So I recently went over the get equity product onboarding experience so I can give my personal review on the product experience and also ways I think it can be improved.

My name is henry Ikoh and I have over 5 years of a mix of product, design, engineering and business experience ( as a failed agency owner and creative explorer ) I have watched and observed why few products succeed and most fail and it generally come down to “friction” users feel when they are trying to get a job done.

I would be reviewing the Get Equity site, I love what they are building and would be sharing my professional insights and recommendations on different parts of the user journey starting from...

The Website

So the landing page looks cool, The headline, “Fund The Future Today” is nice and catchy it draws you in but it doesn't really explain what it does, So naturally, this is where the subheading should come in. “Create, access and share awesome, well vetted, investment opportunities in startups building the future, today!” Ok, this is alright but it doesn't really tell me what it does something like, “Get equity allows you invest in early stage highly vetted startups who are building the future”. I think this might be slightly better. I know exactly why I would signup. ( of course, I just came up with this copy in 3 seconds so it's not the best example )

Show don't tell

Get Equity has a promise which is, we allow you to invest in early-stage highly vetted startups but they just tell you this, and they don't show. You see this is a missed opportunity, companies that are marketplaces tend to “show” you the marketplace or give you access to “window shop” if you see what you like then you can “shop” ( create an account ). Equity doesn't show their listings on their site and I think they showed show it.

Target Audience

Who is the target audience for the product? I would assume young professionals who are looking for interesting and unique investment opportunities, ideally, these people are not aware of all these investment jargon like IPO.. etc. They don't care about the fact that “Tokenized commodities” are used to secure the assets. They just want to know these simple things

• What/who can I invest in?
• Why should I invest?
• How can I invest?
• Are my investments safe?
• How do I liquidate?
• How much returns can I get from my investment?
• what are the risks?

These things need to be shown and presented in plain English on the website. I'm into tech but I have 0 investment experience so I don't understand most of the jargon used within the VC ecosystem. Neither do the users.

Creating Account

So the account creation process, when I click the get started button this should take me to the registration page but instead, it takes me to the login page where is see two options ( investor login / organization login ) I don't even know what to click ( a lot of users would bounce here )

I had to come back to the page and click the sign button. So a total of 2 clicks just to get to the register page and the second click isn't obvious. I bet like 50% of users bounce from this point.

So I get the registration form and I notice that I had to fill in way too many things. But the one thing that annoyed me is the username, why do you need to fill this out? Why do I need a username when you have my email, this is redundant data. Note at this point I still haven't seen the listings and at least 10 min have passed. ( more friction )

I skip the identification and also skip linking my bank account. It wasn't clear why I should even click my bank account, why would I link my account when I haven't seen the listings.

Dashboard

Finally, I get to the dashboard and the first thing I want to see is the listing. so I can finally learn about the vetted companies they have and how I can invest in them or what I get for investing in them. But as a click the listing I get a popup that says I need to input my address... like really? after all this I still can't view the listings... This is where I officially bounce. At this point, I had invested over 25 mins and I still don't have an idea what kind of companies they list on their product. The questions listed above have NOT been answered. ( more friction )

The App

I downloaded the app and was finally able to log in and view the listings. But to my surprise when I clicked the listing, it went straight into launching my keyboard and asking how many tokens I want to buy, I don't even know what the company does, I don't know what they are building. So I close the keyboard and click more information about the company only to be met with a plain text page...

This page is literally the most important page of the app and should feel integrated into the UI but it was just a text page, of course, I wasn't sold. The listing are meant to be a sales page that explains the following key things

• What am I investing in
• How big is the opportunity
• What are the investment packages and what do i get for each level ( investment perks )
• How do I liquidate and why should I hold my investment ( like what is the roadmap for my tokens )
• What are the risks

Currently the listing doesn't adequately explain these core things.

I also noticed a bug or soo but I could not view all listing the page just didn't load anything.

Recommendations

I wrote some recommendations within the article but would try to break down my general ideas

Show don't tell

It's important to look at examples of other crowdfunding marketplaces, they should you the campaigns before you need to create an account, you can see all the packages, the prices the rewards, etc so you know exactly what you are creating an account the invest in

Login process

A nice rule of thumb is to ask for the minimum information create for creating an account and ask for other information as needed

Target auidce

Understand the need of your target audience and speak in the language they understand and most of the target audience are first-time investors but the product seems designed for expert investors who also understand how the blockchain works or even understand what a token means. These questions should be answered on the home page

• What can I invest in
• Why should I invest
• How can I invest
• Are my investments safe?
• How do I liquidate?
• How much returns can I get from my investment

Listing

A lot of thought and work need to go into the listing as the is easily the most important part of the entire product,

• information and the startup should few like part of the UI
• Contact details, social media accounts website etc
• The problem, valuation, target market etc should be part of the UI and made clear and easy to see before asking people how many tokens they want

Investment packages

I think first-time investors don't want to think about how many tokens they want ( do I want 10 or 200? I really don't know ) It might be better to have packages with insightful descriptions for example

• investor light ( 500 dollar)
• Angle investor ( 3000 - 5000 dollars )
• Shareholder ( 10000+ )

These packages should have clearly defined rewards and expectations. don't make people think too much I either have 500 to invest or I have more than that simple. Please make the rewards clear and in plain English.

Example

Investor light - With just 500 dollars you would own 50 tokens for company A and this would allow you access to blah blah meaning when they raise their next round of funds you can potentially make a profit of 5%. Also here are the risks, The risks should be made very clear.

The listing is a sales page, it needs to work worked on by a great salesperson or copywriter and a team of designers. That page should have at least 4 A/B tests running every week to optimize of the best design. It's easily the most important page on the site and yes also the page should be available to anyone without having to create an account. Only when I am trying to purchase a token than I would need to create an account. Show don't tell.

Final words

This article is in no way to bash the great work Get Equity is doing but to give my personal feedback as a Product strategist in hopes it help improve their product experience. If you are building a product like me to help out with your product just shoot me an email henry@thinksenpai.com