Overview
Background: Founded in 2014 and acquired in 2025, Ellevest was the first fintech product made specifically for women, by women. To build on the initial success of their robo-investing subscription, a few years in, they launched à la carte financial planning services: subscription clients (for a discount) and non-clients (for full price) could buy one-time sessions with a CFP® pro. Later, we rolled out multi-session packages—i.e. an ongoing relationship with a dedicated CFP® pro, with valuable deliverables like in-depth financial plans.
Problem: Many clients were interested in packages, but deterred by the high upfront costs (our signature package came in at over $2,000 after the client discount). This meant that clients couldn’t access the level of support they needed, and we couldn’t sell enough packages to be profitable.
Solution: Offer clients the option to pay for packages in three monthly installments. While we’re at it, streamline the browsing, shopping, and checkout experience—which was partly in-product, partly on Shopify.
Scope
Goals: Make financial planning packages more accessible to our clients. Get closer to profitability by increasing financial planning take rate and AOV.
Team: I worked closely with our product designer, senior product manager, and growth marketing director; got input from our data analysts, CFP® pros, and CX team; and gave direction to our marketing copywriters.
Timeline: July - September 2024
Work
Process:
Feature name: The working team had internally been referring to this feature as “installments.” But after doing some competitive research and experimenting with the term in different contexts, I landed on the client-facing term “payments”—it’s more standard and user-friendly, and it makes for a simpler paradigm in-product (see below).
Key message / Headline: I started with “Pay in installments.” This became “Pay over 3 months” (to avoid “installments” as a noun, but also “pay” and “payments” in the same line). In contexts where we had space for subcopy, it evolved to “Choose how you pay”—leading with the benefits of flexibility and empowerment before getting into the feature itself.
Samples:
In-product interstitial served to all users at login.
BEFORE: In-product PDP with installment option added. This was one of the product designer’s early explorations, with their directional copy.
AFTER: In-product PDP with installment option added. (By this point, the one-time payment discount had been removed.) My edits:
Price: Because installments were available only to clients, I advocated for leading with the stricken-out full price, next to the discounted client price. This would help clients anchor to an even higher number than the one-time payment—making installments look like the great deal that they were.
Label: I changed “Select billing frequency” to “Choose how you pay,” again leading with the benefit.
Containers: I changed the language to be simpler and more congruous across the two options (e.g. “payment” / “payments” vs. “purchase” / “payments”). I also streamlined the subcopy: instead of leading with “3 equal payments” and then adding that they’re “billed monthly,” I changed it to “3 monthly payments” (as I believe it’s more intuitive that monthly payments will be equal than that equal payments will be monthly). Finally, I added the total price to each container for clarity and transparency.
Button: I changed “Purchase - $700” to “Continue,” as this is not the actual point of purchase, and I didn’t want clients to drop off for fear of being charged too soon.
In-product checkout screens for installments (left) and one-time payments (right).
Microcopy: Because we used a Stripe integration, we couldn’t remove or change some of their out-of-the-box language, including the disclosure copy below the “Subscribe” button that says “You can always cancel your subscription.” I flagged this as a concern (it might confuse or mislead clients, given that they can’t cancel this “subscription”) and added my own microcopy above the button clarifying that they’re actually “subscribing” to monthly payments, which will end automatically.
Buttons: Stripe’s out-of-the-box button copy was “Subscribe,” which we kept for installments—but I insisted on “Pay” for one-time payments.
Shopify PDP with installment option added (during a later promotion where we extended the window from 3 to 6 months).
Container: Because installments were only available in-product (not on Shopify, which clients could still access through old links), I repurposed the container copy—which previously drove to sales calls with our CFP® pros—to promote installments, guide clients to login and non-clients to signup, and link out to more information.
Results
Installment payments and in-product checkout launched in September 2024. By December 2024, we saw a:
76% feature usage rate (in general, 20-30% is considered “good”)
74.6% increase in conversion rate from sales calls with CFP® pros, our primary driver of package purchases (10.8% from October - December 2024, compared to 6.2% from April - September 2024)