Lender Portal/Live Buyer

REALTOR.COM

There were also some added challenges in the real estate market and the height of the pandemic. We were under a critical time crunch to launch a more user-friendly 3D tour, and video tour experience, as consumers needed these critical features to find a home safely. 


When a user searched on our site, the experience was disjointed. With several known discoverability and navigation issues, we brought together three different products to address these problems.

Process

Research + known issues 

  • Connected experience stakeholders

  • Monitor live user behavior (Hot Jar, Data Analytics)

  • Wireframe

  • User test - moderated

  • Refine design

  • Build, QA

  • Launch 

  • Release to 100%

The Team behind the dream 

4 eng, 2 pm, 1 design, 1 research

My Role

Two-person duo - worked very closely with my PM

Why we did this

We worked on a holistic refresh, starting with our search and listing experience. We wanted to accomplish a high level rethinking of how we present the most importnant details/experiences of a home for the user in the 1 second SRP, 3 second LDP and photo gallery. Working with our research partners, we discovered the following:


  • Cleanup the user experience to address user needs/problems

  • Address discoverability/navigation issues

  • Increase product engagement with home visualization product

  • Add key features to the photo gallery

  • Align the user experience with the upcoming Polaris Redesign work


Research

Through user interviews and monitoring live user behavior (Hot Jar, Data Analytics) we determined the following updates should be made:


  • SRP Card Update - focusing on what a user needs to know most to decide which homes to explore, including new color-coded treatment for statuses and flag simplification to help consumers quickly identify listings of interest or actions to take.

  • LDP 3-Second View Update - to flow intuitively from the SRP card and center around what a user needs to know most to quickly decide whether to discard or dive deeper into a listing. Certain data return visitors may be accustomed to seeing on the Listings Detail Page, for example, Flood, Noise & Commute, will shift to the Neighborhood section.  

  • Enhanced Gallery View - Discoverability of New Products (Video/Floorplan) & Easy Navigation between current experiences (3D Tour, Virtual Tour, Google Maps, Google Street View). 


We kept the scope of the updates small while focusing on what users needed within the first 1-5 seconds of this experience. Our biggest challenge was working with stakeholders from each experience. My PM and I technically only owned the Listing details page at the time. Through a deep partnership, we were able to get on the SRP and Photo gallery teams roadmaps. We were able to design and build all of our suggested changes for this experiment.

Look and feel

Results and learnings

The test ran for several weeks, and we made the decision to move forward with a release to 100% of our users. We reached statistical significance and received great signals and feedback to confidently move forward. This decision allowed other teams to move forward with experiments of their own that were dependent on the results/launch of this test.


KPI Results of the Test (Viewing 30 Days of Data from April 16th - May 16th)

  • 3D Tour Clicks increased by more than 56%

  • Virtual Tour Clicks increased by more than 18%

  • Days On Site (Retention) increased by 2%

  • LDP Share Rate increased by more than 28%

  • ULS remained relatively the same with a delta change of -.14%

  • Registration Rate decrease slightly from .22% to .21% (-6.5%)