Giving sellers certainty and peace of mind in the home selling process.
Lead product designer
Research, product strategy, product design, design systems, user testing
3 engineers, 1 copywriter, internal Real Estate Operations team
Jan 2020 — Apr 2020
With Ribbon’s buyer program experiencing growth in 2019, the company was looking to make homeownership achievable from both sides of the process by redefining how sellers sell their homes.
This initiative was Ribbon Certified, a product that improves the lives of listing agents and sellers by guaranteeing closings through free pre-inspections.
I was the lead designer working on developing the strategy and experience of this new product. The goal of the project was to deliver value to listing agents and sellers, while also kickstarting an entirely new platform on Ribbon.
I conducted three studies to understand agent and seller pain points and evaluate how Ribbon Certified could provide value to them.
😣 Sellers experience a lot of anxiety and uncertainty with the closing process
“I need to sell on a specific timeline so I can move into my next home, but things can get delayed during closing”
“How can I ensure the strength of a buyer so that the closing process has no issues?”
🚫️ Offers often fall through due to buyer financing and inspections contingencies
“Things come up during an inspection, which leads to buyers pulling out of the process. This is frustrating because it means the home has to relisted, which can decrease the home’s appeal on the market.”
👀 Buyers want to see the inspection report upfront
76% of users who visited a listing page clicked on our dummy button in Study #3, which was an extremely high signal that the feature was valuable.
📈 30% of our agents signed up for the waitlist
In our email blast study, 30% of Ribbon’s agent user base signed up to use Certified Listings, which was another signal that the service was valuable.
How might we make removing the inspection roadblock in the closing process as painless and simple as possible?
How might we make agents, buyers, and sellers feel more certain and confident in the home transaction process?
I worked together with our Operations and Industry Relations teams to create a journey map of how the Certified Listings program would function logistically. This was an operationally heavy product.
We brainstormed ideas around how we should handle scheduling inspections with a third-party inspector, which was the trickiest part of the experience. What would be the easiest and most lightweight way for users to do this? I designed a few versions of the inspections process and worked with engineering and ops to scope it down for an MVP.
I took the journey map and created a clickable prototype to test with listing agents.
The certifying experience was designed mobile-first because over 70% of our users were on the go.
I tested for the effectiveness and the usability of the experience.
We started rolling out Ribbon Certified with a few of our waitlist agents. Within a month, there were:
