Context

Some states require companies to offer retirement savings plans depending on the amount of employees they have. Gusto promises to help keep customers as compliant as possible. Sometimes this means educating them on local and state laws they may not know about. 

Problem

To customers, pushing retirement plans may look like an upsell—something they don't really need but we want them to buy. Gusto does have partnerships and revenue share, but there are other options customers can choose as well.

As a software, how might we:

• Educate customers about new requirements,
• Promote a preferred partner subtly, and
• Show up convincingly but not pushy

My approach: 
I started by talking to our Compliance team about the handful of states that have adopted these laws so far to expose trends and outliers. Then I worked with our research team to interview customers and find out what they want to know when they choose a third party to facilitate these plans. 


My role 

Content designer partnered with a UX designer.

UX Research

We interviewed 10 customers to uncover what information is critical during the shopping process. 

People cared about these 3 things (in order): 

1. Price (shocking, I know)
2. Variability of investments 
3. Integrations and automations

I presented the top 2 topics in bullets because readers are more likely to skim content and remember bite-sized pieces than info in paragraph form. Choosing to display the pro/cons above the bullets with a trade-off I made with our Product Marketing team, which was especially motivated to drive adoption toward our preferred partner. 

Collaborators

• Product Management
• Product Marketing
• UX Design
• UX Research

My input

• Create something scalable: Product and Engineering teams will need to refer to a template when new states adopt these requirements. We need to create a solution that can be used repeatedly. Otherwise, design will need to re-prioritize this project for each state. 
• Content strategy:
  • Lead with the compliance requirement
  • When displaying the options for vendors, use natural hierarchy to promote our partner, but keep the other options displayed similarly (don't hide them like fine print)
  • Meet customers where they are—UX research showed us they're interested in different things. Include major topics in the template so we answer questions before they arise.