CoBuy

Notables

Designed and developed CoBuy-certified Pro badge & website that attributed to the growth of CoBuy Partner network by 10x

Key Functions

• Understand industry and market trends along with CoBuy’s business goals in order to work closely with CEO to strategize and build MVP in a timely manner under budget

• UX design lead & interim product manager to help scope initial product offering & drive development process

Defining the approach, and the MVP right for CoBuy

CoBuy approached me after spending months on researching, strategizing, and understanding the market and its customers. A group of partners, investors, and home shoppers were eagerly waiting for CoBuy to build their product to aid the rising Seattle housing market.

CoBuy was ready to transfer all their knowledge we could help define, design, and work with their team to build the product to start fulfilling their would-be customers’ needs.

But first — we must understand what is CoBuy actually trying to build and why:

• What is the goal of the MVP? If step 1 succeeds, what is step 2?

• What’s the roadmap of the business? So we can help construct the roadmap of the product

• Who is the intended audience and how will they be reached?

• What is the current team composition and what role might we need to help fill?

2 weeks of downloading and learning all the knowledge from CoBuy and about the industry. It’s definitely not enough, but dealing with ambiguity happens to be a strength of my. At least this leaves 6 weeks to work on the designs, build, and test.

CoBuy had limited resources, so we had to be smart in helping them get the most out of their time

CoBuy had a game plan for their customers, and our game plan for CoBuy was to make sure the platform only captures serious candidates. Early stage startups are always tight on resources so it's important to spend time wisely. As a result, our design goal was not to sign up as many user as possible, but to make sure the majority of those that come through were serious customers. 

CoBuy’s game plan for home co-buyers

The design approach we took was to implement intentional 'gating' questions for the users before they actually sign up in order to:

1. Be educational

2. Help CoBuy learn the demographic that’s hitting the website

3. Weed off random visitors & non-serious candidates

Based on research, any additional friction introduced to the sign up process can reduce sign up by 20%+. Friction is never a good thing, unless it’s intentional like in this case.

We came up with this solution based on a combination of CoBuy’s knowledge and insight, as well as talking to potential customers in helping us learn that:

• With few other options out there, being unique meant serious customers aren’t jumping to other sites quickly due to friction

• Customers mentioned house-purchasing is a serious business so by asking more questions upfront it showed that CoBuy’s serious, too. This gave them more confidence in Cobuy

• By collecting this information upfront it also allows the rest of the process to proceed with greater efficiency

Hand holding from start to finish

From the start we aimed to make CoBuy customers’ lives easier, but also CoBuy’s own as well by creating a simple design system that they can build, reuse, and expand upon after our work is done.

Beyond the company website, the MVP we designed was an extensive wizard that walked the users through step by step in the CoBuy preparation process. The end product had 3 focus areas:

• Knowledge base: CoBuy Do’s & Don’ts, FAQ, Glossary, Affordability Calculator…etc.

• Group creation: Enable users to get their entire group onboard easily

• Group information: Acquire essential information to help the group and CoBuy learn about themselves, and to catch any reflags before proceeding

The end result was an outstanding MVP that

• Achieved 80%+ completion rate of the CoBuy Wizard once the customer does get through the initial gating questions and sign up for CoBuy

• Within first 2 months enabled CoBuy to acquire their 1st group co-buyers

• Empowered CoBuy to further expand and build new sections to their product by following the design system without additional help

The end goal of the product we helped design and build for is to enable one of the biggest purchases ever in a customer’s life time — a house. It’s a unique opportunity that even car-salesmen can’t compete with in terms of monetary value, and the weight that the purchase decision has.

Nothing about this was fancy or dazzling — it was all about simplifying, being efficient, and meeting the excruciating demand of time-to-market.

I’m extremely honored to have been part of this, and sincerely wish CoBuy all the success in the future so they can continue to help more people become home-owners in this ever-increasing real estate market.