Preparing every user to be “divorce ready”
PRODUCT STRATEGY ○ ENGAGEMENT ○ CONVERSION
Introduction
People typically take 2-4 years to make the decision to get divorced. Understanding this timeline uncovers opportunity to provide support, guidance, and options for those considering divorce. I needed to find a way to reassure clients who had given Hello Divorce their email but not purchased a divorce plan that our divorce service is truly the kindest, fastest, and easiest way to complete their divorce.
My role
Senior Product Designer
Other team members
PM, Head of Marketing, Head of Growth, 2 Full Stack Engineers, 2 Content Writers
My contribution
I worked closely with many teams to determine how we could provide customized, engaging, and valuable features for clients who were considering purchasing.
What is the “typical” divorce experience?
Learning from over 16 years of Family Law experience
The current legal system is obscured, expensive, and broken. From research we know that Californians are likely to spend 15 months and $23,000 per person finalizing their divorce. These numbers can inflate if divorcing couples share minor children, own a home, or have retirement assets. Most people only hear horror stories about divorce, but the are hesitant escalate, or be taken advantage of by their spouse’s legal team.
Understanding the Hello Divorce experience
I know that the key to finding successful solutions is to understand the system, that’s why I built a journey map to solidify my understanding and drive alignment with stakeholders when exploring design solutions.
Problem 1
How can we connect users with features that are relevant to them, build trust, and improve our metric of continuing engagement.
Exploring solutions
Building understanding with interviews and reviews
Interviewing current customers allowed me to prioritize features for potential customers that had been spoken of favorably by customers during interviews. I also filtered all of our reviews through AI to determine areas of opportunity. This understanding of the current system and experience was vital for me to improve value for customers.
Highlighted insights
Checklists are most downloaded
Webinars spur most call conversions
There is an overwhelming amount of content
Streamlining content and tools
One piece of feedback that I wanted to focus on was the overwhelming amount of content, articles, blog posts, webinars, tools, and emails we send. I spoke to the Customer Success team, categorized reviews, and spoke to customers about what tools and features they found most helpful. I learned checklists and worksheets made the biggest positive impact in customer preparation. I featured these tools in the account space redesign.
Keeping potential customers engaged and on track
A checklist allowed users to understand their pre-divorce progress and track what worksheets they’ve downloaded and completed. As they move closer to starting their divorce, they can feel confident they’re ready.
Easy, extensible navigation
Finally, I brought in the most important categories for divorcing families to the forefront. We are able to show only state-specific content for users who are considering a divorce, once they create an account with our CRM. The way the portal is designed allows us to easily add or subtract new features and functionality as we grow.
Problem 2
We need to be able to prove our value to users who are a few years away from purchase. How can we shorten their purchase timeline?
Exploring solutions
How can we prove our software value to users?
The other area of opportunity for converting users and preparing them to use our software was to demonstrate its ease and effectiveness. The PM had a request to integrate a free “try before you buy.” I knew a straightforward design solution would be key to getting interest from users.
Collaborative process
Understand goals from the PM and Head of Growth
Work with developer to understand technical constraints
Begin initial designs and prototype testing
Strategize with Customer Success team to ensure alignment
Finalize content with Content Team and UX Writers
Complete prototype testing and finalize high-fidelity designs
Handoff to developers with spec and design document
Bug hunt with developers
Launch & ongoing support
The primary goal for this feature was a small test release to see if it would be of interest to customers. Working at a startup means we frequently need to balance speed, scope, and quality. The best way to do that is to have a process in place that allows you to ensure alignment and touch base with all stakeholders.
Impact
The new account space changes increased engagement by 60% time on page.
Free “try before you buy” is converting users to customers by 30%.
This new account space is the first step to building a holistic app solution where we can get feedback and understand behavior to ensure that our users feel empowered to purchase the product.
Learning from this project
Collaborating with other teams to improve the customer experience
Working closely with the Customer Success and Content Team was imperative to the design and development of this project. There are so many resources that Hello Divorce has created to help customers, as a Product Designer, I must help the company prioritize value to customer while keeping in mind company goals. Facilitating brainstorms, feedback sessions, and showcase meetings are crucial for collaboration.
Designing with extensibility in mind
A huge part of this project was building the initial framework to build our app solution. This allowed us to get some initial data, paired with my user interviews, that would inform how we integrate divorce steps into this helpful resource framework.