Divinia
Acquiring Users and Standardizing All Verticals
Acquiring Users and Standardizing All Verticals
Divinia is a search platform that uses advanced machine learning like AI and NLP to understand consumer needs and user-generated content, scans thousands of reviews across dozens of websites, and finds the best matching results across four different verticals, from hotels, consumer goods, cars and stock market.
I worked with a cross-functional team as a Product designer, communicated and collaborated with development, and solved problems as they arose. I conducted research and interviews to familiarize myself with various sectors that Divinia’s verticals served. I also wrote and edited content, implemented new branding including a logo, designed wireframes, and sought feedback and incorporated changes.
To understand user experience while using all four verticals, identify pain points and expectations from individual platforms, and provide relevant design solutions that help improve engagement for each.
3 weeks
GT Games
2 designers
Figma
Miro
Adobe Photoshop
When I joined, Divinia had acquired a new client, The Motley Fool. The first project was to help the client with lead generation on Divistocks. I started researching the stock market and best practices for successful lead generation. The secret to the success of the campaigns is their integration with the website's overall user experience (UX). The goal is not to interrupt users while displaying them but instead cleverly set them to appear when they could deliver valuable and relevant content at the right time. After reviewing a few banner ideas, we eventually settled on a nonmodal popup to meet client needs without disrupting the user experience.
I designed it to keep it focused on one value proposition and only ask for the most relevant information, the email. Based on user engagement with Divistocks, it triggers 10 sec after the result page loads. On cancellation, it compresses into a bar and stays on the bottom right, allowing users to interact with it as their journey progresses, keeping its frequency to 2 per visitor.
The idea of adding a blog system to Divistocks was already there in discussions. Now was the time for some qualitative research and competitive analysis to know what users expect from a search platform for stocks. I got my insights on demographics with the help of Google Analytics. After few rounds of stakeholder interviews, I was now prepared to ask the right questions in user interviews. Being a startup, resources were limited so I made sure I make the best use of what I get for qualitative analysis.
Business Problem
Being a finance platform our product is compared to global giants like Google Finance. To compete with them, it's essential to have feature parity with them.
User Problem
Being such a sensitive and constantly changing segment, users need to have a reliable platform to help them make more informed and accurate investment decisions.
Who wouldn't want to know what the future holds for their money!? Mapping revealed a trend: users are always curious about stock forecasts. On Divistocks, the user journey ends once they read reviews or visit The Motley Fool's lead page by clicking the 'LEARN MORE' button.
But what are the prospects for the stock in the next few days?! This gave me the idea of building a tool to keep users on Divistocks and make them return. It was time to take the concept to the data engineering & development team to know its feasibility and requirements to implement this tool. Once the backend was in place, I created a simple mockup to try this tool to check the performance and accuracy. During a usability test, it was revealed that users were interested in the tool, but wanted more information on how it works to build trust for sharing their details.
At this point, I had established a solid rapport with all the teams and earned their trust. We were facing a business problem that required us to optimize our resources. After careful consideration, I suggested that we standardize all verticals. This would allow us to scale to future verticals with minimal effort and also solve the problem of inconsistent user experience. I presented these benefits of standardization to our stakeholders, and I was pleased to receive their endorsement.
I conducted heuristic analysis and user interviews for the remaining 3 verticals to list discrepancies and discover opportunities to design solutions that fit all verticals.
Business Problem :
Each vertical uses a different website template. Divinia is negatively impacted by this variation in terms of economic return, speed to scale, efficiency of resources, and customer experience.
Introducing a Design system would have been a more significant contribution to standardization. As a result of time and resource constraints, it was decided to do a quick fix all verticals for now and keep the makeover for later (which finally happened, starting with Divicars - discussed in a separate case study Divicars).
Qualitative analysis revealed some opportunities that could help Divistay's user experience. Since it's a search engine for hotels, users' expectations from using other similar platforms are unique for this vertical. They want more information on the hotel's location, class, unique selling points, etc.
Engagement overview of all verticals after standardization. Increase in Avg. engagement time and Engaged sessions per user, for all verticals over a period of 90 days after launch compared to preceding period.
Retention overview of first 90 days after launch of Stock prediction tool compared to preceding period.
I loved working with Divinia. I enjoyed being a part of forming the vision that would help this company grow. I learned so much about the stock market and cars, I feel ready to start a stock portfolio of my own or maybe buy myself a new car!
Despite my eagerness, I learned that you can only make a company grow as much as it is capable of doing. For example, I was eager to work on a dashboard on Divistocks for users to create portfolios and track the performance of stocks that interest them. But, the company still needed to be ready for that step. I had to amend my pace and enthusiasm to meet the most critical business objectives. A UX designer's first priority is always the user, but only to the extent that stated business goals are met. I can't wait to see where this company goes in the future.
This was my first assignment as the sole UX designer, which was intimidating but thrilling. This redesign challenged my skills and helped my confidence grow as a designer. I was free to organize my process in any way, and I enjoyed learning what worked best and was most productive for me.
