UX Writing Case Study — Copy Overhaul for Sittercity Background Check Experience

Product: Sittercity.com — a tech-enabled child care platform used by families and sitters to connect and communicate through the assistance of accessible search and screening tools

My Role: UX Writer

Team: Myself (UX Writer), Jaclyn Mann (Product Designer), Ewa Glowik (Product Manager), Chelsea Hower (Trust & Safety Manager), Melanie Neumeier (Communications Specialist)

Duration: 3 months (August — October 2021)

Sittercity was founded in 2001 in response to the all-too-familiar challenges of finding and scheduling dependable sitters. Known as the company that pioneered tech-enabled child care, Sittercity has since connected millions of families and sitters through intelligent features such as availability calendars, interview scheduling, and filtering on sitter background completion.

During their search, parents can request a background check or motor vehicle records check for any sitter. Sitters can also run screenings on themselves to enhance their profile.

After years of partnering with Sterling Talent Solutions to process all background check requests, the 2021 transition to Checkr allowed Sittercity to redesign the background check experience for both sitters and parents using the platform to find child care connections.

What was once a text-heavy and confusing design became a simplified and concise overview of one of the more complex interactions on the Sittercity platform; our team was determined to re-create a flow that would nudge users through selecting the background check package that fit their needs, while clearly mapping the steps that would be taken once a sitter’s information was submitted to Checkr for the actual screening.

Writing as Design

The world of design has long been understood as a space for useful graphics and behavioral psychology. As products become more complex (and as attention spans become increasingly limited), UX teams are learning there is great value in strategic, minimalist verbiage and conversational copy to improve interactions, and that it is an integral part of a design. In the vein of the microcopy that litters our favorite apps: words matter.

The responsibility of the UX writer is to design a written experience that is intuitive, concise, and accessible. We appropriate real, human words to teach a user how to perform a task, or quickly solve their own problem within a complex product. While dense, confusing copy does not always signal poor design, it does detract from the value of a tool that is meant to make a person’s life easier.

As a lover of language and how we speak to each other, I became the first employee in Sittercity history to specialize in UX writing, and to be credited as the sole UX Writer on a cross-functional initiative — all while collaborating remotely. Prior to this undertaking, the standard procedure was to pass along copy edits to the marketing and communications team.

While this is very common for small organizations, there are a few problems with this:

1. In order to write effective product copy, the writer must have an intimate understanding of how the product works — including the full user experience and pain points.
2. The writer must balance conversion with ease of use, goal completions, and user satisfaction; in other words, they must recognize and value the task of balancing copy with meaningful and interactive design in order to help the user solve their problem and have fun using the product — not just to make a sale.
3. The writer must understand the principles of “microcopy” and effectively communicating complex ideas within extremely restricted design specs (i.e. buttons).

As a Customer Success Advocate who was intimately acquainted with both our product as well as the rules of UX writing and microcopy, I brought a specialized understanding of how our users could be best equipped to make informed and intuitive decisions during their time on our site. Having spent hundreds of interactions clarifying the benefit of each respective check, as well as how each check would be conducted, I knew that there had to be a succinct, persuasive way to communicate this information within the user journey.

With this background in mind and a long, iterative process ahead, the team focused on a few key outcomes we hoped to accomplish with this project:

1. A better user experience for parents and sitters
2. A reduced Customer Success and Trust & Safety ticket volume
3. The solution to long-standing bugs that plagued both the product and user experience
4. A solution to time-sensitive in-app purchasing compliance that would keep our product in good standing with Apple

Background Checks on Sittercity

For those unfamiliar with the Sittercity platform and the product’s background check capabilities, there are a few important things to note. Background checks:

• Should be run at the time of hire and continuously thereafter
• Can be processed by sitters on themselves to stand out from the crowd
• May provide a false sense of security as there isn’t just one easy solution that predicts bad behavior in this capacity

Background check results are limited and are only as good as the time they are run. Depending on the jurisdiction (state/city/county), certain offenses may be delayed in reporting or not reported at all. Most arrests not resulting in convictions are not reported. Juvenile offenses are not reported.

With these limitations, it was crucial that we carefully design language that educates the user while protecting the organization from liability. All of the final designs that are shown below are a result of careful legal review.

Research

Prior to this initiative, my four-year tenure in troubleshooting for the Customer Success team allowed a first-hand look into the flaws of the current copy. Through repeated interactions, we knew that the most consistent product complaints involved the background check experience. Specifically, flaws included:

1. Not exposing prices in a helpful, relevant way
2. Not exposing enough of what is covered in a particular background check selection, and depending on the user to translate complex legal jargon
3. Not explaining the steps of the check clearly for those purchasing the check, and for those submitting the check

This feedback was considered in initial planning meetings and supported in our continued user research. During our many rounds of parent and sitter surveys, we noted comments like —

It’s an overwhelming amount of information.

How would I possibly know which level I need, other than this probably be about playing into my fears as a parent, and knowing that I’ll probably cave and get the most expensive one?

I think it’s confusing to me as a busy mom what the major differences are between each kind. I think less options would be better and an understanding of what a multi-state database search is would be great.

This description requires too much reading and lengthy analysis.

More clear explanations about what to expect/when there is a clear outcome and how we would know if something wasn’t clear would be helpful. Also, if there was a way to tell when the BGC was completed on a nanny’s profile that would be helpful.

It was clearly very important for parents to understand the benefit of purchasing a background check for potential hires, and what they could expect from the process.

From there, the product and design teams carefully mapped out a prospective user journey that provided an appropriate amount of transparency and communication.

Snapshot of background check user flows

Language Conception

With this feedback in mind, we took all of our research into the design phase. We were especially concerned with exploring different alternatives for displaying information, including:

1. Providing concise yet comprehensive descriptions that would inspire confidence for the individual making the purchase, thus improving purchase conversion
2. Providing clear language on what would be/would not be included in each check

We began to study each step in the purchase process and elected to minimize blocks of text and simplify verbiage into digestible microcopy. Relying heavily on InVision Freehand to whiteboard comments, our ideas slowly started to shape the story of a fresh background check feature.

Original feature copy was designed through “sticky-note” iteration and dynamic edits to view the look copy suggestions in realtime

As this project was completed with an entirely remote team, all edits were made virtually through this tool. Once we were satisfied with these changes, final designs were added to Zeplin.

Final Product

During the side-by-side comparison, there is a striking difference between the original language and the new copy designs. As you can see below, the amount of copy presented to the user was overwhelming and verbose.

With the new designs, we wanted to make maximum impact with minimal discourse.

In breaking down the product descriptions into modals, we were able to clean up the look of the selection + purchase pages while providing a concise overview in each background check description.

In response to parent feedback, we added a shortened “what to expect” section that can be viewed prior to making a selection and inputting payment information.

Once a background check is purchased or offered to a sitter, we wanted to improve visibility into the status of the check. Additionally, the old flow did not provide a sufficient explanation of how a parent-sponsored offer worked once it became available to a sitter. We provided additional language to explain the accept/decline and submission process.

Conclusion + Next Steps

This feature was released in June of 2021. Initial insights have supported our intent to improve the overall user experience and to reduce contact volume to Customer Success. Since the release, our work has:

• Reduced number of Trust and Safety hours spent on background check screening-related tasks by 69% YoY
• Reduced number of Customer Success hours spent on Care Provider background check-related questions by 35% YoY

I will provide additional insights once they become available.