Realbid is a platform revolutionizing real estate investment by enabling users to buy and sell shares in real estate assets. The project aimed to democratize access to real estate ownership, allowing users to invest in high-quality properties with fractional ownership, making wealth-building more accessible.
My Role: As the lead designer, I was responsible for the development of a cohesive design system, creating user-friendly interfaces, and delivering promotional materials to enhance the platform’s usability and engagement.
Challenges:
- Complex Onboarding Process: New users found it difficult to understand investment options and navigate the platform.
- Data Overload: The platform presented too much information upfront, overwhelming users.
- Lack of Trust Signals: Users were hesitant to invest due to insufficient emphasis on security and credibility.
Realbid is an online platform that enables individuals to invest in real estate by purchasing shares in various properties. This approach allows investors to build a diversified portfolio that generates rental income, appreciates in value, and offers tax benefits associated with real estate ownership.
Investors can choose from a range of property types, including office buildings, single-family rentals, multifamily units, retail spaces, and home equity investments. Investments can start with as little as $10, providing flexibility to buy full shares or fractions of shares. Realbid also offers features like downside protection, enabling investors to sell their shares back to Realbid for 95% of the original cost, and access to tax benefits such as depreciation losses.
The platform provides tools to help investors analyze each opportunity, including market data, property comparisons, and information about the sponsors behind each investment. This transparency allows users to make informed decisions tailored to their investment goals.
Transformative Results & Business Growth
Significant User Engagement:
The intuitive, visually appealing interfaces I designed led to a dramatic increase in user sign-ups, rising from 30% to 70%. This surge in engagement reflects the effectiveness of the user-centric approach in simplifying the sign-up process and fostering a more enjoyable experience.
Boost in Investments:
Through revamped promotional materials, including redesigned property listings and targeted email campaigns, investments doubled. This indicates that the strategic design improvements not only improved user experience but also successfully drove higher conversion rates and ROI.
Stronger Brand Presence:
The impactful visuals and messaging of the promotional materials helped Realbid strengthen its brand identity in the marketplace, ensuring consistency across all touchpoints and enhancing trust with potential investors.
Prototyping:
Utilized Figma to develop high-fidelity prototypes. These prototypes were iteratively tested with users to refine navigation flows, content layout, and interaction designs.
Low-Fidelity Sketches and Designs: The initial stage of the design process included creating low-fidelity wireframes to map out the structure and flow of the platform.
These wireframes focused on:
- A property listing page showcasing available real estate investments.
- Detailed property view pages that include key metrics, comparison tools, and investment details. Navigation flows to guide users through browsing, comparing, and investing.
- Essential interaction elements like filters, search functionalities, and comparison charts.
-The low-fidelity designs ensured the layout and functionality were aligned with user needs before moving into high-fidelity prototyping.
Objective:
To empower users with actionable insights, Realbid required advanced visualization and reporting tools that translated complex investment data into user-friendly, interactive formats. These tools aimed to foster confidence and improve decision-making for both novice and experienced investors.
Features Designed: Interactive dashboards provided a snapshot of portfolio performance, including total value, returns, and diversification insights. Users could drill down to explore individual property metrics like rental yields, appreciation, and ROI. The dashboards integrated live data feeds to ensure information accuracy and timeliness.
- Dynamic visualizations offered comprehensive graphs, including line charts to track property appreciation trends, pie charts for portfolio allocation by property type or location, and bar graphs comparing individual property performance.
- Risk indicators were also introduced, such as heatmaps to identify high-risk versus high-performing investments. Customizable filters allowed users to adjust views based on specific criteria, such as timeframes or property types.
- A property comparison tool enabled side-by-side evaluation of properties with metrics such as projected growth, rental income, and market value. The tool also offered a summary scoring system for easy assessment of top-performing properties.
- Downloadable reports included predefined summaries in exportable PDFs that provided key performance metrics for portfolios. Users could create custom reports by selecting specific data sets and timeframes for tailored reporting. Reports were designed to be easily shareable with stakeholders or advisors.
- Guided education was embedded within the dashboards through interactive tutorials to assist users in interpreting visualizations. Contextual tips were displayed on data points, helping users understand metrics and trends.
Design Principles Applied: The tools were designed with simplicity in mind, focusing on reducing cognitive load through intuitive navigation and clear visual hierarchy. Accessibility was prioritized by ensuring compliance with ADA standards, including proper contrast ratios and screen-reader-friendly descriptions. Responsiveness was also a key focus, with the dashboards optimized for both mobile and desktop platforms, enabling seamless interaction across devices.
Impact: The introduction of these tools increased user interaction with the dashboard by 40% post-launch. User confidence improved significantly, with 85% of users reporting that they felt better equipped to make investment decisions. The tools also encouraged portfolio diversification, leading to a 25% rise in multi-property investments.
Key Takeaway: The investment insights and visualization tools significantly enhanced Realbid’s transparency and usability, fostering user trust and driving engagement while simplifying the complexities of real estate investing.
UI/UX Enhancements:
Revamped the user onboarding experience, simplifying sign-up processes.
Designed intuitive dashboards allowing users to track investments and explore properties easily.
Promotional Materials:
Developed visually compelling property listing pages to highlight investment opportunities.
Designed email campaigns focusing on user acquisition and retention.
Metrics Achieved:
Increased user sign-up rates from 30% to 70% through the redesigned onboarding flow.
Achieved a 100% increase in investment volume within three months of launch.
Improved user satisfaction scores based on post-launch surveys.
Visual ShowcaseDesign System Components Above:
UI Screens: Before-and-after comparisons of the onboarding flow and dashboards.
Promotional Materials: Samples of property listings and email templates.
The Realbid project successfully addressed initial challenges, resulting in a more engaging and user-friendly platform. By leveraging user insights and implementing a cohesive design strategy, Realbid achieved its goal of making real estate investment accessible to a wider audience. This case study demonstrates my ability to design impactful solutions that drive measurable results.
