DepositLink

DepositLink is a digital payments platform for the real estate industry, replacing paper checks and risky wire transfers. It reduces fraud risks, boosts efficiency, and speeds up transaction times. It offers fast, secure transactions for brokers, agents, title companies, attorneys, and rental businesses. The platform enables these users to manage a wide range of transactions, including earnest money deposits, commission payments, rental payments, refunds, and closing funds.

➤ Disclaimer: All DepositLink related identity has been removed from these designs. The UI styles, colors, layouts, etc. have been modified accordingly. These designs do not represent past, present, or future releases by DepositLink. Any sensitive DepositLink related information within this case study has been removed or modified.

 
 
 

DepositLink

DepositLink is a digital payments platform for the real estate industry, replacing paper checks and risky wire transfers. It reduces fraud risks, boosts efficiency, and speeds up transaction times. It offers fast, secure transactions for brokers, agents, title companies, attorneys, and rental businesses. The platform enables these users to manage a wide range of transactions, including earnest money deposits, commission payments, rental payments, refunds, and closing funds.

➤ Disclaimer: All DepositLink related identity has been removed from these designs. The UI styles, colors, and layouts have been modified accordingly. These designs do not represent past, present, or future releases by DepositLink. Any sensitive DepositLink related information within this case study has been removed or modified.

 

My roles & responsibilities

I joined DeopsitLink’s growing team, bolstering its UI/UX design department. By collaborating closely with the lead designer, development teams, and internal stakeholders I created new features and enhanced existing interfaces and user experiences throughout the software. I was a driving force behind refining the software’s overall UI and implementing key improvements to align with WCAG accessibility standards. Additionally, I designed various marketing assets to elevate brand visibility and attract investors.

    • Update colors to comply with WCAG Level AA accessibility guidelines and ensure visual consistency across the software.

    • Collaborate with developers to create new components to be used throughout the software. These components are created to be a 1:1 to what will be built in the software.

    • Up-keeping and editing the existing UI library and design system.

    • Bring old pages, components, and other elements visually up to date.

    • Worked with internal stakeholders to refine existing interfaces.

    • Created wireframes, user journeys, & prototypes to test and iterate quickly, making sure our designs stay within the project scope and are user-centered.

    • Collaborate with internal stakeholders to create intuitive, user-centered designs.

    • Created user flows to promote business partnerships to increase revenue brought in on a regular basis.

    • Designed for desktop, tablet, and mobile devices, prioritizing responsiveness across various screen sizes.

    • Pitch deck to entice investors. 

    • Email & Modal Designs to promote new features.

    • Images to be used in help and training guides.

    • Social media assets for LinkedIn, Facebook, & Instagram.

    • Promotional videos highlighting the business.

Introduction

Landlord Dashboard & Request flow

I explores a potential solution to target a new group of users leading to new users and previous users coming into the software to make payments on a consistent basis.
The target audience for this project is landlords.

I collaborated closely with Jes Chuhta on this project. Jes worked on the Tenant side of this project.

The Problems

Currently DepositLink primarily utilizes single, one time payments. This means users come into DepositLink to pay requests made by their real estate agents, brokerages, etc., once their transaction is complete they don’t have a reason to come back into DepositLink.

  • User retention is low.

  • Investors are looking for increasing numbers.

Needs

Landlords’s needs

  • Rent collection & Tracking tenant’s payments.

    • Collect rent from tenants and keep track on time and late payments.

  • Improved efficiency.

    • All transactions, properties, and tenant information in one location

  • Financial Reporting.

    • Track income by week, month, & year. Along with income by property.

DepositLink’s needs

  • Drive overall revenue growth.

    • Get more users in the software making payments on a repeat, consistent basis.

  • Increase user traffic & retention.

    • Give users reasons to come back into the software.

  • Improve the software's appeal to investors.

    • Increasing user traffic, user retention, and profits.

Solutions

  •  Add recurring payments to our software, landlords will be able to request rent from their tenants for monthly payments. 

  • A one time payment has a single fee with DepositLink. If we can get landlords using these solutions and have their tenants use DepositLink on a monthly basis, this would increase profits by a large margin by charging tenants a small fee when they pay their rent every month.

To create our solution we need:

  • Landlord Outreach

    • This will let landlords know of these new features and get them using the software for their rentals.

  • A Landlord Dashboard

    • This will give the target audience an incentive to come back into the software on a regular basis driving user traffic & retention

  • The LL requesting rent from a tenant.

    • This will tap into the unused large database of agents, landlords, and others that have in the past or are currently using DL for their one time real estate payments

  • The Tenants getting a request and paying their rent, along with the small fee.

    • This will bring in a new revenue stream on a regular basis.

  • A Tenant Dashboard

    • This will give the tenant an easy way to make and track their rent payments.

Challenges

  • Enticing landlords to use DepositLink over alternatives.

    • Solution: Make it free for landlords

  • Keep this project within the scope of a phase 1 project, where we would release the MVP quickly.

    • Solution: Reduce internal stakeholder expectations to keep the scope small for phase 1, create something that uses existing systems in our software to minimize development time. 

  • End of Q1 deadline for a phase one MVP release. 

    • Solution: Reduce & reuse!

  • The fee tenants have to pay will have to be small enough for them to not mind paying it, this number is important to the overall success of this project.

Ideation

Landlord User Flow

Landlord Dashboard Ideas & Mockups

Landlord Outreach

This will let landlords know of these new features and get them using the software for their rentals.

At the end of their initial transaction within DepositLink Landlords end up on a success page. This success page is a great page to advertise our new features. Because we have landlord specific payment types the person requesting the payment can choose from, we can set these ads to show up for landlords only.

We also considered sending out targeted emails to landlords.

Landlord Dashboard

This is a version of the dashboard that we could strive to build towards.

  • This provides landlords with a summary of their total rental income for the year across all properties, along with a summary of previous years for comparison.

  • Landlords can see their connected bank accounts, including updates on micro deposit verifications and status changes.

  • Landlords can upload documents, including lease agreements, maintenance notices, eviction notices, and tenant-related paperwork here.

  • This is an overview of payment statuses across all properties, categorized ad on-time, pending, and late payments.

  • Landlords can navigate between a full list of their properties for real-time rent status updates. This shows which tenants have paid rent on time, who is overdue, or if there are pending payments.

  • This is a complete list of the landlord’s properties. They can request rent from tenants residing at the selected property.

  • Ads are an additional revenue stream to take advantage of. Displaying advertisements on the dashboard increases visibility and increases potential earnings.

Keeping the Landlord Dashboard within scope

To keep the Landlord dashboard within the scope of our end of Q1 release date, I removed much of the features.

The realistic, in scope Landlord Dashboard

This paired down version of the Landlord Dashboard speeds up the development process, allowing it to be released sooner. Our goal with this is to get the product in the hands of the user quicker so we can start bringing in revenue and iterate using live feedback.

  • Landlords can see their connected bank accounts, including updates on micro deposit verifications and status changes.

  • This is a complete list of the landlord’s properties. They can request rent from tenants residing at the selected property.

  • This gives landlords an overview of past payments, letting them know which transactions have successfully processed.

Landlord Rent Request flow

After the Landlord sends a rent request the tenant will receive an email prompting them to pay their rent through DepositLink.

Jes Chuhta worked on the tenant side of this project.

Still Images of Request Rent Flow

Impacts of the new designs

  • These new features are estimated to bring up to just under 2,000 landlords back into the software, along with 2,000 - 8,000 tenants: (1-4 tenants per landlord).

    • There have been around 1,900-2,000 users who have accepted a Rental Deposit in DepositLink.

  • At $5 per tenant rental charge, it could potentially bring in $10,000 - $40,000 per month (2,000 - 8,000 tenants using the software to pay their rent).