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Estate Plans: Wills & Trusts
Crafting an intuitive go-to-market experience for a complex legal product
An adjacent customer need; a new business vertical
First, some context: Policygenius is a NYC-based insurance marketplace with a mission to help people get the financial protection they need and feel good about it.
As Lead Product Designer on the Life Insurance Growth team, I conducted hundreds of 1:1 customer interviews over the years and regularly heard from people that the same events that put insurance on their radar — getting married, having kids, buying a home — also got them thinking about creating a will.
This combined with other data points gave Leadership confidence to invest in a venture bet. I joined a startup within a startup to launch a new product vertical: Estate Planning, aka Wills & Trusts.
Our team was tasked with finding product-market fit (defined as ARPU/CAC) as quickly as possible.
Generative research: sample of quotes and synthesis themes.
Tailored legal documents, one question at a time
An estate plan can cover an enormous range of scenarios and include lots of different documents. To add to the complexity, all fifty states have different legal standards that these documents must meet to be considered valid in court.
First, we worked with our Legal Team partners to craft MVP scope. While Legal designed document templates, Product and Design crafted the experience customers would navigate to customize their documents.
The full process detail of this case study is confidential. Please get in touch to discuss further!
The customer journey
Because the process was lengthy, we broke it into smaller thematic sections intended to be completed in short sessions. A snapshot, after several iterations:
The printed packet
Once customers finished the digital portion of the process and paid, we printed and shipped physical copies of their legal documents (in addition to a digital copy), which they would need to sign in the presence of a witness and notary.
Continuously learning from customers
I spoke with 2-3 customers per week to understand where we could improve — both those who completed and paid for a will, and those who chose not to move forward with our product.
A few opportunity areas emerged:
Customers expected to be able to create estate plan documents for their spouse at the same time, and to coordinate the documents.
Everyone thought their situation was unique. Even if we knew our documents handily covered most complexities, their trust in the product was lost if they perceived it as not flexible enough for their needs.
We underestimated the degree to which creating an estate plans is a team effort: customers described lots of back & forth with their spouse and beneficiaries — often over a long time horizon.
Continuous customer research captured in cards, used to socialize learnings on a regular basis.
Iterating to address core needs
To address the need to create documents with a spouse: we designed and built flows for creating coordinated spousal documents, and signaled this core capability in marketing and app onboarding.
To provide a feeling of thoroughness & customization: we refreshed onboarding to learn about customers' specific situations, and highlight our legal team's stellar credentials in crafting tailored documents for their needs.
To circumvent endless procrastination: we moved payment forward — pay first, finish later.
Refreshed onboarding module to boost payment conversion
All three research insights manifested in iterations to our onboarding module, which dramatically increased ARPU/CAC (profitability).
The refreshed onboarding:
Signals the ability to create coordinated documents with a partner/spouse
Asks about a customer's unique situation and signals how our legal documents will cover it
Requests payment up front
The outcome? A venture wound down, but capabilities that live on
Our venture bet did not achieve escape velocity, but our impact continues to reverberate within the company. Along the way, we gathered learnings about consumer psychology and built core capabilities (like payment processing) that were applied to other verticals within the company.
The full outcome of this case study — including business metrics — is confidential. Please get in touch to discuss further!
