The client was an online start-up in its 7th year of business and it was considering whether to shut down or revamp for one final push. The client had no existing IT staffing available and was looking for a team to come in and help reinvigorate its platform and offers.

Ippon first aligned with the Business calendar, adapting transformation efforts to business milestones within the seasonality of the existing product and market fit. We first approached changes to the Land Owner onboarding flow to implement new functionality ahead of peak season. Subsequently, Ippon attacked the new marketplace functionality ahead of that peak season. This enabled new changes to capitalize on existing markets to increase year-over-year (YOY) adoption rates.

The process for onboarding new Land Owners was such that they received a mailing with a special code identifying their property, encouraging them to visit the customer site and consider leasing their property to hunters. This flow ended with customers being able to contact the client and download a brochure with no further call to action. Land Owners would stop engagement at that point and often never call or be contacted about their interest.

The team looked at this process and decided to create a process where Land Owners could create their listing from the mailing, rather than having to call in. Our solution was to conduct a design sprint to identify high-level designs and prototypes from which to build and then to conduct several short-term sprints that combined design with implementation. By working through designs and implementing them we completely refurbished the site throughout several sprints.

We also redesigned the entire Land Owner digital intake through the website, adding new functionality that allowed for self-onboarding and automation. The result reduced the acquisition cost of new Land Owners by 50%. Before the engagement, administrators were manually onboarding Land Owners.

A second wave of redesign was focused on the marketplace where customers could shop for property for short-term leases. UI and UX were overhauled throughout, improving the general look and feel of the website, giving it credibility and a feeling of professionalism that had been missing.

Lastly, the client platform required several updates to legacy core systems, including Angular, Bootstrap, and other technologies to increase the speed and stability of the platform. Using a design sprint to establish high-level goals and an initial prototype, the team implemented and designed a new website to increase member engagement and reduce onboarding costs for the client. Using the prototype, we delivered incremental improvements in the mailing cycle and the onboarding process which created a way for Land Owners to create their own property listing without intervention from the administrators at the client.

Ippon delivered incrementally and the initial flow had the Land Owner complete 40% of the listing experience with the remaining 60% performed by the client. The goal was to have 80% of the listing completed by Land Owner and 20% completed by the client administrator.

The engagement had 3 goals: increase revenue, decrease onboarding costs and friction for new Land Owners, and increase customer engagement on the website.
Since the completion of the project, net sales have increased by 9.8% for the year and customers are spending more time on the site and more money than they had in the previous year. The project also increased overall LO onboarding. Process changes resulted in new LOs completing at least 50% of the onboarding experience which previously yielded a 0% completion rate. Ippon, therefore, exceeded the goal and drastically reduced the friction for all parties in terms of getting new properties available to customers.

Finally, the project resulted in increased website engagement from an average of 1 minute 46 seconds in June to its peak of 3 minutes 28 seconds in November. Users currently average 2 minutes and 47 seconds on the site, almost double the time spent in the previous 6 months.

Overall, Ippon's work on this project helped make this organization run more efficiently and effectively while also decreasing its overall cost.

Our client was an online platform that allows private property owners to list their property for rental to private customers so that they might hunt, fish, do paddlesports, hike, or camp. The platform was the equivalent of AirBnB or VRBO but for private land usage rather than private dwellings.

The private rental space has a handful of competitors but there is no clear market leader. Our client is still seeking market fit, largely holding a regional footprint, but they were looking for scaffolding help to position an easier path to expansion.