Home Buying Journey /
Website Redesign
Problem: The mortgage website faces a critical challenge stemming from its outdated infrastructure, which was merely retrofitted for responsiveness in 2016 without cohesive vision. This lack of overarching direction has led to a repetitive cycle of short-term fixes, hindering progress. Our focus has been predominantly on meeting business and legal requirements rather than addressing user needs, resulting in a disjointed user experience. Moreover, our atomistic approach to website management has prevented holistic thinking, perpetuating the cycle of isolated improvements. To overcome these obstacles, a paradigm shift is imperative. We must transition from reactive short-term solutions to proactive, long-term vision driven strategies.
Goal:
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Helping users navigate the site and locate relevant information.
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Inspiring confidence in affordability.
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Clarifying the home buying process and offering guidance and support at every stage.
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Providing comprehensive information about TD products tailored to various customers,.
My role:
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Led comprehensive review of past discoveries and usability testing, reviewed live mortgage pages, content analytics, SEO requirements, and competitive analysis.
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Defined opportunities for improvements.
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Led ideation and concept creation for usability testing.
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Revised designs based on usability testing results to optimize user experience.
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Presented design solutions to stakeholders for feedback and approval.
Design and working team:
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Design Director, Design Manager, Sr. UX Designer, Sr. Researcher
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Home Buying Journey Product Owner, Journey Marketing Team, Customer Experience Team
Outcome:
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The North Star vision document to provide a long-term vision and direction for Mortgage website and its validated information architecture concept.
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The developed roadmap to inform tactical platform work (i.e. landing pages) in batches and MVPs, and platform’s tertiary navigation work for TD.com.
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Concept designs for main landing pages.
01 - Knowledge Harvest
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Reviewed the current mortgage pages and TD holistic mortgage experience.
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Reviewed the mortgage pages information architecture mapping.
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Reviewed the mortgage pages visits, bounce rate. average time spent on page, mobile traffic, starts, completed, and conversion rates.
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Reviewed the customer experience performance against major competitors.
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Reviewed the TD SEO rankings and page visits via organic search.
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Reviewed the backlog items and in-flight improvements considering the SEO and planning priorities.
02 - Stakeholder Interviews
In our quest to develop a North Star Vision for the website, we recognized the critical importance of aligning customer needs with business objectives. To achieve this alignment, we facilitated comprehensive stakeholder interviews and alignment sessions, bringing together key teams from marketing, business, and executive leadership.
03 - Competitive Analysis
Through meticulous examination and comparative analysis, we delved into various aspects of competitors' websites, including layout, navigation, flow, content organization, and interactive features. We identified notable differences between competitors' websites and TD's site pinpointing areas of improvement and innovation.
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Analyzed the competitors in detail to understand their overall approach, advantages, and weaknesses compared to TD.
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Reviewed the major competitors IA mapping.
04 - Primary Users Needs Clarification
05 - Opportunities for Improvements
Site Navigation: How to make it easier for users to navigate existing Mortgage site and content and how to improve findability and accessibility of the content.
Site Navigation improvement in examples:
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Mega menu and Breadcrumbs
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Advice Hub and Resource Center
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Affordability Ecosystem
Target Market: How useful and usable the experience is for the target audience.
Target Market improvement in examples:
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Task based vs audience based approach
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Tailored and personalized experience (e.g. renovation, pre-construction, newcomers ..)
Content: How valuable and credible the content is.
Content improvement in examples:
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Simple, concise, and easy to understand language
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Detailed and transparent product information (e.g. unexpected expenses, housing market,..)
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Meaningful advice (e.g budgeting, …)
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Calculators to deliver accurate and reliable results
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Non-repetitive content
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Including secondary needs content (e.g. finding a neighborhood, preparing and negotiating on Offer, …)
End to End Process: How understandable and comprehensive the end-to-end process and steps are.
End to end process improvement in examples:
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Clarification in steps: research, selling home, home research, offer step, mortgage application, closing home
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Clarification in call to actions
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Pre-approval and approval requirements
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Clear connection to the right channel
06 - Ideation
We had several brainstorming sessions, during which we generated and developed a number of ideas for Mortgage landing page:
We also developed ideas to create a lead generation tool. This tool collects users' contact information, allowing a mortgage advisor to reach out within 24 hours.
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TD Mortgage Direct tool - MVP1
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TD Mortgage Direct tool - MVP2
07 - Usability Testing
Tested 2 different approaches to test:
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task based vs audience based language
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usefulness of description copy
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exposure of calculators
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understandability of posted and special rates vs APR
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usefulness of images
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users' interaction with banner content and floating CTA
Tested the second MVP to understand:
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how comfortable users are to share their personal information
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how the error messages help them correct their mistake
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how they interact with the consent checkmark
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the main reasons users are willing to discuss with an advisor
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whether they choose to call us
Current Stage
We launched the the tool and we are currently waiting for the Mortgage landing page testing result.
We are also creating the concepts. We will then run a moderated usability test on the other concepts.