Opendoor is an online platform to buy and sell homes. They offer instant cash offers to customers, allowing them to skip the traditional selling process altogether. Sellers love Opendoor for its convenience and certainty in the home selling process.
A New Way to Sell
Opendoor’s original seller product called “Sell Direct” provided real value to home sellers in 3 ways — selling fast, meeting price goals, and alleviating uncertainty. In a healthy housing market, Sell Direct was successful at meeting the needs for both our customers and the business.
A Shift in the Housing Market
Coming out of the pandemic in 2021, we were in the hottest real estate market in a generation. Fewer active listings than ever before. Housing optimism was abundant and Opendoor’s business was booming.
A year later, mortgage rates jumped from an all-time low to the highest spike in 20 years. Inventory decreased drastically and Opendoor was no longer able to give customers offers that met their financial goals.
A New Product Solution: Listing
To respond to the housing market shift, we created a brand new selling product which aimed to help customers yield higher offers
Paired sellers with an agents to list on the market versus selling directly to Opendoor
Focused on single customer segment (Financially motivated)
Iterations to differentiate and find product market fit
Key customer benefits with listing:
Ability to back out anytime
A backup cash offer (Offer Lock)
$500 to get your home market-ready
Paired with expert local agent
We gathered feedback from real customers while we ran live in our pilot markets. We also ran extensive qual research to understand sellers motives.
Customers want control: Sellers prefer to work with an agent they have vetted themselves
Customers need to understand the process: They found hand-off between multiple people confusing (exp agent, 3rd party real estate agent)
Customers need to see immediate value in agents they work with: Many traditional agents show up in-person with a market analysis in-hand and work closely with customers.
Iterations V1 & V2
Responding to customer feedback and conversion metrics, we made changes to address our customers directly:
Reassure customers that we have expertise in their local market
Clarify our explanation of the listing service and process overview
Ensure customers know they’ll be supported by throughout the process by one of our agents.
Expanded into 2 new markets to pressure-test learnings
No one-size-fits-all solution
Offers fall short with housing market fluctuations
Delivers on speed and certainty
Works well for customers but only when Opendoor can meet their price goals.
Can help customers yield higher offers on their homes, but may take longer to sell and be less convenient of a process
Works well for customers but only when they have more time to spare and dont mind putting in more work.
A Two-Product Offering: Sell Your Way
We understood that neither one of our products was meeting all of our customers core concerns (price, timeline, guaranteed sale)
We devised a concept of a true two product solution— giving customers more autonomy and control in how they sell with Opendoor.
We held moderated research sessions to test our initial concepts and usability. We spoke with ~10-15 people, then and transcribed and synthesized our findings into a deck which helped guide the work moving forward.
MVP Launch
We combined our findings from research to our initial MVP which went live in our 1 test market of Charlotte, NC. We hoped to monitor performance and compare with our existing Sell Direct product. Validating things in our pilot market would give us signal to move forward.
RITE Research
We worked with a newly-joined researcher to help focus our efforts on the most critical parts of the experience. Customers were running into comprehension errors and struggled to understand the product offering. In research, we iterated with copy & design repeatedly in between research sessions to learn what resonated best. We learned a lot about customers perceptions in doing so.
A New Way Forward
We launched our V1 and within a month we saw an initial uptick of 12.4% in conversions. Initial feedback was positive. Customers reported understanding Opendoor’s offerings and that seeing multiple options actually increased their trust in the company. Sets us up directionally in a way that aligns with business goals. We had such high confidence in Sell Your Way that we planned to replace our Listing experience by the end of the next quarter.