Personalising the matching experience
Like Family (formerly Home Care Heroes) is an aged care and disability care marketplace. The focus is on matching people who are socially isolated to people who can provide support that they might not be able to receive elsewhere.
The company shifted efforts towards our “Jane” persona. These users signed up to look for support on behalf of a family member. By changing this persona’s first experience - marketing pages, onboarding and first experience, we increased the number of jobs posted and messages sent.
The team
1 Designer (me)
1 Head of product
4 Engineers
1 Tech lead
Scope
User research, interaction design, UI design
Timeframe
March - June 2021
Goals
Main goals for the project:
Increase the number of activities (jobs) posted by new members in their first week of signing up
Increase the number of messages sent by new members in their first week
Increase the number of new member bookings within the first 3 weeks
We made 3 hypothesis which all linked together based on the user journey:
The more activities (jobs) posted by members, the more applications there would be.
As a response to those applications, the percentage of people messaging a carer within their first week of signing up would increase.
These messages would result in a first booking.
Post activity (job) > Choose and message applicant > Send a booking request
Research
We ran user interviews to determine what people were thinking, what caused them to start their search and how they ended up at Like Family or services similar. We used a “jobs to be done” (JTBD) style user interview to uncover what the struggling moment was that brought them to Like Family was and what their needs were.
We interviewed 9 parents. We found a noticeable difference between two groups that informed our solutions. There was also information in the NDIS dataset that informed the users with the most pressing needs that we wanted to focus on.
One of the journey maps used to communicate back to the team at Like Family that the user’s process starts way before they sign up with us.
The main Jobs to be Done:
For parents with children under 17: “Give myself respite while someone cares for my child”
For parents with children over 17: “Find someone who can teach my child skills to become more independent”
(Insights have been hidden to respect Like Family’s privacy.)
Opportunities for improvement
To highlight the areas we wanted to focus on, I wrote “How Might We” statements and worked with the Head of Product to align on these.
HMW encourage the user to feel that the carer could be a mentor or older brother/sister figure?
HMW highlight how trustworthy our Social Carers are?
HMW give the users more choice over the way that they searched for Social Carers?
HMW simplify the onboarding experience?
HMW get carers to respond to new members faster?
Solution
More photography across site to feel more welcoming
To feel more welcoming, redesigned the homepage to relate to our target persona. We changed it to be shorter and simpler, including:
Photos from community members showing carers who could be a big sister/brother/friend figure. Pricing was pushed down to the bottom of the page.
Allow people to search for carers before signing up with us.
Adding the activity (job) posting into sign up flow
As of March 2021, we wanted to encourage the posting of an activity (a job) without negatively affecting the sign up rate.
We ran an AB test adding an activity creation form at the end of the sign up to improve the % of people who create an activity in the same session of signing up. The people who signed up and filled out an activity form at the end of their sign up, dramatically increased the activity posting. So we changed the flow to include this.
Encouraging member's to send the first message to carers
We wanted to encourage members to send the first message to carers sooner, as this is a mandatory action before creating a booking. To do this, we changed the new members dashboard experience and the way that they search and view carer’s profiles.
Redesign the dashboard onboarding experience focusing on simplicity
We progressively disclose features and navigation items to reduce complexity.
We added tool tips to provide guidance when nav items show.
New members will get recommended carers based on the information that they supplied to us during sign up. The developers created algorithms to suggest carers based on multiple criteria.
The algorithm also allows us to show relevant information on Social Carer tiles. eg. if they have a car, if they’re first aid qualified and if they have received any recommendations.
To allow more choice and control, additional filters added to the carer search and carer profiles
I designed these badges that were added to the carer' profile based on their activity: badge for X amount of recommendations, by X amount of hours working with a specific user type, by X amount of total bookings.
To improve trust, we made the carers profiles more informative:
added the date they joined Like Family and number of bookings in the platform.
prompted members to write a recommendation.
highlighted shared interests and relevant experience.
allowed carers to upload multiple photos to their profile. Profile photos have a large influence in how members chose carers.
To improve trust, we wanted parents to see progress over time and photos of the bookings.
We added functionality that allows carers to upload photos and notes of bookings on to the app, so that the person who was managing the bookings (eg. a parent) has more visibility and can see progress.
So when parents received booking confirmations, they were able to see photos from the booking.
Outcome
We achieved our three goals.
Main goals for the project:
Increase the number of Activities posted by new members in their first week of signing up 👍
Increase the number of messages sent by new members in their first week 👍
Increase the conversion rate of new member bookings within the first 3 weeks 👍
Key metrics from March - June 2021:
Activities (jobs) posted by new members in 1st week: Increased by 43%
Messages sent by new members in 1st week: Increased by 84%
New members who made bookings within the first 3 weeks: Increased by 31%
We learnt that our hypothesis that more activities posted does lead to more first messages being sent out by members, but that does not necessarily result in an increase in first bookings. We are now pivoting to focus on opportunities to bridge the gap between sign up and the first booking.
Next steps
We wanted to focus more on opportunities to bridge the gap between the initial messages and the first booking.
We experimented with bringing “meet and greets” to the platform. It was common for people to meet off platform to see if they would be compatible but at times, there was confusion as to where to go next after messaging each other.
I made a video walk through to share back with stakeholders outside of our team. Note that this is a long video and I would suggest watching it in 2x speed.