Hoist
Home services tech. Latest app version shipped April 2024.
Services
The problems we tackled: residential painters spend too much time creating proposals, they miss out on leads because they don’t respond quickly enough, and they lack a streamlined sales process.
Key Impact
Increased close rate from 33% industry average to over 70%
Increased average monthly sales volume per user from $30k to $60k+ in 3 months
Doubled unique app events in 3 months
Starting with our target customer.
Based on over 100 conversations with painters, we found that our target user is an early adopter with a small-medium size business who is interested in scaling. They're typically the only person running their business, so I knew the product solution would need to be simple and optimize for the use case of working in a car or between jobs.
Information architecture
The app's architecture centers around a user’s leads. Leads are ordered by recency so users can find them quickly. All job information is contained within the lead, and is further divided by various job types (interior, exterior, cabinets). I refined this organization to get closer to users’ mental models through regular interviews and testing sessions.
UX & interaction design
To craft an intuitive UX I stuck to well-known interaction patterns that users would expect. This was especially important because the product is introducing an entirely new concept and workflow that painter's haven't seen before. In order to overcome their old habits and get closer to product-market fit, it's imperative that the UX is straightforward. For new, complex features I worked in wireframes in order to cycle through ideas quickly with product and engineering. For smaller updates I work directly in visual design in order to save time and execute quickly.
User testing
Our user experience is refined through both internal and user-facing feedback sessions. I work with my teammates who regularly interface with painters in order to get their product feedback. I host a biweekly design review with our engineering team in order to get their thoughts early on. Throughout each sprint, I meet with the PM multiple times per week to show design updates and vet through ideas. Both before and after launching new updates, I meet with our users to test new features. Sometimes I test with the live product and sometimes with a Figma prototype. We also collect ongoing usage and engagement data through Mode which serves as another input into the design process.
Evolution & iteration
Although we're seeing strong signs of product-market fit with this version of the product, we're working on a pivot in order to reach our goal of a $200m+ valuation. The new iteration of the app would replace a painter's salesperson by delivering won jobs. All a business owner needs to do is schedule the job and show up to paint.
