Original business frame
What the business set out to do
- Create a new monetized model
- Drive customer engagement
- Increase interactions between providers and customers
Marketplace Product Design
Creating confidence in uncertain decisions.
I designed a marketplace experience that helped people discover, evaluate, and connect with trusted service providers.
The work focused on the moments that build confidence—from comparing experience and credentials to knowing what would happen after making contact.
The Context
Choosing a provider is a high-trust decision.
WealthGuide connects people with local providers for financial and life decisions. At the time, customers submitted a request form and received one to three provider recommendations.
This project explored a new model that allowed customers to compare providers directly and choose based on their own preferences.
- Limited provider visibility
- Unclear expectations after submitting a request
- Inconsistent provider experiences
- Low return engagement across services
- A growing need for customer trust and loyalty
The Challenge
More control made trust even more important.
The proposed marketplace gave customers more control, but it also made trust more important. People needed to compare providers, understand their credibility, and feel confident choosing a professional.
The experience also needed to support the full journey, from discovery and evaluation to account creation and follow-up. Customers needed to feel confident at every step.
Deeper user problem
What customers actually needed
- Hiring a provider is a high-trust decision
- Customers need confidence before taking action
- Provider information, ratings, and vetting signals need to be clear and reliable
Product Vision
From one-time matching to an ongoing relationship.
The long-term vision was to turn WealthGuide from a one-time provider-matching experience into an ongoing relationship platform.
Customers could compare providers, choose trusted professionals, access relevant resources, and return as new financial or life needs emerged across real estate, tax, insurance, and other services.
Understanding Trust
What helped people feel confident enough to choose?
My team and I explored the information people needed to trust and select a provider. We tested several concepts and features with potential customers to understand what shaped their decisions.
Key Observation
Features focused on trust consistently performed better than features focused on convenience.
Key insights — what people wanted
- Highly rated professionals
- Relevant experience
- Social proof and recommendations
- Confidence before making contact
Testing Trust Signals
How should new providers appear before they have ratings?
One key question emerged during research: how should new providers be presented when they had not yet received ratings? We conducted additional testing to understand how people evaluated providers without reviews.
Customers were willing to consider unrated professionals when other trust signals were available—experience, credentials, specializations, and professional background. This finding shaped how providers were presented in the marketplace.
Star rating display test
Four Treatments Tested
Test result
We asked if users would consider a provider without a star rating
Reasons for consideration:
- Years of experience
- Precise detailed experience description
- Their ranking within their regions
- Records of home selling/buying
- Professional profile pictures with a pleasant look
Star rating finding
- 01
Years of experience is one of the top determining factors for users to consider any agents besides ratings and reviews.
- 02
Agents with strong experience but no ratings or reviews raised skepticism. Users questioned why their experience wasn’t backed by customer feedback.
- 03
Review volume also mattered. Most preferred a 4.5-star agent with 24 reviews over a 5-star agent with only 5, suggesting that more reviews increased trust and credibility.
Design response
We used the label “Not rated yet” for providers without reviews to avoid drawing unnecessary attention to the absence of ratings.
We also turned the research findings into profile guidelines, helping providers—especially those without ratings—to strengthen their bios and highlight relevant experience to improve their chances of being considered.
Designing the Experience
Giving customers more control without adding uncertainty.
The marketplace gave customers more control over the selection process and allow them to explore their options and choose providers who fit their needs.
The experience focused on four areas
Discovering providers
Comparing options
Building confidence
Taking action
User flow & interface examples
Validating the experience
We created an interactive prototype and observed how people moved from provider discovery to selection. The prototype helped validate key assumptions about trust, provider evaluation, and account creation.
Outcome
What changed.
The project showed that customers were interested in the marketplace and could complete the full journey.
Although the marketplace was not continued, part of the work was later used in the My Providers section—a place for customers and providers to connect.
- 01Learned which details helped customers trust providers
- 02Confirmed that customers wanted to compare and choose providers themselves
- 03Found that missing reviews made providers harder to judge
- 04Improved provider bios and experience details
- 05Shaped later work on customer and provider experiences
Insight
Confidence had to come before action. Trust depended on several signals working together—ratings, reviews, experience, specialties, and clear next steps.
Cross-team dependencies delayed provider reviews, showing how much the customer experience relied on the systems and operations behind it.
The concept showed customer value, but moving it forward also required stronger business readiness and stakeholder alignment.
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