Our team was asked to rethink Dave Ramsey’s mortgage, mortgage payoff, and investment calculators. Most of the files have been lost to time, but here's the recap of the process we used on the project.
The previous calculators weren’t focused on a single topic, were difficult to use, and were still in Adobe Flash. Customers were confused about what to do after using the calculator.
The previous calculators weren’t focused on a singular customer intent, so our search engine rank was declining. Also, company strategy shifted towards targeting high intent and high volume keywords.
We assembled a cross-functional team consisting of a designer, a product engineer, SEO specialist, and a content writer to work on the three calculators over the course of 3–6 months.
First, we met with our customer service team to determine what problems existing customers were having with the calculators.
Second, we interviewed customers over the phone and in our lobby to determine what problems we could solve by updating our claculators.
Finally, we utilized an iterative design process by creating InVision clickable prototypes, showing them to customers to get feedback, and revising the prototype until we reached a point we were comfortable shipping a valuable experience.
The three calculators are used by over 8 million people a year and provide introductions to the Ramsey, Endorsed Local Providers, and SmartVestor brands to customers who might never have found them. All three are routinely in the top 10 most visited pages on Ramsey Solutions’ website.
Each calculator has reached the top 5 on Google for high volume keywords like "investment calculator," "mortgage calculator," and "mortgage payoff calculator."
Unfortunately, due to shifting company priorities, the calculators have not been iterated on like we had hoped to do and have been left largely the same since 2018.
