First, I started from thinking about the entire experience of our users, the student loan borrowers, from landing on LoanSense’s website to using the product. Drawing out the user journey map helped me understand and think about what our users feel and what frustrations and encouragement they might feel during the process.

With the developed key features, I started by categorizing all features and functions.

By grouping similar functions together, it'll help users navigate in the web app and find what they are looking for efficiently. At this step, I also discussed with the PM and business team to decide what features are only shown after users purchase extra services.

To introduce LoanSense services, I put the repayment recommendations and other tools in front of the paywall. As a new service on the market, LoanSense users may be unsure about the product. Revealing these useful tools can help users understand different ways to help them reduce their loan debt before purchasing any services.

After designing the first user flow for the consumer web app, we launched the product and kept improving the user experience through different research methods. The two kinds of user information helped me further understand more users and explore where I can improve to encourage more users to complete the flows.

The metrics of success for the refining process include:

Sign up rate

The task success rate in finishing the onboarding process

Build trustworthiness

From our research, we noticed the low task success rate in finishing questionnaires and filling in the contact form. Some users mentioned that they were not sure about giving their information since LoanSense was new on the market. Therefore I adjusted the user flow to simplify the sign-up process and provide users with more information to build trustworthiness.

Feedback on V1 userflow

👎🏼 Users are not familiar with LoanSense, and feel hesitant to give their personal loan and contact information.
👎🏼 If users drop off from the flow and don’t fill in their contact information, LoanSense will not be able to reach out to them again.

Design decision for V2

To Increase the sign-up rate and users’ task success rate in the onboarding process, I:

Moved the sign-up (contact information) section to the beginning of the user flow

Provided more explanation during the onboarding process

Shed light on LoanSense’s value

With the changes in V2 user flow, the sign-up and onboarding task success rates increased. However, the conversion rate didn't reach the expectation. Therefore, I suggested the team provide users with names of the recommended repayment plans, and also redesigned the user flow to make the entire experience more smooth.

Feedback on V2 user flow

👍🏼 It's easy to sign in.
👍🏼 Users understand why they need to fill in the information and feel more comfortable providing it.
👎🏼 Users don’t know what the recommended plans' names are.
👎🏼 Users need to give their loan information again after purchasing.

Design decision for V3

To attract users to purchase the services and simplify the steps after purchasing, I

Revealed the names of recommended plans

Moved import loan step to the onboarding step

With the improvement in the user flow, the sign-up and onboarding task success rate increased. More customers visited and used LoanSense services.

To provie our users with financial knowledge, the team was creating different learning materials to provide extra guidance for the paid users. Therefore, I worked with a learning experience designer to design where to put the informative and educational resources in the product.

To understand how these resources can effectively help the paid users, I did a contextual interview with LoanSense's loan expert to understand the counseling process and questions users had. Based on the information, I designed two places for users to gain financial knowledge.

Prepare for counseling session

Targeting the problem users want to solve in the counseling session, the system can generate related videos and documents we recommended users to watch and prepare.

Learn different topics

The learning experience designer and I had the loan experts grouped FAQs and insightful financial tips into six topics. With the loan guidance section, the paid users can always come back and learn if they are interested in or having changes in their financial plans.

Why six topics?

To prevent information overload and make it easier to manage the increasing contents in the future, the learning experience designer and I think six topics would be the ideal amount of themes that have enough varieties but also not overwhelming.

As we added new paid expert services to help users file paperwork or assist users set up financial plans. To integrate the new features to the web app, I added an "Expert service" section under the "My Recommendations" part.

Why did I decide to put expert service under My Recommendations?

User flow
My Recommendations is the first page users land on and explore. Putting the expert service in the third section on this page can increase users' interest in learning paid services and evaluate their needs after they browse the free recommendations.

Functionality
The expert services are all related to making decisions on repayment strategies. It is easier for users to retrieve the expert resources and read other repayment recommendations if information that helps make decisions is on the same tab.

Considering the expert service is hidden under My Recommendations, I added a CTA button “Purchase services” on the navigation bar to enable users quickly to go to the pricing page.

After designing the new information architecture and features, my next goal was to enhance the conversion rate and improve the paid experience.

Simplifying and clarifying pricing page

My first step was to take over and redesign the design of the pricing page.

From our research, the users who were interested in the expert services couldn’t clearly understand the contents of the expert services. Therefore, they either contacted the customer service to ask for more information, or gave up purchasing the services.

Original pricing page

I analyzed the page and conducted some user tests to understand what caused the problems. My solution was to simplify information, rewrite the content, and separate the pricing and payment page.

Revamped pricing page

Elevating paid services

Next, after improving the pricing page, I further thought about what else we could bring to the paid users, especially for those who purchase counseling services.

In the original user flow, users needed to get the Calendly link from their email inbox to book their counseling sessions. It led users to leave the web app. What's more, the users would not access extra guidance or resources before and after their counseling sessions.

Original paid service flow

Therefore, I decided to use the Calendly API that enables users to book sessions in the web app. After the users book the session, they will see instructions for the counseling session and resources targeting their problems. This "My Counseling session" page can help users prepare for their counseling sessions. Besides, they can also access the "Loan guidance" section in which has more articles and videos for common financial topics.

Revamped paid service flow

We implemented the changes, revamping the pricing page, and flow. With the new design, we received positive feedback from our customers and reduced the workload of the customer service team.