Car shopping with a budget

tl;dr
I led end-to-end product design efforts for Shift’s first pre-qualification product to help users gain confidence when shopping for cars and applying for a loan. Pre-qualification increased conversion across the entire funnel and was one of the company’s most successful product launches to date.

Goal
Increase Shift’s revenue from loan products (a.k.a. number of cars financed through our lenders).

Problem
Sales feedback and data from our financing application funnel revealed that many of our shoppers were interested in financing their next car with us, but were dropping off because they didn’t know which cars they could get approved for or reasonably afford.

Role
I did end-to-end product design (UX, UI, user testing) while working closely with a product manager, data scientist, engineering manager, engineering team, and content strategist.

Process
My product manager and I led a team workshop to generate ideas on how to help these customers find cars in their budget and get approved for a loan. A pre-qualification product, which could provide a personalized estimate for the cars that a shopper would be likely to be approved for and their predicted monthly payments, seemed to have the greatest potential for business and user impact.

First, we ran a qualitative survey to validate shoppers were interested in getting pre-qualified. 68% of used car shoppers surveyed preferred pre-qualification over other options (i.e. paying outright, having to go through the full financing application).

Then, we ran an in-product experiment to increase confidence that Shift shoppers would be interested in this product.

Our car pages had a call-to-action pushing users to our official financing application, so we temporarily changed this copy to “Get pre-approved” (which opened a popup modal thanking them for their interest in this feature). The copy change drove a 60% increase in clicks within the few days we ran the experiment.

Over the next few weeks, our team worked closely together over various mocks, prototypes, critique sessions, and bug bashes to ship v1.

• Discussions with our data scientist to understand what form field inputs are required for a confident prediction in someone’s loan terms

• Multiple working sessions with our content strategist to clearly frame the range of loan terms that a shopper might get approved for

• Design critiques with our broader design team for clarity and visual style while we navigated an upcoming rebrand (the rebrand was eventually delayed, so the designs were reverted to the existing brand).

• Regular syncs throughout with product and engineering to discuss progress, feasibility, and scope at all points of the flow

We did 2-3 rounds of user testing to get feedback across different devices, entry points, input questions, and personalization levels.

Early on in user testing, it was difficult to get good feedback on the flow and results without personalizing numbers to someone’s financial situation. So for the next round, I worked with an engineering partner to test a working loan calculator as part of the application, so it could simulate ranges closer to their actual terms.

While the calculator feature was cut from v1’s application due to scope, the findings were useful when designing the calculator tooling elsewhere in the website (like on the car page and the general financing page).

Overall, users liked the pre-qualification flow and the ability to filter inventory using a personalized budget.

Outcome
Pre-qualification was one of Shift’s most successful product launches ever, driving 26% more test drives, 30% more purchases, and 15% more loans.