CAN I AFFORD
CALCULATOR
This is where the home affordability calculator can support set user expectation, simplifies complex financial calculations, guides financial planning and build overall confidence.
1. Expert reviews (and often, ratings)
2. Informative editorial that explains and guides
3. Best of lists & rates tables to support comparisons
4. Calculators to support “What if” analysis.
Adding calculators is critical to both attract and satisfy users.
The page layout is intentionally structured to address three key stages in the decision-making process: "What do I have?", "What's now?", and "What to do next?" This flow ensures that users receive relevant information at each step, helping them confidently move towards their financial decisions.
By organizing the page flow into these distinct sections, the design not only maximizes space efficiency but also aligns with the user's thought process, making it easier to transition from analysis to action. This layout ensures users receive a cohesive, engaging experience that supports their financial planning needs.
DTI (Debt-to-Income) ratio is the critical concept for this calculation. Based on DTI and loan information, we can calculate, at different affordability, how much house users can afford and how much monthly mortgage needs to be paid. Users monthly income won’t change, so the change is their savings and payments.
There are 3 main critical DTI values:
1. 20%-36%: Affordable (highly LIKELY get approved by lender)
2. 37%-43%: Stretch (MAYBE get approved by lender)
3. 44%-50%: Aggressive (highly UNLIKELY to be approved by lender)
In order for users to understand how different DTI affects how much they pay, how much of the house and eventually how likely they will get approved, I designed a slider which allows users to visualize the impact of different financial decisions in real-time with dynamic recalculations for different loan terms or interest rates.
We not only enhanced user engagement but also drove significant traffic back to the main calculator page. The shared widget played a pivotal role in increasing cross-platform user interaction, leveraging Yahoo's extensive ecosystem to maximize engagement and revenue.
To encouraging seamless next steps, in the result section, the affiliate program module is added to show mortgage offers directly related to the user’s calculated affordability. The affiliate program module is a separate independent module, be able to drag and drop to wherever it fits.
While time and efficiency are lifted, users will have to re-enter the inputs that they have just entered for the calculator again, which indicates a redundant experience. Thus, rounds of testing work has happened with the Engr team to make sure those once independent modules now communicate with each other.
This involves collaboration with the central messaging team on setting up the logic for alert setting for logged in and logged users, logistic planning on phase 1 requirements involve how many alert should we allow, and plans for phase 2&3 release.
Search CTR: Targeting a position #4 in search results, with an estimated click-through rate of ~8%.
Affiliate CTR: Anticipated affiliate click-through rate of ~1.4%, driving users towards mortgage offerings.
Monthly Revenue: the expected potential monthly revenue is approximately ~$1.2k.
These metrics will help measure success by driving meaningful engagement and revenue growth through the Yahoo ecosystem.