Introducing GetGround's all new platform experience

Next week GetGround will launch its latest milestone in the world of buy-to-let – a brand new platform experience designed to enhance the all-in-one property investment journey and better serve customers. To delve into the details, we sat down with Mat, our Head of Design, who shared insights into the rationale, process, and outcome of this exciting transformation. 

Tell us a bit about yourself and the work you do here at GetGround.

With a decade of experience designing digital experiences for diverse businesses and industries, I stepped into the Head of Design role at GetGround about a year ago. My role encompasses various activities and projects to ensure a seamless and cohesive experience for our customers, regardless of which part of our all-in-one platform they use.

One responsibility I have is to imagine the future of how our platform will look and behave, to set a direction and guide our thinking as we release new products and services. The vision for our future is an opportunity to think of new and innovative ways to support our customers on their property investment journey.

What was the main driver behind upgrading the investment platform experience at GetGround?

GetGround was born from the idea that property investing has been difficult for too long. Every day, we encounter complex user needs and solve them to transform a fragmented, traditionally offline industry into a truly digital experience for investors.

Over the past five years, we've made significant progress in addressing major pain points; from establishing a new limited company to finding the right mortgage for a buy-to-let property. However, we recently realised that whilst we were driving positive change for our customers, our platform experience needed a fresh start.

This reset would present an exciting opportunity to deliver an even better customer experience and create a platform that would:

• Adapt to a customer's needs at every step of their investment journey
• Provide richer, more meaningful insights that guide customers to further increase their returns
• Provide better access to solutions our customers need to buy, manage, and sell their buy-to-let properties

How exactly does redesigning an investment platform from the ground up work? 

The new platform is a culmination of six months of work by many GetGround team members. As a business, we pride ourselves on our customer-centricity and great relationship with our customers, so it was only natural for us to involve them in the process.

We spoke to customers to understand their wants and needs, finding trends within them in order build a picture of the new experience. We often presented them with different concepts and prototypes, gathering their feedback, which allowed us to focus on creating the right platform for them.

As our confidence in our concepts grew, we began tactically planning how to build the new experience. Multiple teams, from Engineering to Operations, investigated the impact of this work to ensure a seamless transition for our customers. This approach meant various projects, from creating testing plans to rewriting our FAQs. An all-in-one platform takes an all-in-one effort to make it a reality.

What can GetGround's buy-to-let investors expect to see next time they log in?

The new GetGround experience is a significant improvement, enabling greater utility for customers with added moments of delight. We've worked hard to remove friction seen in the previous platform experience, placing emphasis on making it easier to find information and take action from it. We've also taken significant strides in improving the experience for smartphone users who access our platform. 

Our dashboard experience has evolved to Today, giving customers a comprehensive snapshot of current tasks and updates for their investments.

We have reimagined how customers manage their investments. With Portfolio, our customers have a comprehensive view of their companies and properties. They also have greater control of their business accounts with new features such as the ability to add notes and attachments to transactions.

An all-new part of the platform is Discover. Here, our customers will find the range of solutions that GetGround offers, giving them the confidence that GetGround really is the all-in-one destination they need for their investments.

Our new platform has catalysed new working processes and a substantial rebuild of our technology, meaning we can iterate and release features faster than ever. Everyone at GetGround is excited to share this new platform experience with our customers and hear their feedback. Customers will see more feature updates in the coming months. This launch is only the start.