Open House
StreetEasy
We wanted to learn more about consumers progress down funnel and pinpoint areas we might be able to better help them. 70% of for sale listings had an open house while actively on the market and StreetEasy was the primary source consumers used to find them. Agents valued these leads and we saw an opportunity to attribute visits back to us by delivering an experience that eliminate friction and gave the consumers more support and control.
Role:
UX / UI Design
Research
Email Design
Other team members:
PM
Strategy
Dev Team
Email Team
Platform:
Web
App
Email
My first steps were to work with our user researcher to conduct interviews to understand and identify pain points for consumers as they went through their home shopping journey. We wrote a script that looked at how they used the site and app today, discussed tools they used for keeping organized and learned where they wanted more help. To get diverse feedback, the interviewees were selected based on where they were in their home shopping journey, neighborhoods of interest and price points.
The Buyer's Journey
Identified
Pain Points
Can’t feasibly attend an open house for every listing they are interested in
- Is interested in open houses in multiple neighborhoods
- Overlapping weekend times make it difficult for them to visit all the open houses they’re interested in
- Only a fraction of listings will have an open house scheduled in a given month
- Requesting an open house requires messaging the agent (and revealing contact info)
Open house sign-in is an unwanted annoyance
- Benefits agents more than the buyer; they want anonymity until they are ready to move forward
- Forces them into unwanted interactions (e.g., sized up by the agent, probing questions)
Has to rely on external tools (e.g., Google Docs, pen & paper) to remember properties they liked
Is left wondering what to do after visiting a property they love
After the initial user interviews I worked with my dedicated PM to host an affinity mapping session, bringing together representatives from strategy, business, marketing, development, customer support and other designers to work through and organize possible solutions. Collectively we discussed what were viable options based on time and tech limitations and made a list of targeted solutions.
When reviewing projects with the dev team, I find it helpful to make user flows so everyone is on the same page with what actions are supposed to happen where and when. The initial work was focused on the pre and on-site visits.
From the interviews we learned how important open houses were to the consumer along their journey. We also knew how vital our contact form was for agents and the business. As an alternative to this form, we explored adding the ability to request an open house, giving the consumer control over when they were available to visit the property.
Another action we took was adding the ability to save a property if the user saved an open house and vice versa, highlighting when there was an open house if a user saved a listing. I worked in tandem with the email team to develop reminder emails to coincide with the user’s saved actions and offer more suggestions based on the size, price and location of the property they saved.
Initial studies for a light planner that helps organize properties of interest, way-finding and feedback.
An open house reusable component was added to our library for use on all listing card types.
Conclusion
Targeted 10% attribution back to StreetEasy with a baseline of 0%. Follow up steps included focusing on the visit itself, the evaluation step and post-visit contacting.
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