Overview

Background: Ellevest is the first fintech product made specifically for women, by women. Though it’s best known for its robo-investing subscription, Ellevest also offers financial planning services as an upsell from robo-investing, as well as wealth management (WM) — which consists of holistic investment management and financial planning for high-net-worth individuals. With a $500k investment minimum, WM accounts for most of the company’s ARR.

Problem: As we continued to grow, our WM sales funnel became increasingly leaky. WM prospects might attend an upscale event hosted by our financial advisors… then land on our homepage, click around in the navigation menu (which accounted for 73% of all page clicks), and get put off by our more “junior” services — dropping off without submitting a request for a consultation. This meant that prospects were missing out on a service that did meet their needs, and we were missing out on multi-million-dollar opportunities.

Solution: Move from a “house of brands” to a “branded house,” where all three business lines were strategically represented and weighted — starting with our website navigation.

Scope

Goals: Make it easier for WM prospects to find what they’re looking for. Increase WM lead submissions without sacrificing too many robo-investing subscription starts.

Team: I worked closely with our CPO, senior product designer, and data analysts; got input from our CFO, WM stakeholders, and marketing team; and shared regular updates with our leadership team.

Timeline: January - March 2024

Process

Navigation menu:

Led rapid iterative testing and evaluation (primarily tree testing and prototype testing) using UserTesting and Optimal Workshop
Conceptualized five potential paradigms to test against each other
Once we honed in on a winning paradigm, worked closely with our senior product designer to write and design a new navigation menu
Worked with our data analysts to A/B test the existing vs. new navigation menu in production, ultimately calling the test for the variable

Routing flow:

Conceptualized and wrote a short flow to route users from the website navigation menu signup CTA to their intended business line (vs. directly to robo-investing signup)

Conceptualized and wrote three targeted, conversion-focused landing pages (one for each business line)

Deliverables: Navigation menu

Navigation menu: BEFORE

“Online Investing” (for robo-investing): We’d received anecdotal feedback that “online investing,” which is a nonstandard term, meant different things to different people. Nesting “Investing” under “Online Investing” muddied the waters even more.

“Private Wealth” (for WM): This was placed between two business lines associated with each other, but not with WM — burying it for its intended audience and breaking up the other business lines for their intended audiences. Also, of the three primary navigation items (excluding “Magazine” and “About Us”), only 1/3 was an entry point for WM.
“Financial Guidance” (for financial planning upsell): This linked directly to our financial planning upsell on Shopify, and was unintentionally capturing many WM leads who were interested in financial guidance as a part of wealth management.
“Become a client” on any page except for Private Wealth: This linked directly to robo-investing signup, and was also unintentionally capturing many WM leads.

Navigation menu: Conceptualization of five potential paradigms

Based on the preliminary tree test results, internal and external discovery, and my own hypotheses, I proposed five potential paradigms for a new navigation menu. The winner was what I dubbed “1.5 Digital / 1.5 WM,” where all business lines get the same number of entry points — sharing one where robo-investing and WM overlap (financial planning).

Navigation menu: AFTER