My Challenge

I was tasked with growing Rocket Mortgage not just visually but on a monetary level through research and AB testing.

My Roles

  • Led lead form optimizations. Achieved a more modern lead form experience that these funnels had never seen before, resulting in large growth during testing cycles.

  • Organized and executed moderated user interviews, unmoderated usability testing, affinity mapping, market research, competitive analysis, and other research projects to fully understand our user needs and current pit falls.

  • Led strategy and design thinking workshops that helped transform historical lead forms through CRO and created a Figma design system for the brand to allow for a seamless experience across all marketing channels.

Overview

Rocket Mortgage® (formerly known as Quicken Loans) is a major American household brand name when it comes to mortgage solutions. They operate with a wide brand umbrella, allowing them to leverage a diverse financial product portfolio in today’s market. Within this brand’s operation are specialized lead forms with the goal of getting a user to their mortgage’s "finish line” as quickly and easily as possible. These lead forms are managed by my team at Core Digital Media (a Rocket Mortgage subsidiary) where we grew the user experience to new heights.

Research & Understanding

Identifying A Gap In Audience

In an effort to identify ways to grow the Rocket Mortgage brand, I set out to hear from the market users themselves. Rocket Mortgage historically has had a more mature user base that for the most part has experience in refinancing their home. Unfortunately, there is a gap in the audience when comparing this demographic to current market trends. The result of this research was as clear as day: Rocket Mortgage is not marketing to the majority of the market, “i.e. Millenials.”


The personas for these two cohorts showed the following truths:

  • There was a lack of online avenues to start a loan application, which was the preferred method of contact (instead of a phone call from a banker).

  • Jargon in the disclaimers, rates, or even general information confused this user group as many of them were new to home refinance.

  • The market majority age group generally has a higher loan amount than the historical target audience, which could help increase revenue from home loans.

  • The design was seen as dated and the lack of informational hierarchy on the form flow made the application seem less trustworthy to the market majority audience.

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AB Testing In Action

Testing With Purpose

While a novel resolution was needed to address the overall market gap, one thing was certain: ALL users want to know what’s going to happen after they submit their personal information and they want an option to do things online

Some testing highlights:

  • By offering an “online” solution flow (while delaying a call from a banker), the total refinance applications started rose 8%.

  • Informing users about closing costs, a hard credit inquiry, and that they would be called raised refinance applications starts by 6%.

Closing The Gap

Now that the new target audience was in alignment with mortgage market data, it was time to create an experience that spoke to the demographic. In order to do this, a new brand was created that would not just aggregate leads to Rocket Mortgage, but also other lenders who could help when Rocket Mortgage was unable to. The resolution: Refily, a new refinance matching tool. With a sleek new modern experience, easy-to-digest data models, and transparency that primes the user for their lender interaction…Refily was able to:

  • Become profitable within the first month of launch.

  • Be free of any bias towards the Quicken Loans or Rocket Mortgage brand, which research showed users value.

  • Increase loan application starts (compared to the Quicken Loans or Rocket Mortgage branded form application).

  • Automated the ability for users to better compare lenders on their finer details without having to use multiple different outside resources.

Optimizing Forms We Know

Our historical lead forms have always proven to be reliable, which gives us a great base to optimize from. As Rocket Mortgage steps into a more modern era, our lead forms should reflect this change as well. In the past, feedback from users indicated that the brand felt “out of date”, which hurt trust with users as they were unsure if modern security measures were in place.

By modernizing our primary lead form I was able to generate a 10% lift in conversion and 17% increase in users starting loan applications, yielding over $300,000 additional profit generated over a 2 week time period for a single AB test