Customer Reviews Feature:

Driving Trust and Engagement Through Strategic Review Collection

The Challenge

Our users faced a significant barrier that impacted their success and growth.

Data showed that 53% of active users had zero customer reviews on their profiles, creating a credibility gap that hindered their ability to secure new jobs and build customer confidence.

The Result

I designed a feature that enabled our users to collect reviews from past customers outside of our platform, ultimately increasing job acquisition rates and user retention by 31%.

Closing the Gap: Building Credibility Through Reviews

Our pros were having a difficult time connecting with homeowners.

During interviews with users, we noticed a pattern of users expressing frustration with building credibility on their profiles:

“Starting over on a new platform is hard because I have to rebuild my profile and reviews.”

“I have a Yelp and Google business account that have reviews. But on here, no one can see them.”

After looking at our data and existing research, we identified key problems and observations:

  • New users struggled to establish credibility without reviews

  • Existing users had positive reviews scattered across external platforms (Yelp, Google Business)

  • No systematic way to migrate or collect reviews from past work

  • Low conversion rates for users without reviews

Analyze & ideate

How can we help users collect reviews from their customers that weren't on our platform?

We brainstormed and narrowed down three solutions for how a pro can collect reviews:

  • A simple URL that users could share anywhere text messages, emails, social media. No platform account required for reviewers.

  • Pre-designed email and SMS that are easy to send and feel authentic and professional.

  • A way for pros to import their existing reviews onto their profile so all existing reviews are displayed.

Working with constraints

We presented our findings and early designs to stakeholders.

Our engineering team had constraints—limited resources, competing priorities, technical debt. We had to make choices about what to build first.

Working closely with our engineering team to identify the most impactful features we could deliver quickly.

We decided to focused on three core options: the ability to request reviews from past customers through email, sms and a shareable links.

The MVP:

  • Review request links that worked anywhere.

  • Ability to send an email and sms request that feel authentic.

  • Basic analytics to track success.

  • Mobile-first design because that's where conversations happen.

Design

In Figma, I created user journeys and wireframes. The designs were focused on the three different ways a user can request a review.

Design Documentation:

Working with the existing design system, I created comprehensive documentation including:

  • Component Specifications: Detailed design system components

  • Interaction Guidelines: Micro-interactions and animations

  • Edge Cases: Error states and loading scenarios

The Launch

Before rolling out this feature to all users, we select a group of users to test first. We needed to to ensure there were no bugs and we could collect early data and feedback .

Working with our marketing team, we crafted a launch strategy that met users where they were. We designed in-app announcements and coordinated e-mail and SMS campaigns for existing users.

The Results

The feature has been successful. Users who have requested reviews have a greater chance of connecting with homeowners.

  • The percentage of active users with at least one review jumped from 47% to 75%.

  • Job acquisition for users with reviews improved 23%.

  • Review requests have a 68% completion rate

Moving forward

The next step is to allow the ability for a user to import reviews from other sources including Google and Yelp.

Leading the design on this project provided me with a valuable opportunity to collaborate with many teams across the company including Marketing, Sales and Account Managers.