Driveway's vehicle sell & trade-in ecommerce site initially faced significant user drop-off challenges. However, within 9 months, our comprehensive redesign efforts resulted in some significant improvements:
As Lead UX/UI Designer, I led research and feature design across key touchpoints including account creation, document upload, scheduling, and real-time payments.
Case
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The Challenge
High-intent sellers were dropping off during onboarding. Through user research, we discovered trust, security, and friction points in uploading and scheduling were driving this behavior.
My Role
Research & Insights
Goal: Understand why users abandon the process
Method: 20 remote interviews via Dscout + onboarding analysis
Key Insights
Primary User Defined
A Primary Customer Archetype - persona document was created to simplify and synthesize the information we gathered from the 20 interview participants. The documentation was created with the following 3 exercises:
Journey Map Key Findings
Most sellers wanted to complete everything in the same session, if they determined the offer was the best deal. Sellers appreciate doing everything on their own.
Sellers were hesitant to share a mobile phone number and also considered abandoning the process.
Security was a concern since they're not familiar with the brand. It would prevent most from sharing personal information.
Many sellers say they don’t consider trading in their vehicles because they believe it will be a lower offer. Sellers are unaware that sell vs trade-in cash offers are equal.
Task Analysis
High level flowcharts were used to visualize all the possible flows within the sell and trade experience. The flowchart also helped plan for our design strategy to prioritize and discuss feasibility with the development team for roadmap progress.
Landing Page Redesign
Challenge: Did not communicate trust or value
Solution: Rewrote copy, highlighted US Bank & instant payment, clarified steps
Result: Increased conversions and account creation
Self Scheduling
A scheduling application was built to provide full control of the home pick up or dealership location appointment times. The interface was designed to be consistent with our design system patterns and personalized with geolocation services for assisted task completion.
Instant Payments
We designed a payment system with US Bank to instantly pay customers for selling their vehicles online. Sellers previously had to wait several days to receive their payment checks in person. There were many moments of frustration. The partnership provided the extra assurance of security and credibility to our sellers.
Earlier research revealed that this was another major friction point for customers and the business as well considering how many factors could extend the payment process. A/B tests and data analytics were used to validate our proposed flows because of the complicated security interactions that only the real product could provide.
We successfully released the payment system with some notable mentions recognizing our team's hard work.
Driveway becomes first online car dealership to pay customers via real-time payments - Nasdaq.com
Driveway's new 'real-time payment' option available 24/7 could give them competitive advantage- autonews.com
Document Upload
The document uploader was built to replace the original method of exchanging paperwork through overnight mail services. This was a major pain point that complicated the seller and business experience.
Research taught us that missing signatures and personal info always delayed the final steps of a vehicle sale. We prioritized features to accelerate the paperwork process through instant notifications of document discrepancies and status indicators of paperwork progress.
The document uploader was received with great enthusiasm because it empowers sellers to upload documents and vehicle photos on their own time. This functionality also helped achieve business goals by dramatically saving the company $100,000+ in shipping fee costs by eliminating overnight document deliveries.
Learnings
Outcomes