Establishing continuous user research in an early stage product team

What does Doorvest do and what problems does it solve for customers?
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Doorvest is a comprehensive end-to-end real estate investment platform designed to assist customers in sourcing, underwriting, purchasing, renovating, listing leases, and managing homes. Our platform caters to customers seeking to enter the real estate market but unsure on how to begin. We help those customers begin by understanding their preferences, risk profiles, and return expectations. After making those assessments, we help our customers in identifying suitable homes that align with their interests and return expectations, streamlining the entire process.

Doorvest is unique because we offer exclusive perks, such as rental guarantees and DV Boost, through which we provide additional cash flow as income to our customers, enabling them to bridge short-term and long-term benefits. So we’re there for customers investing in real estate from A to Z, managing their renovations and being accountable for their investment.

What challenges or pain points were you experiencing prior to using Hubble?

We are a startup and our product tam is not big enough to have one person solely responsible of conducting user research. While we needed to get in front of our customers more, it was difficult for me to attend every sales call or request our team members to record the calls. We had also reached out to customers with paid user studies, but they weren’t really sticking, and the research velocity was not as high.

“Hubble’s in-product survey was key…I appreciated how little engineering work was required. After integrating the Hubble SDK, I could effortlessly specify which part of the product should prompt the survey, control its timing and duration, and more.”

How did Hubble help address the problems?
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Hubble’s in-product survey has been key in addressing user feedback. When we started the onboarding process, I appreciated how little engineering work was required for Hubble. After integrating the Hubble SDK, I could effortlessly specify which part of the product should prompt the survey, control its timing and duration, and more. I loved how simple it was to set up Hubble and immediately start collecting insights from our users.

Now we have a better cadence. I wanted it to be easy for the customers to provide us quick and continuous feedback and Hubble has instrumental in achieving that goal. Along with in-product surveys, we are now running unmoderated tests on our main pages, in which our customers can browse all the homes, drill down into specific home, and transaction pages. Hubble has been most useful in testing our product because after being involved in product development for so long, it’s sometimes hard for me to get into the head of the customers as often as I want to.

“I wanted it to be easy for the customers to reply to us and Hubble has done that…we can go wild and test multiple features at once without needing the engineers to implement the product.”

How did Hubble’s unmoderated tests help with your latest project?
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For a recent project, we are testing a new user dashboard with multiple features that will require iterative development. With unmoderated prototype testing, we can go wild and test multiple features at once without needing the engineers to implement the product.

The value in unmoderated studies is that I can collect very specific feedback. Besides the qualitative feedback, I can measure quantitative data, such as time to tasks. Being able to test concepts and prototypes early stage helps us save resources and avoid disrupting the launch velocity by validating assumptions and hypotheses before engineering gets involved.
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What advice would you share with other companies that are considering trying out Hubble?
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Ever since using Hubble, hearing from customers directly has been easy and extremely beneficial for shaping our product. Anyone in product would know that the more you get in front of your customers, it’s only going to benefit you whether that’s a positive or negative feedback from them. And Hubble makes it easier. So the sooner you try out Hubble, the better.

Also, make sure to iterate your studies and surveys once you are using Hubble. It’s helpful to establish a continuous feedback loop so that you can act upon the data and insights you get over time from customers. The customer success team has also been great in helping us out and answering all of our questions. We are really happy with Hubble and are looking forward to continuing the partnership!
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“The more you get in front of your customers, it's only going to benefit you regardless of whether you get positive or negative feedback. Hubble has helped us become more customer-centric. The sooner you try out Hubble, the better your product and customer experience organization will be.”