Stessa

Rental Applicant Experience

Redesigning and streamlining the rental applicant experience to reduce drop-off, increase completion rates, and empower rental applicants to successfully navigate the screening process.

Overview

As part of its mission to simplify rental property management, Stessa acquired and integrated RentPrep for tenant screening. However, the inherited RentPrep rental applicant screening flow came with significant usability and operational challenges that were impacting both the user experience and business insights.

Disjointed Experience: At the time, the rental applicant screening flow lived in the RentPrep portal, whereas the application flow was separated into the Stessa portal.

No User Tracking: RentPrep’s workflow did not include event tracking or analytics. As a result, the team was unable to determine where users were dropping off or which steps caused friction.

Lack of Design Oversight: The original RentPrep experience had been built without the involvement of a designer, resulting in a non-optimized UI/UX that negatively impacted conversion rates and user satisfaction.

Old design: Disjointed application and screening process for applicants

Rental applicants would complete the application through Stessa, then receive a separate email upon completion to complete the screening portion through RentPrep.

After completing the rental application in Stessa, users would have to complete the screening in RentPrep. This fragmentation caused confusion for tenants and friction in the overall process.

The team initiated a project to migrate the entire RentPrep screening workflow into Stessa, eliminating the dependency on the RentPrep frontend.

This allowed for:
A Unified Experience: Renters would now complete both the application and screening steps within a single, coherent interface in the Stessa Resident Portal, removing confusion and improving completion rates.
Integrated Tracking & Analytics: Full instrumentation of the new workflow enabled visibility into each step of the user journey, allowing for data-driven improvements.
User Centered Redesign: The rebuilt flow was designed from the ground up with user experience in mind, incorporating modern UX best practices and consistent branding.

New design: Application and screening flow end to end within Stessa platform

Research and Discovery

User Feedback

Due to the tight project timeline, we weren’t able to conduct direct user interviews. Instead, we collaborated with the customer support team to identify recurring issues reported by users, which gave us valuable insights into their pain points.

User Flows