Case study: Preliminary offers
How we revamped our offer to give home sellers more certainty
Co-created with Gavin Johns, Sr. Product Designer.
A year of change
Throughout 2020, we rapidly adapted our experience to provide a safe, efficient, and contact-free home sale. As we settled into this new normal, we quickly found that our existing experience wasn’t providing the level of certainty our customers needed in an unpredictable year.
How it worked before
Customers come to Opendoor to get a cash offer for their home so they can avoid the prep work and stress that come with selling the traditional way.
In the previous experience, they would answer a few questions about their home and see a broad home value range and a breakdown of their selling options.
When we looked into this further, we found that many people weren’t taking their next step — to schedule a video walkthrough — even folks who were very serious about selling! We rolled up our sleeves and got to work to figure out why.
Understanding customer problems
Uncovering the “why” at Opendoor starts with the customer. Our first step is to empathize and understand customer needs so that we can define their problems and explore solutions.
Through a series of customer interviews, we discovered three key areas where we could improve.
- Price uncertainty: The range we gave didn’t provide the certainty and clarity customers were expecting.
- Offer uncertainty: Customers weren’t clear on what exactly went into their offer.
- Process uncertainty: Customers weren’t certain how to proceed or where they were in the process.
If we could overcome these challenges, we knew that the result would be a simple, clear experience that built trust with our customers.
Going messy and broad
When we design solutions, we tend to start messy and broad. Here are a few early explorations to show you what I mean.
This work is crucial for a few reasons:
- Enables us to quickly sketch out a range of solutions without spending time on details
- Shows us where not to explore based on constraints or non-goals
- Helps us facilitate a conversation with stakeholders early in the process
During this period we seek out a variety of perspectives. We hold weekly design reviews with a broader group of stakeholders. We also hold design-only critique sessions, and daily jam sessions with content designers, researchers, product managers, and product designers from other teams.
Getting neat and narrow
After the initial explorations, we prepared a few contrasting designs to test with potential customers. We exaggerated the differences between these two designs to text the extremes.
We use this technique to get a clearer reaction from our customers, even if it means the designs don’t necessarily reflect what we would ultimately ship.
Flow # 1 | Guided
The first flow revealed information to the customer over a few separate pages. It felt more guided, progressively revealing their home value and what went into it, and then transitioning to their offer price and selling options on a separate screen.
Flow # 2 | All at once
The second flow gave the people everything at once, with free reign to explore it all on a single offer page. They immediately saw their offer and what went into it, and could click into individual sections to see a deeper level of detail.
Refining design and copy
The beauty of incorporating user research into the design process is that you can get feedback midstream. This revealed what parts of the design were solving the challenges we’d outlined.
Here are a few key design elements that resonated with customers.
Customer problem: A home value range doesn’t give me the certainty I need to make an informed decision.
Our solution: Display a preliminary offer that subtly indicates the offer can change. Add a card with a breakdown of the costs involved with your sale.
Customer problem: I don’t know where I am in the process or what to do next.
Our solution: Show a timeline of key milestones and update our schedule page.
Customer problem: I don’t understand how you came up with my offer.
Our solution: Create pills beneath the home value that directly connect the offer to the work we did to prepare it. Share key data points that went into the offer, like comparable home sales and market trends.
Launch and results
Once we finalized the details, we partnered closely with our engineers during the launch to ensure that no comma or pixel was out of place. We did this by taking screenshots of the experience in a browser and marking up our changes in Figma.
While we were confident that the designs provided a better experience for our customers, we were surprised by just how much customers loved it. We wanted to see an increase in the number of people who chose to move forward and schedule a video walkthrough and we did — by double digits.
And it wasn’t just completing the next step. People in the new experience were more likely to attend their walkthrough and even more likely to sell their home to us!
It was a great reminder that the best products always start and end with the customer.
Psst! We’re hiring.
If you’re interested in joining the fun, we’d love to hear from you. Check out our careers page, or take a look at these open positions:
