NINETY NINE

99.co is a map-based property search engine that provides renters, buyers, and agents fast and efficient property search experience. It’s the fastest growing property portal in Southeast Asia.

PROBLEM

Previous usability tests identified that consumers are frustrated by listings quality. On the other hand, agents complain that they don’t get enough enquiries.

METHODS

Data analytics tool
User interviews
User testing
 

LIST A NEW PROPERTY FLOW

99.co Platform consists of two parties: the real estate agents and consumers (buyers/renters). Previous usability tests identified that consumers are frustrated by listings without pictures, incomplete descriptions and outdated information. On the other hand, agents complain that they don’t get enough enquiries from consumers. By breaking this vicious circle we can potentially increase the conversion rate.

OBJECTIVES AND HYPOTHESES

Once I have the insights and understand the problem, I craft objectives and hypotheses. They help me identify the concerns and measuring the impact of new designs. I try to keep them the concise in order to stay on track throughout the process.

Objective
Increase the number of listings by 5% in 6 months time 

Hypotheses
If I solve the design problems, then the listings’ quality will improve.
If I educate agents how to be ranked higher on our platform, they will get more leads.
If agents follow our guidelines, their listings will be ranked higher.

USABILITY TESTING & FINDINGS

Apart from having quantitative insights, I decided to meet face-to-face with agents. It’s the most effective way of understanding what works and what doesn’t. I ask our support and sales team to schedule appointments with 5 participants that are eager to help us out. Before I meet users I come up with exploratory and specific scenarios. In this particular case, I test the old design and competitors’ websites. 

One of my goals is to provide agents with a tangible proof that if they enhance their quality of listings, they will get more business. When the agent clicks on the ‘list property’ button in the navigation, he sees a message about the data which is most relevant and helpful to consumers.

Address / Basic information page

The new ‘basic information’ step consists of the address and listing type option.

1. Agents are informed that higher response rates to consumers’ enquiries lead to higher rankings on our platforms.

2. The radial progress chart tracks progress on completion of the fields.

3. This button leads to the same popup message that is displayed after clicking on the ‘List property’ button (The only difference is that I removed the ‘Don’t show this message again’ option).

4. The section contains contact details. In most cases, if users can’t find what they’re looking for on a website, they’ll leave. However, I include it because it gives users the comfort that there’s someone on the other side who’s eager to help them.

5. The ‘Save draft’ button was one of the most frequent requests. The reason being, some agents don’t have all the information at once and they’d like to get back to the draft later.

Details Page

The new ‘basic information’ step consists of the address and listing type option.
 

1. Consumers claim that a lot of descriptions are low quality. I decide to create a template for the agents what should be covered in the description.

2. Based on users’ requests I add the character limitation.

3. Although Singapore’s first language is English, 75% of the resident population is Chinese. Many of them prefer to communicate in Mandarin. We offer agents to translate descriptions to Mandarin. In exchange it helps us to boost our SEO optimisation, so it’s a win-win.

Photos / Media
 

1. A picture is worth a thousand words — it’s a cliché, but it doesn’t make it any less true. Many listings don’t have pictures, and obviously, it affects the conversion rate. Agents who don’t have the interior design pictures at least can include a building’s images that we have in our database.

2. Some of the agents have videos of apartments but they weren’t able to upload them to our platform. Additionally, users who purchase a premium account can request a professional video record.

Summary
 

1. The Summary is a new step, it calculates overall listing’s quality score and encourages agents to enhance this rate.

2. Now agents can preview a listing before publishing it.

WHAT'S NEXT?

Remember that design is an iterative process and problems you (think you) fixed should be tested again to ensure that the “fixes” really solved the problems. Additionally, you want to learn about any new usability problems introduced by the changed design. The next face-to-face usability testing should be conducted with 5 participants, and enable you to calculate the overall usability improvement. Nonetheless, it sometimes doesn’t work in a fast-growing company and you need to find other ways to collect data.