Rated People is an online marketplace that connects homeowners with local tradespeople across the UK. The platform supports more than 30 specialist trades and allows homeowners to post jobs, book tradespeople and review their work, while tradespeople use the platform to find leads, build their reputation and grow their business.  

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The project focused on optimising two key areas of the Rated People experience: the homeowner job-posting journey and the tradesperson onboarding journey. Rated People had identified that a large proportion of homeowners were abandoning the job form, with previous conversion rates of 21% for the generic job form and 18% for the skill-specific job form.  

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My role was to redesign the job form so it felt more reassuring, structured and supportive for homeowners, while also creating a smoother mobile-first experience for tradespeople. The work covered research, user-flow analysis, usability testing, competitor analysis, wireframing, prototyping and UX optimisation across desktop, mobile, tablet, iOS and Android.  

Rated People is a UK-based home services marketplace that connects homeowners with quality local tradespeople. Homeowners use the platform to post jobs, compare tradespeople and review completed work, while tradespeople use the service to access job leads, fill gaps in their diary, build trust and grow their reputation.  

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The product has to serve two connected user groups: homeowners looking for reliable tradespeople and tradespeople looking for relevant, high-quality job leads. This made the UX challenge more complex because the platform’s success depended on both sides of the marketplace working smoothly.

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As an entirely online service operating across desktop, mobile web, tablet and app, Rated People relied heavily on clear UX, simple navigation and efficient task completion. The experience needed to help homeowners post jobs with confidence while also helping tradespeople respond to leads quickly and manage opportunities without unnecessary friction.  

The challenge was twofold because the platform had to meet the needs of both homeowners and tradespeople. For homeowners, Rated People was losing a significant proportion of users during the job-posting process. The existing job form was not guiding users clearly enough, which contributed to low conversion rates and increased abandonment.  

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The homeowner journey needed to feel more supportive and reassuring. Users had varied levels of technical confidence and different job requirements, so the form had to guide them step by step, help them describe their job clearly and give them confidence that they could find a trustworthy tradesperson.

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For tradespeople, the challenge was to create a simple, intuitive and mobile-first experience that supported daily usage. Rated People’s business model relied on tradespeople subscribing, finding leads and building their reputation, so any friction in sign-up, onboarding or lead management could result in abandoned payments or reduced engagement.  

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Research also revealed several barriers in the homeowner job form, including lack of support when adding a job description, confusion around the hiring stage, unclear budget guidance, users being taken out of the job flow to log in, lack of reassurance, unclear data usage and limited control over how homeowners would be contacted.  

The solution was to redesign the homeowner job form and optimise key tradesperson journeys using a research-led, user-centred process. I began by reviewing the existing journey flows for both homeowners and tradespeople, then used design sprints, competitor analysis and user testing to identify where the experience could be simplified and improved.  

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For homeowners, I redesigned the job-posting journey around a more guided type-form experience. User testing showed that most homeowners found the type-form approach easier to use than an icon-based approach, so I developed wireframes and prototypes that guided users through the process in a structured way.  

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The redesigned form broke the journey into clearer sections, including job description, photos, timing and budget. I added reassurance points, clearer guidance, job-description tips and visible help contact details so users felt supported throughout the process. The aim was to reduce uncertainty and help homeowners complete the form without abandoning it.  

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For tradespeople, I focused on making the onboarding and lead-management experience faster, clearer and more relevant. Design sprint feedback showed that tradespeople cared about lead relevance, local job opportunities, speed, reputation-building and being able to assess whether a lead was worth pursuing quickly.  

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I explored onboarding prototypes, refined the mobile-first experience and used affinity mapping to turn feedback into clearer design decisions. Key improvements included surfacing relevant leads more effectively, supporting faster access from notifications, encouraging profile completion and helping tradespeople showcase photos of themselves or their work to build homeowner trust.  

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The final experience included optimised job-form prototypes for homeowners across desktop and mobile, alongside improved onboarding and landing-page flows for tradespeople. These changes created a more reassuring journey for homeowners and a more focused, value-led experience for tradespeople.