Vrbo
Homeowner dashboard cards
Background
HomeAway has many homeowners who have posted properties to the HomeAway platform. These homeowners come from all kinds of backgrounds, have different managing styles, and own different numbers of properties. We wanted to create a landing page after each owner logged in, that is a personalized social feed, based on each of their needs. This feed would show relevant news for each property.
Interviews with property owners
Together with a user research lead and a user researcher, we did user testings with current homeowners, who came in to our office to participate in these testings. Here are some of what they said:
“I spend the majority of my time online using social media.”
“I only get on HomeAway website when I have to.”
“I set my daily rates based on how I feel.”
"I don't know much about my neighborhood prices."
"I don't think the website feels visually appealing."
"I don't find it easy to manage my property."
Our team compiled all the results from the user interviews, separated the feedbacks into different groups. We then analyzed the different groups of results before coming up with solution proposals.
Not informed
Many property owners don’t know too much about how their properties are performing, let alone the neighborhood or market of their properties.
Lack of motivation
Many owners expressed that they lost some motivation to keep managing their properties. But they also wanted to keep the businesses running in these properties.
Not enough app usage
On a daily basis, property owners spent on average 18 minutes on each property, lacking the productivity and engagement levels needed to manage their properties.
Based on the user feedbacks, we designed the owner newsfeed. The newsfeed is personalized to each owner, and shows relevant information for the owner's properties. The newsfeed accomplished the following:
Current news
- Help owners gain perspective of how their properties are performing in the neighborhood.
- Help owners understand what is happening in the neighborhood.
Engage
- Make owners feel like home.
- Make owners want to keep coming back to HomeAway.
Improvement
- Help owners improve with the performances of their properties.
- Introduce helpful tips to manage their properties.
I designed several cards that are designed to be displayed on the social media newsfeed.
Each card provides relevant information to the owner that either provides market insights, educational material about improving property management, or alerts that need the owner's attention quickly. Some cards are interactive and shows more detailed information with interaction. These cards are engaging and grabs the owner's attention. These interactions are especially useful when displaying crucial information regarding the property or market.
I designed several options of the same card concept and tested which one works best.
How did property owners react?
When the social newsfeed was released to the property owners in the first month, their reactions were mixed. Our monthly active owners haven’t changed much, at roughly about 1.5 million. About 30% of them reacted favorably at first, saying that this was what they wanted the whole time to help them manage their properties. The rest of them were not so fond of the feature for the following reasons:
Not used to the drastic change
Some property owners missed the previous view, because it felt familiar.
Can't utilize this feature to manage properties
Being a new feature, the social newsfeed is hard for some property owners to utilize, to help them manage properties.
I addressed these concerns
A majority of their concerns were not about the usability of the feature itself, rather about getting accustomed to the feature, or being accustomed to interacting with the social newsfeed. Therefore, we thought the feature itself isn’t the problem; the problem is how to introduce the feature better.
We promoted this in other platforms.
We tried to generate more awareness by promoting the social newsfeed introduction on our instagram, Facebook, twitter, and emails, to generate more awareness.
Can't utilize this feature to manage properties
I created a step-by-step on boarding experience that highlighted essential functions of the social newsfeed. The user can follow through each step to understand how to view each feed card, and where they are taken to after each click.
Engagement increased in the following months.
After those necessary steps were taken to address user concerns, property owners reacted favorably. Some of them expressed that they are more receptive to the idea of landing on the social newsfeed after logging in. We saw engagement with the HomeAway owners tool increase in the following 6 months.
We were happy to see that our monthly active owners increased after 6 months, to 1.6 million.