UrbanGate Capital Redesign & Blockchain Website
UrbanGate Capital, a private lending company, recognized the need for a digital transformation. They sought to support cryptocurrency-funded loans from investors. This case study explores the digital rebranding and the creation of a new tool for UrbanGate Capital, focusing on the design and development process, challenges faced, and the impact of the new platform.
UX Research
UI Design
Full-Stack
Understanding UrbanGate's Investors
To understand the needs and pain points of UrbanGate’s CEO, Will, and their investors, I conducted formal interviews and engaged in casual conversations to discover some key insights:
- Will faces challenges in scaling and growing his business with his current model. He spends a significant amount of time contacting investors and handling paperwork and procedures.
- There is little traffic on UrbanGate’s website. Instead, most of the investors that Will finds are through personal connections.
- Investors struggle to decide whether to invest or not. This often leads them to play it safe and not invest.
- Besides the potential for profits, the most important factor in deciding whether to invest for investors is trust.
Will also revealed his long-term vision for UrbanGate. He is anticipating a Web3 future where transactions are made primarily with cryptocurrencies. Accommodating his vision and incorporating my findings, I defined the problem statement:
UrbanGate Capital’s business model is currently not scalable because it relies too much on manpower. UrbanGate also lacks a strong digital presence, which does not garner trust from potential investors. These factors are a problem because it is preventing UrbanGate’s growth as a company.
Scalability: Minimal Viable Product (MVP)
We first decided to address UrbanGate’s scalability issues. Analyzing competitors who have successfully scaled in the private lending industry for properties, I discovered that Lofty.ai had both a scalable digital model and a compatible model with cryptocurrency-funded loans. Lofty.ai allows investors to invest in tokens for loans with money, and most of the investment process is handled automatically with software instead of manual work that humans must complete.
Since we were building an MVP, I prioritized the most basic functionalities. Our primary goal was to make sure a loan could be funded completely, and I drew a flow diagram to understand the bottlenecks in the process so I could improve the user experience for both investor and admin in a future iteration described in a later section. Although the aesthetic design is just as important when it comes to building a brand and trust, I also decided to prioritize that after we built the MVP.
I chose Next.js as the web framework because it supports necessary database functionality and can be deployed to the web quickly. To support cryptocurrency loans, we chose ConnectKit, which provides a library for user authentication with a digital wallet and transaction methods. Because signing and sending documents slows down the funding process, I also chose to use the DocuSign API to automate signing and sending.
Inspiring Trust: Redesigning UrbanGate's Digital Presence
After building a functional MVP, we decided to redesign both UrbanGate’s client-facing website and the MVP website.
To gain a better understanding of what content should be on the client-facing website, I looked at local and larger competitors. Local competitors included neighboring private lending companies in Nashville such as the Cauble Group, which has a more established digital presence, as well as larger companies like DLP Capital.
All the successful competitors shared many features, which I have included in the brand redesign:
- Bold call to actions (buttons, actionable headings)
- Methods of building trust (testimonials, mentions in the news)
- Information describing the company’s methods and impact
- Methods of registering with the company (forms, email lists)
They also had a distinct design that signals to investors and borrowers that they are professional and trustworthy. Will suggested that UrbanGate have a dark theme instead of a traditional light theme, which gives a modern crypto feeling to UrbanGate’s digital presence.
Streamlining the Investment Process
I redesigned the loan funding website to match the client-facing website. In addition, the investment process was not efficient and still involved a lot of back and forth. To improve the user experience of investing, I streamlined the investment process and added some useful features for both admin and investor.
Streamlining the investment process required a strong technical understanding of how DocuSign worked. Before, the investor had to wait for UrbanGate to sign the DocuSign, then approve the loan in the admin dashboard before the investor could hit “Invest.” By using DocuSign Connect, a message can be sent to the server, which automatically approves the loan, thereby removing the need for admin signature and approval.
Sign in with Google was added so potential investors could first view the loans without setting up a wallet. The admin dashboard was redesigned to be more compact and easily navigable to manage an increasing number of loans, properties, and payments. Finally, the investor can now view their payment history on each loan. All these features give the loan funding website a complete feel and make the investment process easier.
TL;DR
The two main challenges faced by UrbanGate Capital were the lack of scalability in their current model and a weak digital presence. To address scalability, we built an MVP that allows investors to fund loans with cryptocurrency online, which automates many time-consuming processes. To address a weak digital presence, I redesigned the client-facing website and the loan-funding website to inspire trust. Below is the full digital redesign.
