1West Finance is a marketplace serving small business owners and connecting them with lenders to provide them with capital.

The challenge

1West finance required applicants to provide financial, business, and personal details.

The process was time-consuming. Most of the time the applicant did not have all the required information on them, and there was no option to continue later.

For the business, this meant more support time and cost to follow up on unfinished applications.

Limitations and constraints

To sustain the quality of applications, I had to explore a scheme that would cut down the application time, without reducing the amount of collected information.

Additionally, I needed to be extra cautious with the language we use for regulatory reasons.

Goals and objectives

My primary goal was to increase conversion from the landing page.

I also needed to increase the number of successful applications, and ensure users about their information privacy.

Finally, the experience needed to be inclusive. Responsiveness and accessibility were at the heart of each stage.

My role

In my role as the sole designer, I led all design activities, which included:

• Research and discovery

• Current state analysis

• Information Architecture

• Wireframing

• Moodboards & Visual concepts

• Prototyping

• Design system

• Branding

• Newsletter design

• Illustrations

I worked alongside a talented cross-functional team. The team included the Strategy Lead, the UX Head, and the Delivery Lead.

The scope

The initial scope was to redesign the application experience.

The scope was later extended.

The expansion included the marketing website, Branding, and newsletter design.

Timeline

Our engagement started on November 2021 and ended on June 2022.

Current state assessment

Assessing the current state, allowed us to establish a shared understanding of the key functionalities, processes, and priorities.

It served as a kick-off point for shared ideation workshops.

It also allowed us to visually identify important key challenges. Such as accessibility, and navigational issues.

I also inspected traffic analytics. This helped me discover critical pain points, including:

• 80% of applicants were leaving at one point in the middle of the process.

• Mobile users were increasing. The current experience was not optimized for all screen forms.

Competitive analysis

My analysis focused on 3 main competitors, Lendio, Lending Tree, and Fundera.

It was an opportunity for me to explore what works. Avoid what doesn't work, and identify gaps to gain a competitive advantage. 

Things I looked at were: 

• Self-service: Platform online support that does not require any interaction with a representative. This includes Onboarding, Customer service, FAQs, user knowledge base & continued engagement.

• Surface experience: The general look and feel and experience. This includes branding, data visualization, icons, colors, and other components.

• Landing experience: The effectiveness of how they organize information, measured by how easy is it for a customer to find what they are looking for. How actionable and task-oriented is the information presented to the users?

• Product & Service Information: What information is presented? Is it helpful? Can the user understand the product or service that they’re trying to avail?

Design thinking workshops

Among the workshops I ran with the 1West team:

• User personas 

• Current and ideal user journey mapping

• Feature prioritization

User personas

I broke users into 3 types:

• New Customer: those who are in a time of need, and exploring financial services options.

• Return Visit New Customer: those who have dropped off the process, and returned back.

• Repeat Customer: those who are already customers, and applying for another loan.

User Journey mapping 

The current state journey mapping helped us to visualize the customer experience interacting with the service. 

We were able to uncover several pain points, and surface opportunities to tackle them.

Feature prioritization

We sorted features brought up by the personas exercise and user journey exercises.

Inspirational user experience

We looked at different products for lessons, and inspirational experiences we can apply to the 1West Finance platform.

Some of the ideas that resonated with the workshop members:

• Utilizing support wizards with engaging visuals and simple language.

• Proving the user with progress indicators with the ability to continue later.

• Educating applicants on why their data is needed.

• Grouping relevant inquiries to reduce the application time.

The key takeaway from the research

• Reduce the barrier to entry. Allow the user to select the finance amount from the landing page. 

• Optimize the application questions and order. Group relevant enquires to reduce time. Place users in control of the process. Make them feel comfortable and secure. 

• Better set expectations of the service process. Inform and educate users with progress indicators, and what to expect.

• Application status visibility & applying for another loan. Provide the user with the appropriate system response to evoke positive emotions. 

• Improve accessibility. We needed to ensure enough color contrast between different components.

• Enhance responsive layout. Applying consistent interactions across the different screen sizes.

Designing the solution

Based on our discovery and research. Users had a hard time finding where to start the application. Once they started, there was no sign of long will the process, or if they can leave and continue later.

Additionally; most applicants leave in the middle of the process. They became hesitant to provide information. They assumed might affect their credit score.

I decided to tackle those issues, I needed to:

• Surface the first step of the application on the home page.

• Use steppers, and other indicators to communicate the process duration.

• Be transparent, and inform the user about their data privacy.

User flow and information architecture

I designed the architecture to optimize the application flow. The aim was to reduce the time applicants spent filling in information.

Wireframes

After getting feedback on my user flow and navigation foundation. I decided it would be best to communicate our ideas through wireframes.

It gave us the opportunity to walk through the structure without getting sidetracked by design elements such as colors and images

Brand refining 

1West team though we are in a good position to explore rebranding. Through a series of dot voting exercises, I was able to develop a fresh brand. 

The new brand reflected professionalism, trustworthiness, and friendliness.

Illustrations

1West was using an inconsistent style of stock illustrations. They did not reflect the company's ethics, nor were they relatable. 

We decided to create a new library of illustrations. The new art direction focused on communicating a message. We are here to help your business.

Design system

The design system allowed us to build High-fidelity designs and prototypes. It also allowed us to test more ideas, and test, and iterate.

I built the design system to achieve:

• Brand Consistency

• Optimizing Team Communication/Workflow

• Design efficiency improvement.

• Scalability

High-fidelity designs

Once we were comfortable applying the visual treatment. We started bringing our wireframes to life.

Prototyping

We started prototyping from the wireframing stage to allow for early usability testing.

Marketing site

My next target was to increase conversion from the landing page.

Final results

This design is currently in the development stage. Initial usability testing concluded that we've achieved a majority of our goals:

• Participants found it easy to start the application from the home page.

• Applicants felt the process is now quicker and more organized.

• Applicants felt that 1West is trustworthy, and their data is safe.

Consequently:

• We expect a reduction in human support involvement.

• Increase in returning customers.

Key takeaways

I approached the business challenge from a user's perspective. The business was losing prospect applications, mainly because of user sentiment.

Analyzing the challenge from a user-centric approach, not only solved the problem with the conversion. It also improved the brand image.

Users value transparency and openness, and this eventually increases conversion.

There are still more testing and iterations to do once the development phase is finished.