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HomeLister
UX DESIGN l UI DESIGN l RESEARCH
INTRODUCTION
HomeLister is a digital real estate platform that helps users control their financial transactions and save commission fees. They offer services like market research, offer review and paperwork guidance. We recently decided to re-design our existing service called listing flow, which is the digital forms homeowners use to market their homes to acquire users more quickly and easily onto the platform.
MY ROLE
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Conducting user research
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Developing UI mockups
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Communicating closely with stakeholders to synthesize user requirements and convey design concepts
MY TEAM
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1 UX/UI Designer
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1 Creative Director
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Team of 3 developers
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Team of 2 Product Managers
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1 Marketing Manager
TIMELINE
May 2022 - Aug 2022
The Problem
As the current listing flow experience is really long and not user-friendly, we have observed a significant amount of users abandoning the process before reaching the endpoint.
Our mission is to empower customers
to take control of their real estate transaction experience.
Business Goals
Help users
Easily complete the listing of their homes and save the commission
Help HomeLister
Increase the conversion rate by making the experience easy to understand, smooth to fill out the form and joyful to use our products
Help Growth
Decrease the abandon rate in order to keep the customer base and grow as a solid home-selling platform
Project Outcome
Conversion Rate
15%
The conversion rate of current users went up by 15% as a result of the new design. Since our primary goal was to boost the conversion rate to maintain the existing user base and attract new customers, the outcome was successful.
User Engagement Rate
+20%
Since the new design, users now spend 20% more time on each page. Also, we discovered from the heat maps that user engagement was much higher compared to the past.
Bounce Rate
-18%
The bounce rates have decreased by 18% after the new design's launch. As we regularly observed customers quitting existing processes, lowering bounce rates was one of our top priorities.
Home List Day
-3 days
We discovered that validating the product solution and user adoption of a new feature allows users to list their homes three days faster on average.
Competitive Research
First, I conducted competitive research to learn about competitors and see the market trend. My goal was to help users to finish the listing flow easily and navigate them to the end smoothly, so I evaluated competitors to observe their navigational features and user flow. Through the research, putting the navigation in a prominent location and outlining the steps in detail make the process easier for users to comprehend and complete the listing. Therefore, I decided to help users through the entire process by developing the proper and helpful tools and navigation.
UXR Findings
I initially collected data from our customer service team, who receives daily complaints from our users by phone and email to get to know them. Then I conducted six user interviews who signed up, but abandoned the listing process to learn about their concerns, as well as their thoughts and workflows. Following are the highlights from the user interviews, and I found out that users want a simple and easy process, preview, and guidance and assistance during the process.
User Persona
Based on the insights I gathered from the user interview, I created user personas to learn more about the target users. This helped me better understand target users goals, motivations, and frustrations.
HMW statement
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How might we help users finish the listing flow easily?
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How might we help users understand the whole process at once?
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How might we navigate users to the end smoothly?
Brainstorm Session
With the How Might We questions in hand, I conducted an ideation session to brainstorm on the idea with the product, design teams and key stakeholders. The goal of this session was to reinforce the core team's understanding of the goals of the project and the problem we were trying to solve to evaluate the existing product and explore ways to enhance it. By creating a mind map, we could organize the thoughts in our heads and develop them into full-fledged solutions.
User Flow
I created a user flow to comprehend the chronological steps the users might go through, which helped me empathize with them and focus on their needs. “Introduction/Preview,” “Product tour,” and “Missing answer guide” are new steps that are added to this project scope.
Usability Test
Then, I started to put solutions to the design by creating wireframes. Once the prototypes were ready, I conducted a usability test with 4 users to see how users interacted with my design via Zoom. Following are the findings I gained from the usability tests.
Before
After
1. Many users commented that they needed clarification on whether they finished each step. So we added the circular progress bar for each section to show how far along each step is and a checkbox next to each subsection to indicate step completion.
2. The term "Your Savings" was confusing because users thought the meaning was ambiguous and didn't know what to do with it. Therefore, we added the word "Estimated" and the info icon next to the saving amount. When the user clicks the icon, it triggers a modal that explains the estimated savings' meaning.
3. Several customers with multiple properties were curious about how to switch to another listing. Therefore, we included the dropdown field, allowing users to quickly switch to another listing by selecting different addresses.
4. Users didn't think the search bar was necessary because they were new to the page and didn't know what to type, so we decided to remove it from this MVP.
The Solutions
Step progress
By adding step progress, we can provide the current status to users, which helps them learn the outcome of their prior interactions and determine the next steps. Therefore, we can continuously communicate with users.
Overall progress
As the listing flow is a long process, users need to know where they are at and how long they expect to work on the process, giving users control over the product.
Estimated savings
The main goal of HomeLister is to help users save their money from a large amount of commission, so we added “Estimated savings” on the top navigation to inform users quickly.
Chat with us
We added a “chat with us” function to help users in real-time in case they have questions while going through the process rather than making them exit.
Section divider
As this is a long and tiring process, we added the teal bar for each question section to increase the legibility.
Main Features
Onboarding / Welcome
When users initially open the app, this page is what they see. It gives users a glimpse of the listing flow and what they can anticipate to see by giving them the welcome message and a preview that covers all of the steps of the entire process.
Product Tour
We introduced the product tour at the beginning of the listing flow for users who need help with using buttons and navigation. The product tour explains to users what the "Estimated saving" and "Total progress" bars at the top mean and shows them how to use the left-hand and bottom navigation.
Missing Answer Guide
Users often miss filling out some required fields, so at the end of the listing flow as there are a lot of them. To help users identify the missing fields, we introduced the missing answer guide function at the end of the listing flow.
They can either select the listed things or the "start missing answer guide" option. They can either click the "start missing answer guide" button or one of the listed items to start the guide.
Error Prevention
The user is taken to this page when conducting the missing answer guide. If any fields are missing, they will see the error fields, allowing them to immediately see what needs to be filled up. By making this available, we can prevent users from skipping to fill out the listing's necessary fields.
Conclusion
Although redesigning the entire listing procedure was challenging, it was also a really satisfying process. I was inspired and thrilled to see the product's development and users' encouraging comments. The success we had after the launch, in particular, was precious and demonstrated to me that my design had a positive impact on both customers and the business.
I grew as a UX/UI designer while working on this project in a cross-functional team, including engineers and product managers, which made me a better team player. I learned to view the big picture after learning how to handle real-world problems and choose the best solution for the customer and business.
Future road map
We concentrated on making the listing flow easier and more like a guided experience, but the listing flow is still lengthy, with multiple questions on one page. In the future, I hope to reduce the number of questions and display one or two on a single page to simplify the experience and help users focus on the process.
Also, I would conduct usability tests to see how users interact with the new listing flow, as well as how useful the preview and product tour is, and to determine whether additional features are required.
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