Financed customers make up close to half of our orders, but the online application experience only had an 8% completion rate. The disclosures forced customers to another tab, validation happens on application submit, the form fields are displayed side by side, and ultimately, the form is lengthy.
As I started this project, I evaluated the application flow and identified potential friction points for our users. I did market research on other companies, comparing like financial institutions and other types of lending partners like Affirm or Bread. I worked with our financing partner to discuss the changes I was proposing based on my findings, since the application is closely tied to their rules and regulations. Through this collaboration, I was able to transform the application experience for the user.
I removed the “Pay Your Bill” CTA from the landing experience, and made “Apply for Credit” the primary CTA. With the support of our financial partner, I removed several unnecessary form fields and split the application into mobile-friendly steps. Validation was added to the form fields on click off to notify users of errors instantly.
The Location section of the application is a business-requested friction point of the application. These questions are meant to create sales leads for our associates. I took the opportunity to enhance this experience for the user by using location services to select their nearest store automatically.
Lastly, instead of opening two different disclosures in new tabs, I combined the disclosures into one experience and used an iframe to immediately expose the disclosure to the user.
These enhancements are being iteratively implemented, with the first change being the disclosure experience. This change brought about a 6% increase in application completion.