Opendoor: Seller Products
Opendoor is an online platform to buy and sell homes. They offer instant cash offers to customers, allowing them to skip the traditional selling process altogether. Sellers love Opendoor for its convenience and certainty in the home selling process.
The lay of the land
Since the beginning, Opendoor had one core seller product called “Sell Direct” which worked favorably for customers. It met their financial goals, allowed them to sell within a given timeframe, and provided certainty in a sometimes uncertain market. However, Opendoor was only able to give favorable offers when the housing market was hot. Soon after I joined, the market cooled and so did our business. The seller product team had to respond accordingly and created a new product called “Listing”.
Listing essentially allowed customers to list their homes on the market via Opendoor to try and field higher offers than what they might get from us. We quickly learned that differentiating our product from a traditional agent experience very challenging. Customers did not see the value in listing with Opendoor no matter how we positioned the product.
Evaluating & Exploring
We first began by evaluating our existing learnings from our two products. We highlighted that customers have a strong desire to have input and control in how they sell their home. Neither one of our products gave customers that ability and neither product was satisfying all 3 core needs we identified (meeting price goals, selling within a given timeline, certainty of sale).
Design explorations started wide with evaluating the sequencing of information. It was important for us to decide when to present selling options in order to ensure customers would comprehend the product offerings and not be overwhelmed with information. We then narrowed to focus on the dashboard experience as our primary surface area.
User Testing
Lead fully by design, we moderated research sessions with current home sellers. Our goal was to test our initial concepts and general usability. We spoke with ~10-15 people, then and transcribed and synthesized our findings into a deck which helped guide the work moving forward. In addition to pinpointing which concept resonated best, we found several other key points which we also incorporated in future revisions.
MVP
We combined our findings from research to our initial MVP which went live in our 1 test market of Charlotte, NC. We hoped to monitor performance and compare with our existing Sell Direct product. Validating things in our pilot market would give us signal to move forward.
RITE Research
We worked with a newly-joined researcher to help focus our efforts on the most critical parts of the experience. Customers were running into comprehension errors and struggled to understand the product offering. In research, we iterated with copy & design repeatedly in between research sessions to learn what resonated best. We learned a lot about customers perceptions in doing so.
V1 Launch
We launched our V1 in our same pilot market. Within a month we saw an initial uptick of 12.4% in conversions. Initial feedback was positive. Customers reported understanding Opendoor’s offerings and that seeing multiple options actually increased their trust in the company. Throughout all this work, our team was all-hands-on-deck collaborating to update our design system. Check out the reel below which showcases all of this work together.