Case study
Prepped Premium
Exploring and creating the Prepped Premium service
The Challenge
Prepped is a free product. Would users be receptive to a Premium offering? What would that be?
Prepped is a job preparation service that provides resources, helps users plan their job search, and gets them ready for interviews through a scientifically backed approach. At the time, Prepped was a free service for all of its base features.
We needed to determine if a Prepped Premium offer would appeal to students and would be a convincing offering to help convert them to RBC.
Audience
College and high school students who are preparing to enter the workforce. Otherwise known as Gen Z, aged 18 to 23.
This audience is known not to identify with banks and big businesses. They are the “do it yourself” generation, and are motivated to learn using internet resources. So while Prepped may be appealing to students, the thought of using it to convert users to RBC might be at odds with their motivations.
Discovery Phase
Is Prepped Premium viable as a conversion tool to a bank?
To answer this question, I led 8 in-person interviews with new graduates and soon-to-be graduates. The focus of the interviews was to assess how this audience approaches their job search, their understanding of banking, and if they would be willing to pay for Prepped Premium.
Assumptions going into the sessions:
- Gen Z have a strong dislike for big banks, and so might dislike Prepped’s association with a bank.
- Gen Z do not have a great understanding of finances.
- Gen Z would not pay for Premium if they can get the offerings elsewhere.
Format — 60 min total (5 min buffer room):
- 5 min: Introduction
- 10 min: Warm-Up / Current Approach to Job Search
- 10 min: Student Banking and Financials
- 15 min: Prepped Walk-Through
- 15 min: Prepped Premium Potential Offerings
“I wouldn’t switch banks just for this. I feel like this platform is like…okay, you know how Hinge’s slogan is meant to be deleted? I feel this platform’s slogan should be meant to be deleted. They’re trying to help me find a job, but once I do, why would I care about the platform anymore? I wouldn’t switch banks just to access this, because once I use it and get my dream job, why would I use it again?”
Key Takeaways
- Gen Z are largely indifferent to banks, while RBC association gives Prepped credibility.
- Gen Z have a solid understanding of financials.
- Prepped Premium makes sense in a freemium model.
- Current Premium ideas not compelling — possibly better as a bundle of offerings.
Prototyping Phase
Challenges to Consider
- Tight deadline of about a month to put together a proposal for Prepped Premium.
- Limited design resources to work with.
- 12 potential features needed to be narrowed down to a select few.
Step 1: A Quantitative Approach on usertesting.com
To help the team get a sense of how Gen Z values the various different features we were considering, I took a quantitative approach to establish an order of value for the different features.
Analogs of existing services were found for each potential feature, and were described in 3–4 slides. Each feature was then shown to 15 different participants who were job seekers of the Gen Z age range, for a total of 180 participants.
Participants were asked to give ratings for:
- Subjective value
- Assumed frequency of use
- Likelihood to recommend to a friend
- How much they were willing to pay
Key Takeaways
- Established a generalized order of features based on value, frequency, recommendation, and cost ratings.
- Grouping features that were potential Premium packages allowed for statistical analysis that gave confidence that these ratings were not due to chance.
- Best-rated features overall were a Job Application Tool, a Resume Generator, a Resume Scanner, and a Portfolio Tool.
Step 2: Mock Up a Prepped Premium Bundle
Upon receiving the ratings for each feature, the team brainstormed and came up with one Premium Bundle comprising three of the features tested previously, and created conceptual mock-ups of those features. This bundle included the three highest-rated features of a Job Application Tool, a Resume Generator, and a Resume Scanner.
We also created mock-ups of four alternatives for participants to consider.
Validation Phase
Step 3: Test Premium Packages Within the Context of Prepped
Although getting feature ratings was a good start, these features were rated in isolation from one another and were considered as stand-alone offerings. Therefore, it was still important to get a sense of how well these Premium offerings performed within the context of Prepped, and if they were compelling enough to open up a bank account for.
To test the Prepped Premium offerings, I led 8 more interviews with recent and soon-to-be graduates.
Format — 60 min total (5 min buffer room):
- 5 min: Introduction
- 15 min: Usability Test of the Current Prepped Platform — A quick run-through to give participants a sense of how it works.
- 25 min: Prepped Premium Package and Alternatives — Participants were shown mock-ups of the Premium package (3 features), asked probing questions, and rated each feature. They repeated this for the alternative features, then built their own ideal package of 3 features.
- 10 min: Banking Conversion Appeal — Lastly, participants were asked to compare 3 real student banking offerings, one of which included Prepped Premium access, and to select the most appealing.
“I’d pick this over those two any day. The benefit as a student, knowing what the platform offers and how it benefits me job searching, and the aspects of education and feedback that come with Prepped. That in terms of value, is more valuable than an SPC membership that CIBC offers and the financial tracking capabilities of TD.”
Key Takeaways
- Consistent with quantitative ratings, Resume Scanner and Resume Generator were widely sought-after and highly valued tools.
- Within the context of Prepped, the Job Application Tool was not as highly valued as it was in the quantitative ratings, and was not always included in the ideal Premium bundle. Instead, the AI Interview Tool was considered one of the top features (also consistent with quantitative ratings), and made more sense for Prepped.
- The new Prepped Premium is a unique offering that cannot be easily found on the web, and so had considerable influence as a student banking offer, with 7 of 8 participants considering it the best offer.
Outcomes
- 5 Happy Stakeholders
- 4 Deliverable Decks
- 4 Features Added
- 2 Company Acquisitions
The team was happy with the outcomes. We successfully created a compelling student banking offer that combined the top-rated features from the quantitative assessment with the highly sought-after AI Interview Tool that surfaced in the qualitative research. Based on these findings, the team made 2 minor company acquisitions to build out its AI capabilities within the platform.
What Would I Have Done Differently in Retrospect?
Due to time constraints, we tested Prepped Premium as a student bank offer against other student bank offers while we were validating it as a concept.
I warned the team that we would need to keep in mind that this would not be a fair comparison, as we were spending the majority of our time exploring Prepped Premium, and then asking students if it was a better offer than established offers. Naturally, these participants would have been spending a great deal of time considering how Prepped Premium could help them, and so were more likely to select it as the better offer.
Had we had more time, I think it would have been worthwhile to test it as a bank offer in an entirely separate test where each of the offers was given equal exploration and consideration time. Nevertheless, the team was still very happy with the results, and has regularly engaged with me since.