HouseTrip property listing redesign

When I was first tasked with addressing the performance of the existing behaviour on the site I started by looking at the way people were interacting with the current page through tools like heatmaps and analytics on the existing page. I combined this with feedback from user testing sessions and call logs from customer support where I began to outline issues people phoned in about or raised whilst browsing the existing page.

Early ideation

We quickly discovered that Customers sought out a number of thing when evaluating a property; imagery, facilities, a breakdown of the properties sleeping arrangements, location and feedback from past guests.

Initial wireframes

The findings gave us a pretty good indicator of how to prioritise things on the page and also highlighted one of our biggest issues. The property description on the page had no character limit and was completely unqualified in its contents which could vary from property to property. Whilst the option of revising this was closed down to us it made us realise the potential benefit of the property description was mitigated and we should explore other options to communicate information about the property.

The final design we ended up with for the property page.

The findings lead to work introducing the following into the property page

• Much more significant image presence on the page
• Showing the property availability on the page
• Clearer handling of minimum lengths of stay and changeover days
• A detailed room by room breakdown of the sleeping arrangements in each property
• Categorisation of property images by room
• Showing which facilities the property didn't have alongside the ones it did
• Adding location information alongside the property map (this challenged our assumptions - we ran testing sessions with the information in the map itself but putting the information in proximity to the map but not in the map was universally received better in sessions).
• Cleaner visual hierarchy

Photos of the property could now be browsed on a much more immersive overlay.

The first iteration of the page had positive but somewhat mixed results, the dramatic change in booking resulting from the decision to pursue a 'booking bar' (horizontal form) as opposed to the more conventional booking 'box' form actually created significant friction - the most notable being that in user testing sessions (which were now more an established practice within the company) it transpired that the people viewing the booking 'bar' suffered from a type of banner blindness.

Thankfully through an agile process of iteration, the page has gone from strength to strength to the point where its out-performing the previous one with considerably more scope to develop the page further. The success has been seen internally within the company and externally as the working process adopted whilst on the project meant that we could move forward in a faster, more iterative and experimental approach which significantly reduced the risks and opened up more creative avenues whilst simultaneously contributing to an ever improving end-result.

Contact

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