Door.com Offer Submission
Product Time: 2019 June - July (3 weeks)
My Role:
Planned observation study and interviews with PM - focused on process, problems, work effort, and pain severity.
Collaborated with the PM to determine product value, platform scale plan, and shared with the leadership.
Designed experience for web and mobile and defined scope for the MVP product, including building priority of problems, user flow, design solutions, and features in different phases.
Led UX and UI design iterations with wireframe (Axure RP 8), hi-fi interactive prototypes (Sketch & InVision) and usability testing.
Worked with the PM and development team closely to define requirements, walkthrough and hand off designs, and check implementation quality.
Conducted the UAT and facilitated the agent training.
Tools: Sketch, Illustrator, Axure RP 8, InVision, Miro, and Microsoft Forms.
Strategy: Lean UX
Background Story
In a real estate transaction - buying and selling a property, there was a buyer agent and a seller (listing) agent represented for each side. Door.com agents work as non-commission and they are divided into different positions and more efficient in their specific role during the whole transaction. With efficiency, Door.com is able to close more listings with the same amount of agents with a good experience.
Door.com selling process includes three teams.
The Business Problem
The business wants to increase the number of closing listings by each listing agent. However, the listing agents are not able to close current listings faster and have more listings under management (LUM).
FROM BUSINESS PROBLEM TO USER PROBLEMS
To identify areas where more efficiency can be introduced to the daily operations of Doors listing agents, our product team conducted a 7-day observational study of the highest performing listing agent to understand the workload and the feasibility to achieve the goal.
The biggest manual work we found for the listing agent was entering offers into company CRM (at least 25 mins). It also increased the probability of error and delay caused by switching between multiple platforms.
The current process to submit an offer.
After follow-up interviews with listing agents and the lead to identifying where the main pain points were in the offer process.
Offer submission journey map and pain points examples.
The Solution and Assumption
I presented the solution to take the responsibility of entering and sharing the offer of the listing agents’ shoulders by creating an offer submission tool for outside buyer agents to fill the offer form to generate contract or upload the contract, and auto send the offer to the listing agent and seller.
However, there was an assumption that the buyer agents were willing to use this tool submit offers and reduce the amount of time for listing agents to process the offer.
Validate Solutions
The solutions and experiences were designed based on the following high-level requirements:
Make the online submission scalable to different market
Make offer submission form as short as possible and void overwhelming the buyers who shop on Door.com
Follow the design principles and avoid new UI components design
The design principles I was using:
Simple
Consistent
Scalable
Valuable
Trust
To reduce the potential for product failure, I validated the solutions and sketches with the product manager and internal agents through a design critique. Then I tested the wireframe with 15 outside buyer agents - in 3 group sessions and 4 one-on-one sessions.
Wireframe built with Axure RP 8
User testing form and section.
Positive feedback
The positive feedback we got from the buyer agents that validated the previous assumption.
14 out of 15 buyer agents were willing to submit an offer online
The agents were pleased with the time savings that would come with the ability to generate documents/contracts online.
The offer received directly by the seller after it submitted were added value.
“I will do whatever your listing requires me to do even I don’t want to because my buyer wants it.”
“For small companies like us, we don’t have this kind of system. This will save us a lot of time. I don’t need to repeatedly type the information.
”
“If this (online offer submission) can get my offer in front of the seller quicker, I definitely will use it.”
Enhancements
We also found out some enhancements that had to be made to move forward.
Provide different experience of submitting an offer for buyers without an agent, buyers with an agent, and agents to avoid the high possibility of spam offers given anyone could submit an offer
More education for traditional buyer agents to know to submit an online offer for Door.com listings.
Make the buyer information optional to reduce the fear of being cut out of future opportunities from buyer agents
Emphasis the benefits of submitting an offer online and keep the traditional way to submit an offer by email to avoid losing any offers from older and less technology-savvy agents.
“Currently, all companies are fighting for data. Who has the data, who is going to win in the market? I don’t want to give my buyer information to your company.”
“I’m from the old school. If you ask me to abandon the way I’m doing in all my life, you’d better show me the real benefits of doing in a new way. Otherwise, I prefer the old way.”
Bring the idea to life
Based on the leverage of user experience and development resources we have, the next iteration design was delivered for the MVP product including the basic solutions to support submitting an offer online (buyer information, offer information, agent information, and upload contracts function).
the final design
The primary users of the offer submission product are buyers’ agents who are able to submit official offer with contracts. Meanwhile, the secondary users are buyers who can start the offer by themselves regardless of whether they have a buyer agent or not. However, to provide customized experiences for those secondary users, we separated them into two user personas.
Primary and Secondary User Personas
Based on three different types of user personas - buyers without an agent, buyers with an agent, and buyer agents themselves, this product was broken down into three different experiences.
Buyers submit an offer without an agent
View listing details and make an offer.
Buyer who doesn’t have an agent submit an offer.
Buyers submit with an agent
If buyers are represented by buyer agents, the offer contract must be submitted by their agents.
Buyer who has an agent make an offer.
Their agents will be notified by email with the related information and continue submitting the official offer.
Offer sent to the seller and listing agent and buyer agent receives a thank-you page.
Once the agents submit the offer, the listing agent of the property they make the offer for will be displayed on the page in case they want to reach out for more questions. The buyer agents don’t have to log into the MLS listing and find out who is the listing agent. Meanwhile, the offer will be received in the CRM and instantly sent to the listing agent and the seller to review it
Agents submit an offer for their buyers
If the buyer agents are with their clients and have all contract documents on the phone, they are able to submit an offer by phone. However, the majority of buyer agents would like to prepare the offer contracts first and prefer using their desktop or laptop.
Agent enters the offer submission landing page.
Search for the property address.
Buyer agent fills out offer information, uploads offer contract, and submits the offer.
CRM Improvement 1 - No More manual entering offer information
CRM Improvement 2 - No more manual document uploading
Product IMPACTS
The product was successfully launched in September 2019. By automating/streaming-lining manual tasks for the listing agents, we specified the value of this product from the following three aspects:
Efficiency
Decrease the time of processing an offer from around 25 mins to 0.
The number of listings that the listing agents can manage increased from 20 to 40+ in the first two month.
Revenue
Higher company revenue achieved by increasing the number of listings that can be closed by the listing agents.
Adoption
More than 58% of the traditional agents have already changed their current processes to adopt this product and the way of submitting offers. The number is continuing to grow.
the next step
The usability testing was designed and conducted to make sure the product doesn’t have major defects and refine the copy if it is necessary.
The product was launched in Sept, according to the user tracking data, 25% of agents submitted offers through this product. We are conducting internal process changes to receive more offers by using online submission, such as telling buyer agents to submit offers online and what the benefits are. We are also designing attachment and writing a blog and press to educate and encourage buyers’ agents to submit offers via this way.
The next round (phase 2) was planned to start soon.
takeaways
Align the design plan and solutions with relevant teams before moving forward.
Never rush to move to the wireframe or hi-fi prototype design because ideal solutions don’t always match the real world. The previous idea of providing the offer submission URL in the property descriptions for all door.com listings for buyers who shop on the 3rd party websites to work with Door.com or redirect to our site to submit an offer was terminated by the MLS restrictions. We got this feedback from a real estate agent during the testing session.
The good MVP strategy should balance the risks and rewards.
Scoping the full product down to the MVP would have a quick win and more flexibility to adapt to the market changes. Our users’ lifetime commitments and engagements might be increased according to the rapid iteration and new features delivery.
Educate people will make things move faster.
Teach design thinking to product managers, developers, and shareholders will speed up the process and increase the confidence to defense what design decisions have been made.
Great Thanks To The Team:
Product Manager - Peter Yobo
Website Engineer - Paul Day
CRM Engineers - Sarfraz Khan & Brandy Smyth
Content Strategist - Allison Dupuis