Improving search conversion at HouseTrip

Going through feedback and call logs from our customer support teams in Lisbon, combining this with recording clicks on parts of the page and the use of heatmaps we looked at how visitors were engaging with the filters and map view option on the search.

The results suggested overwhelmingly that people were failing to notice or interact with the majority of the property filters or access the map view in its existing presentation.

Initially I thought simply drawing attention and increasing the promiance of these elements on the page would increase their usage but even this wasn't actually a gurantee when it came to improving conversion on this part of the site.

The ideal solution would be that the average number of property views per guest would go down and the number of enquiries go up. In essence - ensuring people were making more qualified decisions whilst avoiding becoming burnt out by viewing multiple properties.

A screen from an initial concept

Going through feedback and call logs from our customer support teams in Lisbon, combining this with recording clicks on parts of the page and the use of heatmaps we looked at how visitors were engaging with the filters and map view option on the search.

The results suggested overwhelmingly that people were failing to notice or interact with the majority of the property filters or access the map view in its existing presentation.

Initially I thought simply drawing attention and increasing the promiance of these elements on the page would increase their usage but even this wasn't actually a gurantee when it came to improving conversion on this part of the site.

The ideal solution would be that the average number of property views per guest would go down and the number of enquiries go up. In essence - ensuring people were making more qualified decisions whilst avoiding becoming burnt out by viewing multiple properties.

We began to look at ways we could intergrate the two views, the hypothesis being if we could directly integrate the means of browsing properties people would not only see the absolute position of each property but also the placement of the properties in relation to one another.

In conjunction with the filters this map view would allow people to make decisions based on both the location and qualities of the property - something previously that we could of done one of but not necessarily the other.

The initial approach was to do away with any sort of list view and push for was believed to be a more powerful map. However, this concept seemed to simply switch one problem for another in that we gave people no way to scan property information without first interacting with the map. We refined the design based on other concepts and got a much better result.

The end result was an real step forward for how we understood search - we saw a decline in the number of people asking questions relating to the location of the property and an increase in the number of people making enquiries with hosts - we managed to do this by also actually reducing the number of property pages customers were viewing. We later improved this further by increasing the prominance of the images and giving them the ability to view multiple images from each property on the search screen through a carousel accessible by hovering over each properties image.

The search screen at the end of the process.

Contact

Email
keith.stewart.mason at gmail dot com
LinkedIn
@iamkeithmason