Esti Murik
funda

Saved houses

Addressing low engagement with the Saved Houses feature on a housing platform.


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Project Overview: Adding value to the buying process

The Saved Listings feature enables registered users to save properties to their accounts.
  • Goal:
    Gather reliable data on users' stages in the buying process and their preferences.
  • Background:
    The existing saving functionality had remained unchanged for years, leading to legacy issues and minimal user engagement.
  • Discovery:
    Conducted user interviews and surveys to understand the reasons behind low usage and alternative user behaviors.
  • Hypothesis:
    Enhancing the Saved Houses feature would boost engagement, resulting in valuable data to improve various aspects of the platform.
  • Outcome:
    • Increase of +70% in number of listings saved
    • Increase of +67% in Favourites page-views
    • Increase of +71% in notes creation

User Research

I began by interviewing both registered and non-registered users actively searching to buy a house.
Key findings included:
  • Many subjects were unaware of the existing feature.
  • All participants were either looking with a partner or sharing relevant options with others for advice.
  • Some were considering several different geographical areas or types of properties.

A screenshot of listing rating dashboard with a watermark over it saying old version
A screenshot of a zoomed-out view of an online whiteboard filled with tens of tables and flowcharts
A bar graph showing the amount of saved listings per user

Identifying Problems

The old design had several straightforward issues: each listing occupied excessive vertical space, the content was both overly detailed and too generic for users, some buttons lacked clarity, and certain interactions were buggy.
While I couldn't pinpoint the exact cause of the low engagement, I believed the core idea had value in strengthening our connection with users - helping me understand their preferences and needs, and how I could better support them.
Since I couldn't confirm that the visual design was solely to blame, I approached the redesign from multiple angles: visual improvements, new functionality, and greater visibility through increased entry points and internal linking.

Solution

I prioritized initial solutions that could be implemented quickly and improved over time as I reassessed their performance:
  • Increased Entry Points: Added more options for users to add a listing to Favorites (e.g., in the 'investigating a listing' flow, media viewer, and contact broker confirmation screen) to increase awareness and convenience. This quick implementation resulted in a 26% increase in saved listings.
  • Enhanced Linking: Enriched linking throughout the platform by adding more actionable options wherever appropriate, such as contacting the agent from the saved listing card and providing more access points to the saved listings area.
  • Card Design: Redesigned saved listings as cards to save screen space, align with our existing component library, and follow common universal conventions, offering a better overview and prioritization of certain details.
  • List Organization: Allowed users to divide saved listings into lists. Conducted separate research to explore different options for list types (e.g., ready-made based on the buying process, generically named, or user-named lists).
  • Collaboration Features: Enable users to share their favorite listings with other users, facilitating collaboration.
  • Informative Tags: Provided users with as much information as possible using existing data. For example, if the user had already contacted the agent regarding a saved listing, a tag indicating this was added. This allowed for sorting options based on the stage of "seriousness."
Screenshots of a modern design of the saved houses dashboard with a modal and a comparison view
A screenshot of the details page of a saved house with a new design for the added details
A bigger view of the improved design for the saved houses dashboard

Results

The first release consisted of an implementation of new entry points, adding links in key positions to promote actionability along the user flow and a redesign based on an updated design system.
The options to save listings into folders was schedules for a later realease.

A month after the first realease showed:
  • Increase of +70% in number of listings saved
  • Increase of +67% in Favourites page-views
  • Increase of +71% in notes creation