on the personal loans results page .

Progress Metrics

• Increase interaction rate on personal loans Enquiry Presented page

• Increase click through of Homeowner loans

• Increase time on Homeowner loans EP

• Reduce drop off at personal loans EP

• Reduction in negative customer feedback on Feedbackify

Problem Value Metrics

Users are currently unaware of home owners loans when they are in the personal loan journey leading to high drop off