From Sales Tool to Business Platform
Evolving a vertical SaaS product to serve the full customer lifecycle, with 50% beta adoption of new features
ResponsiBid was good at one thing: helping home service businesses win the job. That was also its ceiling. As Lead Designer, I shaped its expansion from a focused quoting tool into an end-to-end platform covering everything from first contact to final payment.
Role
Lead UX Designer
Team
Duration
2024 - Present
A home service business could quote a customer, follow up, win the job, and schedule it in ResponsiBid. Then they had to switch over to a connected CRM or Google Calendar to manage the work. Many eventually left for good.
ResponsiBid was a sales tool: quoting, lead nurturing, automated bidding, follow-up, and scheduling. But many businesses saw it as a luxury add-on. Companies earlier in their growth couldn’t justify the cost, because they needed something more fundamental first: a way to manage the work once it was booked, and collect payment after completing the job.
To understand the gap, I used AI deep research to map how competitors covered the operational stages, then checked it against user research. ResponsiBid was strong early: quoting, lead nurturing, follow-up, and scheduling were well-built and differentiated. But once a job was scheduled, the product stopped, with no way to manage work orders, invoice customers, or collect payment, the operational backbone of these businesses.
Users felt it, and their requests were consistent: turn a won bid into a real job they could manage in ResponsiBid, invoice and collect payment, and see what work was pending, completed, or unpaid, and these weren’t nice-to-haves. In exit surveys, the customers we lost named all-in-one field service platforms directly. They weren’t leaving because our quoting was worse. They were leaving because quoting was all we did.
The strategic goal was to reduce churn by extending ResponsiBid across the full lifecycle, so both new and existing users had a reason to stay, and to reach businesses that needed a complete workflow rather than just a better sales layer. Leadership set that direction at a company hackathon in early 2023, before I joined, but what this expansion would look like was largely undefined, and that’s where I came in.
Part of that reach was a permanently free tier. My product manager’s research into how other SaaS tools use free versions to grow made the case for it, and she and our CEO set the premise: quoting only. I turned that into the product, deciding where free ends and paid begins, down to how many bids a free account gets, and designing upgrade moments that surface premium value in context. It became our steadiest organic lead source. In its first two years, it brought in 350+ leads and showed up every single month, while other lead magnets spiked and faded. Among activated free users, 24.1% upgraded to paid. Next, I’m analyzing how to bring limited work orders and invoicing to free accounts. This segment already converts to paid, and these features would make ResponsiBid far more valuable to small businesses at this stage.
Free version:
The upgrade explains itself
Adding more services shows the upgrade right where a free account runs out.
Locked, not hidden
Private notes stay visible, one tap from unlocking.
Restructuring the architecture
A bid used to be both the proposal and the scheduled work. When a customer came back, rebooking overwrote the earlier date and the work already done, so a bid could only ever record one sale. I separated the two: the bid stays the proposal, the work lives on jobs, and a bid sold several times now shows every sale, so our reports finally count them correctly.
The design I inherited nested invoices under the job. But chasing a payment shouldn’t require knowing which job it came from. I made that case to my product manager, then with her to our CEO, and invoices got their own home. The sidebar changed to match, making room for invoices by clearing out items few people touched:
“
Does anyone use the lightbox or smart form? I’ve not clicked either of those since I’ve had ResponsiBid… do people actually click on those?”
Nicholas F., during a user test
Side nav reorganization:
Before
Infrequently-used pages sat at the top level, while jobs and invoices had no home. A certification prompt took the top spot, even for long-time users.
After
Customers, bids, jobs and invoices each get their own spot, in order. Every item earned its place through usage data and user feedback.
Once ResponsiBid collected payments, users needed one place to see who still owed them. I designed the invoices list as a table, with quick actions for what needs attention, like past-due invoices, and batch actions for several at once. Our bids and jobs lists had shipped as cards, but industry practice and my user interviews both pointed to tables on desktop, so I made the case for switching those too. Today all four lists (bids, jobs, invoices and customers) are tables on desktop.
The lists:
1. The invoices list
Quick actions for invoices past due or waiting to be sent, and batch actions for several at once.
2. The jobs list
The same table, showing what’s scheduled and what’s waiting to be scheduled.
Deciding what to migrate
Because the architecture was changing significantly, I co-created with users to make sure the changes would land. Engineering planned to migrate every existing account into the new structure, but my research sessions surfaced real anxiety about disturbing current work history. I pushed to leave existing bids untouched while new work used the new workflow, and my product manager and our CEO backed the call. Engineering’s feature flags let each account move to the new workflow when they’re ready.
Update button:
Nothing moves on its own
An old bid keeps the structure it was sold with, and a quiet note says so.
One bid at a time
When a customer comes back, Update moves that bid alone to the new structure.
Partnering with a payment processor
Invoicing meant taking payments, which meant choosing a processor. Stripe was the obvious default. I evaluated it alongside processors built for home services, and we chose a smaller partner for better margins and direct access to their team. That access mattered: their payment form only took cards and bank transfers, but our users also get paid in cash, by check and with cards on file. Working with their team, we built their form into one I designed to handle all of it.
Collecting payment:
Fees shown transparently
The card total lists the platform fee, so the charge button shows exactly what the customer pays.
Cash and checks
Payments taken outside the app get logged under Other, so the invoice still shows what’s been paid.
Sales tax was a new wrinkle for a formerly sales-only tool. In testing, users asked for it: one wanted to mark services as taxable and tie a rate to each zip code. My AI analysis of competitors found most left it to manual entry. Based in part on that research, we built configurable tax profiles, which I designed to apply automatically based on job location and services.
Sales tax profiles:
What competitors did
Most left tax to manual entry.
What we built
Configurable tax profiles that apply automatically, based on job location and services.
The job page
On the bid page, users had shown us what they wanted: everything on one page, without the endless scroll. I brought that answer to the job page: the work in a main column, the customer details in a side panel, and anchor tabs that jump to each section on a page that still scrolls. It’s been live for over a year with no complaints about the navigation from beta users.
The side panel collapses, so customer details are always available for reference but out of the way when users need room to work. When scrolling the panel separately proved hard to build, engineering and I settled on scrolling it with the page, a simpler pattern we reused on the invoice page and beyond. New features meant new edge cases, so I held the build to the design, logging and tracking 100+ design QA issues.
Job page:
Tabs, not hidden cards
Tabs jump to a section without hiding the rest.
Everything stays visible
The most important details come first.
A side panel, out of the way
Customer details collapse when users need room.
The invoice page
The invoice page had to feel unmistakably different. In the original new UI, distinct pages looked so similar to each other that users lost track of where they were. I gave it a “paper sheet” layout instead of the cards used elsewhere, matching the simpler nature of an invoice and keeping focus on its one job: collecting payment. In testing, none of the 10 users confused it with another page, a direct fix to that complaint. They also liked seeing the deposit already applied:
“
Sometimes customers will say to me, ‘Oh, have I paid already?’ … But at least this helps me to be like, yeah, you’ve already paid a deposit.”
Stuart M., during a user test
Invoice page:
A paper sheet, not cards
It matches what an invoice is and keeps the focus on collecting payment.
The deposit is already applied
Owners can answer “have I paid already?” at a glance.
One clear next step
Collect payment leads, with email and text right under it.
The reports:
1. Before
One Reports page with fixed tabs and monthly totals. When a bid sold again, it overwrote the earlier sale, so the numbers couldn’t be trusted.
2. After: One hub
Reports grouped into Sales, Jobs and Finance, each with its own page. The Daily Digest moved here from the sidebar.
3. After: Bids Converted
Counts every sale once, by month, week, day or a custom range.
Going to market
Going to market was where our plans met our users’ real workdays. Excitement was high, but changing entrenched workflows was harder than expected. Some users couldn’t adopt our new tools until we added features beyond our MVP; others couldn’t train their offices until the busy season eased. The key pivot was integrating our work orders with partner CRMs, so users could put the new features to work alongside the tools they already relied on. One of the most successful businesses on ResponsiBid still runs payroll in its CRM, but now collects deposits and final payments through us.
Jobs, invoices and payments now live in the same product that wins the bid, so a business can run each job from first contact to final payment in one place.
The new platform
$500K+
In customer payments through the invoicing I designed
50%
Of invited beta users adopted new platform features
↳ The free tier
24.1%
Of activated free-tier accounts upgraded to paid
350+
Leads in its first two years, every single month
This project changed what I think of as design work. I came in improving screens. Here, the biggest design questions came before any screen existed: what the product should cover, who it could serve, and how a free tier could bring those businesses in the door. I learned to treat exit surveys, competitor coverage, and conversion data as design inputs, and to make the case for what to build next alongside my product manager instead of waiting for predefined specs.
The most valuable design work I did here happened before there was anything to design. That’s the part of this project I’ll carry into everything I do next.
