Pro Referral mobile app
Pro Referral is Home Depot’s digital marketplace that connects licensed professional (“pros”) with homeowner (“leads”).
The Pro Referral mobile app is a lead gen tool for pros to receive and reply to leads, message customers, and manage jobs. Our task was to boost engagement and brand loyalty for the most active pros.
On the old app, we noticed a lot of churn from the app at certain stages of a job.
This is because we lost visibility of a job once a pro contacted a lead, which means we couldn't:
😐 know if a job was done
😐 measure pro performance
😐 drive product loyalty, retention, and in-store spend
😐 improve lead quality
😐 identify pain points in the app
😐 reward high performers
😐 connect leads with relevant, responsible pros
Thanks to our stellar in-house researcher, we had some key insights from pros who used the app to gather and manage leads and jobs:
😬 Confusing IA, can’t find things
😬 Low awareness of features
😬 Various usability issues
😬 Not perceived as pro-friendly
😬 Job statuses and timer don’t align with pro’s mental model
😬 Unclear and inconsistent copy
To be successful, I created a content design framework based on this question:
How can content design help pros manage jobs from start to finish,
in a way that speaks to them,
while aligning copy across product, brand, and our team?
The previous IA separated leads from jobs, which confused pros.
Also, the update job status link was hard to find.
I talked to pros to understand how they think about their work, going from a lead to a finished job, then I:
✅ Simplified job lifecycle to match pro’s mental model
✅ Paired each backend match status to a pro-facing job status label
✅ Tested the new job status labels
Creating a labeling hierarchy and better UX created clear steps to help pros manage their jobs.
The term “New leads” conveyed zero urgency to follow up with the customer, who was waiting for a reply and a bid. To solve for this, I wrote the timestamp logic to clarify when a lead arrives and expires. They utilized both absolute and relative time for different scenarios.
Even though pros were competing with each other on leads, our research uncovered that pros have a lot of pride – they do not see themselves as the “beggar” in the relationship with the customer, but, rather the “chooser.”
To write the UI copy, I did more research, talked to subject matter experts, and created a comprehensive messaging strategy.
New app onboarding flow
Finally, I created an HTML style guide for Pro Referral with the goal of empowering my team members with UX copy that:
✏️ is reusable, scalable, and transferable
✏️ reinforces the Home Depot brand
✏️ provides clear direction and hand-off protocols for my build partners
