MyRentalA Reliable Tenant

MyRental makes tenant screening solutions for landlords, real estate agents, and property managers to help identify top-quality applicants.

How It Works

The product works by doing a thorough background check about applicants and providing a so-called SafeRent score via a custom-built algorithm.

In addition, the product pulls up background reports from various registries and credit agencies. The score helps landlords quickly identify tenants who are likely to pay rent on time and keep a property in good condition.

My Role

Gathered and analyzed unstructured customer feedback data
Identified emerging patterns and prioritized steps to enhance the product experience
Completely redesigned the landing page and the main product page

The Goals

MyRental had a website that was working for some time. They've been gathering analytics data and customer responses. So the goals were:

Improve the product growth rate

Improve the product growth rateWe would do this by rethinking the landing page selling the solution

Increase customer satisfaction

Increase customer satisfactionWe would work on enhancing internal product pages that customers already used

Research

The company was gathering quantitative research data via two types of surveys:

Net Promoter Score is an industry-standard metric to measure customer loyalty. To get this score, we ask people to answer a simple question with a rating. In addition, they have an option to fill out a text form with a reason for their answer. This option is available via a modal window within internal product pages.

How likely would you recommend MyRental to your friend or colleague?

Measuring Net Promoter Score

Exit Survey consisted of three questions: 1) Did you find what you were looking for? 2) What did you come to the site to do? 3) How can we improve your experience while visiting our website? This survey would appear if people decided to leave the Pricing page without making a purchase.

Survey Statistics

I got a spreadsheet containing over two thousand responses from the past six months. I aimed to discover what's working well and where we could improve. So, I went through them individually (I wish there were a faster way to do this) and categorized responses by topics.

Processing Survey Results

1Collect
Survey Data

Collect
Survey DataI gathered responses from the last six months to get the most relevant and recent data

2Filter Abstract Comments

Filter Abstract CommentsComments like "It is good" or "It is bad" don't provide much context and thus are ignored

3Identify
Patterns

Identify
PatternsI summarized repetitive comments into "user stories." For example: "As a user, I would like to receive quality customer service."

4Prioritize by Frequency

Prioritize by FrequencyTo prioritize the responses, I rated the most recurring comment with a base score of 100. Others got a relative score from 1 to 100.

Survey Highlights

To prioritize the responses, I rated the most recurring comment with a base score of 100. Others got a relative score from 1 to 100.

Net Promoter Score

I wish I could follow up with customers individually to learn more about their concerns. Yet, the time constraints of this project didn't allow that.

Solution

Homepage

The homepage aims to advertise product features and answer the most frequent questions a potential customer might have.

Pricing

Many potential customers were confused by the original pricing options. So, the pricing section was simplified by clarifying the text and adding an interactive toggle component to showcase a premium option. In addition, MyRental reduced the number of pricing tiers, while a free intro product got a prominent place.

Landlord

Renter

Product Page

Lease Decision is the primary page for landlords. The goal is to demonstrate a SafeRent score and background check information about co-applicants. The SafeRent score summarizes a potential risk of leasing a property based on several data points. A higher score tends to predict more reliable tenants.

Failed Ideas

Infographics. With the first version of a new Lease Decision page, my goal was to demonstrate the SafeRent score's value better. I tried doing this by showing how it compares to other applicants in the area (based on anonymous stats from MyRental) as other applicants for the current property.

I assumed that just a score number provides little insight into whether it's good or bad. So comparing it to others could help with evaluation.

Letter icons on a graph represented other applicants for the property

Yet initial tests showed that customers get overwhelmed with this amount of information. Because after using the product a few times, they start looking for a score and don't need such detailed data.

Background Check Evaluation. To simplify the readability of the page, I suggested using icons for each data point used in the score: green check marks for reports that are presumed "good" (i.e., no eviction history, credit score >650, rent-to-income ratio <20%, etc.) And yellow warning icons for data points requiring attention.

The legal team was not happy about that. This way, we would decide whether people's records are "good" or "bad" on behalf of a landlord. And this could lead to potential lawsuits against the company.

A product should not imply that a criminal record needs attentionFrom an ethical point of view, I also think this was a bad idea on my part. A product should not imply that having an eviction or criminal record needs attention by default. A human should make this decision.

Results

A few years after launching the product, I contacted the company's leadership—they were happy with the results. The redesign led to a customer base growth of 18%, while the Net Promoter Score rose by 30%, from 56 to 70.

Credits: cover photo originals by Unsplash/Point3D and Unsplash/Rodion Kutsaev

Igor Syvets