Improving the Contractor Application Experience

I drove the redesign of 3Play Media’s contractor application process, increasing overall conversion rate more than threefold.

Note: To comply with my non-disclosure agreement (NDA), I have omitted and obfuscated confidential information in this case study. All information presented in this case study is my own and does not necessarily reflect the views of 3Play Media.

This experience is publicly accessible on the 3Play Media contractor application page.

Project Overview

Company

3Play Media

Timeline

4 weeks (June to July 2021)

Platforms

Desktop + Mobile Web

My Role

Design Lead

Key Collaborators: I worked alongside our VP of Operations, Head of Marketing, a product manager, and two developers.

Project Overview

After COVID’s upsurge throughout 2020 and the beginning of 2021, an increasing number of schools and educational institutions moved classes and lectures online.

My company, 3Play Media, provides accessibility services such as captioning and audio descriptions for these organizations, and typically anticipates a seasonal upsurge prior to the start of a semester. However, with so many schools moving online, we were unprepared to meet this demand with our understaffed contractor base.

We were working under a tight timeline, as the longer we delayed this project, the more we were making our customers unhappy by missing their order deadlines, which could be quantified as a direct hit to our revenue and perceived level of quality as a company.

Unmet contractor demand chart

The Initial Challenge

How can we improve the current application process to make it easier to find qualified contractors?

Finding the Right Applicants

Historically, finding good contractors was a challenge. Compared to our competitors, we were much more selective and deliberate around who we approved as a contractor, as we aimed to maintain a high-level of accuracy and quality.

We knew there were many qualified candidates that were unemployed because of COVID, and we wanted to find a way to get them to learn about 3Play and apply to work as contractors.

Looking at the numbers and data 🔎

At the time of the redesign, around 5,000 people applied to become a contractor each week.

On average, out of those 5,000 people who applied, only 600 (12.2%) completed the entire preliminary application process. This completion percentage was the most important metric we looked at, but we also had to make sure we were considering the following objectives:

⬆️ Increase or Keep Constant

Contractor happiness

Number of total applicants

Opportunities to promote 3Play

Consistency in branding

⬇️ Decrease

Time to completion
‍
Overhead and manual touchpoints
‍
Cost to acquire a contractor
‍
Duplicate or fraudulent applications

Auditing the Current Application Experience

To start, we had to dig into the current experience to uncover the moments of highest friction. This audit would help us answer the following questions:

  • Where are the most applicants dropping off?
  • Are there major usability, accessibility, or scability issues?
  • What opportunities are there to automate processes or consolidate systems to reduce overhead and tech debt?

From there, I documented the long and disjointed journey an applicant had to go through to complete the application. We shared this Figma link with relevant internal stakeholders and synthesized feedback from previous contractor surveys to paint a clearer picture of what needed to be improved.

Old contractor application user flow

Simplified flow describing the old application application - disjointing, lengthy, and full of friction

The Five Major Pillars of the Application Redesign

After a week of team workshops focused on affinitizing goals and prioritizing them in order of severity, the following opportunities were identified as table stakes in the redesign of the new application.

Under each one of these top-level opportunities, I worked with my team to identify corresponding high-level and UX-specific KPIs that would help us track and determine whether the new application was performing well or if we had to make adjustments.

5. Improve Localization and New Services

As our company grew, we expanded our geographic reach, allowing us to hire offshore contractors and offer more services in other languages.

The new contractor application had to support new entry points for other services outside of transcription and captioning, especially as we were scaling audio description and live captioning offerings. This first release of the new application would support both English and Spanish applications.

4. Align with the New Company Rebrand

Our company rebranded in April of 2021, and this meant incorporating new assets and brand guidelines into the design of the new application.

Instead of viewing the recent company rebrand as a constraint, I saw it as an opportunity to differentiate our application process from our competitors by using refreshed language and imagery, and also use it as a chance to “sell” our company to applicants.

This was also a good opportunity to modernize and update components within our design system, while also focusing on accessibility throughout the process.

3. Increase Fraud Resistance

Our operations team spent a lot of time sifting fraudulent applications and trying to prevent them from accessing and completing work for real customers.

The current version of the preliminary application only had one simple test at the very end of the WuFoo form. Anecdotally, our team knew that answers were being shared across various forums and social media groups online.

Additionally, offshore contractors were sharing accounts and using spoofed identities to apply as American contractors to warrant higher pay rates. We needed to safeguard against this behavior and create scalable measures to future-proof the application from new types of fraud.

2. Reduce Manual Interventions

Previously, moving applicants through the applicant funnel was a cross-functional, heavily manual process.

We wanted to eliminate as much overhead and as many manual touchpoints as we could by automating the scoring system, and providing our internal teams dashboards and a set of controls to move applicants quickly through the application process.

1. Improve the Contractor Experience

Our goal was to increase the completion rate, number of applicants, propensity to work with 3Play long-term, and word-of-mouth referrals.

We knew the existing process was lengthy and disjointed. Our clunky, outdated, application experience deserved a long-overdue redesign as tech debt had accumulated since the start of the company in 2008, and the current application process was built using a mish-mash of technologies (WuFoo, TypeForm, Adobe Sign, and custom development work).

Historically, NPS and applicant happiness was not measured, but we had conducted a series of contractor interviews in early 2021, which qualitatively showed dissatisfaction within new contractors who reflected negatively on their application experience.

The application process was too long compared to Rev and Verbit’s, and it almost made me not want to finish my application with 3Play.

I wish there was better communication during the application process, as that could have been helpful for knowing where I stand.

I need instant feedback during the application process to keep me motivated and more likely to continue through the process.

I need a company that is flexible and forgiving when it comes to making mistakes, especially when starting out as a new contractor.

I had heard good things about 3Play, but I wasn’t sure whether it was a legitimate opportunity until I received an email months later from the Ops team... Better communication would have been appreciated.

I want to be able to hear back from 3Play about my status more quickly after I submit my application.

Iterating on the Design

As a team, during the one week design phase, we came up with several versions of what the future applicant user flow could look like. This timeline was tight, but we worked together as a team to iterate and provide feedback quickly through both synchronous (meetings, working sessions) and asynchronous (Figma comments, Slack messages, emails) forms of communication. This was the

Redesign contractor user flow diagram

Contractor flow diagram outlining state transitions, error states, and exit paths associated with the new application

Updated user flow of designs

Annotated Figma Document

Contractor application designs

GIF of Contractor Application

A Successful Launch! 🚀 🎉

After three weeks of development, the new application was rolled out on July 12th, 2021.

The Fruits of Our Labor

Instantly, we saw an instant increase in overall conversion rate from 12% to nearly 40%.

This was attributed to eliminating dropoff during key moments of engagement, and also creating external triggers to remind contractors to continue where they left off.

Bar chart showing increase in completion rate of application

Some Final Thoughts

This was one of the most challenging projects I’ve worked on, primarily because of the short timeframe we had to work under. As a result, some cool design features were deprioritized during the process that I want to call out as future enhancements:

  • Animations!
  • Automatic grading system
  • Redesigning the remainder of the extended application
  • Onboarding webinar and scheduling after application submission

This project would not have been possible without my team for their openmindedness and willingness to collaborate, even when it may have felt hard to do so.

A special thanks to our principal developer Andrew, who worked alongside me to build this out. Although it was hard to design all of this in a week, it’s much harder to build it in three.

Credits and thanks:
Photos from Unsplash. Icons from Flaticon.

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Derek Mei

Thanks for checking out my work. If you have questions or want to get in touch with me, please reach out by email or connect with me on LinkedIn!

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