Elevate Money

Experience 2

Elevate Money: real estate investing for all

Elevate Money has one goal: to give the everyday investor access to institutional level real estate. With low account minimums and high dividend yields, Elevate Money does all the heavy lifting for its investors.

My Role: Founding Product Designer

Company: Elevate Money

Project Type: Webapp, iOS App, Marketing site

WHAT IS ELEVATE MONEY?

Elevate Money is an early stage startup designed to bring institutional level investment opportunities to the everyday investor. Like other real estate investment platforms, Elevate Money has high dividend yields and strong investment properties. So, how do we stand out? Through product. We created a platform that was intuitive to all investors. We emphasized cutting edge designs to attract customers that might also be interested in crypto and day trading.

WHAT WAS MY GOAL?

As the first employee of Elevate Money, I was hired to overhaul every digital product, and create a few new ones. My goal was to create a series of products that could be easily accessed by all users, showcase our properties in a unique way, maintain a common brand identity, and fit a tight engineering budget.

THE NEW WEBAPP

When I started at Elevate Money, the investment experience was at its lowest. The live webapp had no UX logic and was losing potential investors left and right. I took this as a chance to overhaul Elevate Money's investment experience and give the project the proper research and discovery work that it deserved. The result: a 72% higher conversion rate, and better investment experience for all.

The marketing site

After totally rebuilding the Elevate Money marketing site, we saw a tremendous increase in numbers. Conversion rates increased by 72%, new high for us. While recreating the marketing site, we also explored creative ways to digitalize the properties that our REIT owned. These eye catching, 3D representations were rated highly by our test groups.

The dashboard

The dashboard is one of the most important parts of any investment experience. How does the user feel when they're pushed to the dashboard with a pending transaction? We want the user to feel confident in their decision to invest with us, so we must create a powerful and trustworthy interface. Anything short of perfect will erode the user's trust in our brand.

Auto-invest

Among many other features, we overhauled the auto-investing experience. As a result, we saw auto-investment usage more than double. We created an intuitive flow that cut out all unnecessary steps and any uncertainty that the user might have had.

THE iOS APP

As the most used platform, the iOS app had to be perfect. Our target user was approximately 25 - 35 years old, meaning, they expected a flawless iOS experience. After dozens of rounds of design and iteration, we created a seamless iOS experience that shared components with its preexisting twin, our PWA.

The design process

The design process was extensive for this project as we balanced engineering manpower with our MVP requirements. We went through several rounds of prioritization, research, and wireframing to eventually narrow in on the core functionality that we wanted to iOS experience to have.

The necessities

Nowadays, it's common for a company's iOS app to be used by a majority of users. This was no different for us, and we had to to create an app with our best foot forward. Uploading an app to the app store opens the door to all kinds of scrutiny through user reviews. We had no room for error and the application continues to hold a high rating.

The handoff

Having outsourced engineering manpower can be a challenge for several reasons. To set engineering up for success as best as possible, I created a series of unique documents to provide as much information as possible about my designs.

WHAT DO PEOPLE ON THE TEAM HAVE TO SAY ABOUT ME?

I worked closely with a group of unique individuals to bring the world Elevate Money. Here's what these folks had to say about me:

Founding Engineer

"[He] minimizes the amount of 'catch-up' work my engineers have to do when onboarded to a new project. [His] designs are well though out and rarely require any additional questions from engineers"

Founder, Design

"[He] helps take stress away. I can consistently trust [him] to deliver excellent work. [He] goes above and understands what needs to be done without leadership asking."