Varsity Tutors: Tutor application

BACKGROUND

Problem: We were hemorrhaging money on ad spend and acquiring very few tutors

The existing tutor application process was a labyrinth of pieced-together third-party apps that made for a cumbersome, disjointed, and confusing user experience. From start to finish, the application process yielded less than 1% of applicants joining the platform. My role as the UX design lead was to improve the experience for tutors and ultimately increase conversion so that we could spend less money, time, and effort on acquisition.

PROCESS

Research: Auditing the current UX to demonstrate problem areas and opportunities

My research started by digging deep into all stages of the funnel, allowing me to identify the most critical drop-off points and hone in on ways to mitigate abandonment and cut costs. I conducted competitive analyses of analogous application experiences, audited the current application flow, mapped out the user journey, identified discretionary expenses, and assessed which portions might not be necessary and what critical information we might be not capturing, which enabled me to recommend a plan going forward.

Audit of existing tutor application flow

Journey map of existing tutor application flow that exposed unnecessary complexities and multiple defects

Narrowing in on a solution: Proposing a simplified UX and content organization

I worked with our product and tutor sourcing teams to ascertain what information we needed to collect and ways we could streamline content to avoid making applicants do unnecessary work. After gaining an understanding of what information was critical and why, I created groupings of content that facilitated a more logical flow for the applicant. Additionally, I partnered with engineering to determine the viability of absorbing third-party functionality in house—an effort that would benefit both the applicant and the business.

Journey map of proposed tutor application flow—a drastically simplified and streamlined experience optimized to encourage completion

Detailed view of proposed application content

Future Vision: Supplying a North Star to work towards

After identifying numerous areas that could benefit from an improved user experience, I got buy-in to spend a little more time upfront to lay out the vision that encompassed all of my ideas, knowing that we could easily scale things back for an MVP launch. The future state of the tutor application included easy and seamless account creation, saving and editing application drafts, advanced conditional logic, multiple API calls, pre-filling content by uploading a resume or connecting to LinkedIn, international applicant affordances, subject recommendations based on user inputs, and the integration of all third-party apps.

International affordances & more advanced functionality

Mobile progress indicator behavior

MVP Launch: Partnering with product and engineering to launch the features that gave us the biggest bang for our buck

To begin learning as quickly as possible, we launched with an MVP version that introduced improved UX patterns, a progress indicator, conditional logic, simple API calls, and editing capabilities.

Layout illustrating a variety of question & answer types

Mobile view

Progress and error states

Patterns and functionality

Results

With a flat marketing spend, my redesign resulted in a 74% increase in applicants, an 18% higher conversion rate, a 106% increase in tutoring contracts offered, an 83% increase in contracted tutors, and significant reductions in costs associated with internal processing efforts and unnecessary background checks.