Transforming the society detail page
Decisions made easy, site-visits made worthwhile
Team
Me Lead UI/UX designer, researcher
Bhavika Gupta Lead UX researcher, UI/UX designer
Timeline
3-4 months
Impact as of 19 Aug (50% rollout)
15%+
Direct conversion
7%+
Attributed conversion
-8%
Bounce rate
4-6%+
Time spent
Our society detail page has around 40% of our total traffic.
It provides users all the details related to a society & allows users to connect with the builders & brokers selling homes within it.
Our goal as a platform is to help users with quicker decision making and to narrow down their dream home. Ideally, this page should serve as the most holistic & credible resource available in the market about any society.
Building blocks
For the past couple of years, our org. had been building what we call Real Estate Intelligence (REI), regarding price appreciation, transaction records, reviews & ratings, on-ground locality research, etc. However, a lot of the information hadn’t been integrated with the core content & added as an afterthought.
so, while the content was enriched & up to date, our pages weren’t
Problem areas
UX Audit ∙ Hover to expand
Process
(we went a little backwards on this one)
Designing intuitively
Removing organisational inertia, pitching through design
In the last two years, I had...
interviewed
...more than 80 homebuyers, 40 of which were in-depth hour long conversations. Gained insights into their dreams, hopes & fears. Uncovered reasons behind their decisions, understood their quirks and skilful judgement while navigating a largely opaque industry.
consumed
...countless RE builder websites, youtube videos & adverts understanding how they sell their projects.
observed
...the leaders vision for our platform, learnt the kind of value our underutilised product initiatives can bring to the user’s lives.
A random brief
So, when I was tasked to make a few different approaches of our product detail page quickly, we got the ball rolling. The goal of was to pitch this project to the leadership & get it green lit ASAP.
My approaches
Why this exercise was important
With a project as big as this, often there can be a lot of research based inertia to get things started and to do things perfectly. However, since I was experienced in the domain, it made sense to take a crack at the vision.
Going visual first: Breaking the mould on what we’ve been seeing on our platform
Combining the best of the 3 iterations
After presentations in various leadership forums, we got our go ahead. To “officially” begin the project, of course, we started our research.
User interviews & secondary research
Takeaways
High-level insights
Topic-specific insights
Then we put together insights around the specific pieces of content. A couple of examples:
Project location
Users go off the platform to use google maps to figure out the exact project location & key landmarks
What is the experience of living here? People, commute, amenities, traffic, other societies in the area.
What are the positives & negatives of living here?
Is the project in a good part of the locality? Is it safe here?”
What is the historic price appreciation in this locality? (Shows them this is a desirable location)
Amenities
Unique amenities help users differentiate between projects
Localisation is important, what may be special in one city is basic in another city.
Details are important, an infinity swimming pool is not the same as a regular swimming pool
Images of amenities are engaging & help recall
Users fear builders will not deliver on promised amenities or deliver poor quality
AND SO ON.
Other research
Secondary research to understand how builders & brokers pitch their projects, what information exists out there
x
x
x
x
Design Principles
The foundations for the design work
Documentation: Designing by writing
Ideas around data, insights & content useful to users
Content hierarchy
Based on card sorting & section engagement data with better grouping
Navigation Bar
Media
Title Information
Inventory Information
Project USP
Floor Plan and Pricing
Media categories
Seller advertisement
Builder Credibility
Amenities
Location Advantages
Location Advantages
More about the Project
Brochure
Builder Projects (Recommendations)
Resale Properties
Rental Properties
Similar Projects (Recommendations)
Compare
New Launch Projects (Recommendations)
Price Trends
Transaction Prices
Society Reviews
Location Information
Loan Information
Educative Information
SEO Information
Navigation Bar
Media - Images, videos, brochure, USPs
Title Information
Location
PSF, credibility
Construction info
PROJECT tab
Inventory Information
Floor plans
Amenities
Interior information
Masterplan
Seller advertisement
Locality Information
Builder Credibility
Price Insights
Transactions
Project Reviews
Compare
Recommendations
Educative Information
SEO Information
PROPERTIES tab
Filters
Inventory Summary
Tuples
In-line Widgets
Detail Pages
User testing feedback
Quick interviews with total 10 participants from Delhi, Mumbai & Bangalore
Final designs
Scalable stories
Media rich
Contextual insights
Social validation
Improving transparency
Reflection
What worked, what didn't & what could have been
Improvements
Length of page & discoverability of content: Although in the starting one of the goals was to keep the page as short as possible, we were not able to achieve that due to a serious case of scope creep. Some solutions I had explored to mitigate this were also deprioritised at that time due to tech bandwidth, but might get picked up later.
Micro animations: There was a lot of room for various animations but due to the given time frame & limited experience with the same, I was not able to explore much during the project.
My experience
This was the biggest project I have undertaken in terms of complexity & no. of moving parts. This came with a huge responsibility as my manager also loosened the reigns completely. This was the 2nd most important project in the Homebuyer POD all year, and given only 2 years of experience, it provided me with an accelerated learning opportunity as it was a complete revamp.
While this project was going on, the new design system of 99acres was also being worked upon, which gave me a chance to add to that as well. It was an intense experience, made whole by the positive user feedback in user testing.
My thanks to
My primary collaborator Bhavika, who worked on discovery of properties on the society detail page - Namely Available properties, Floor plan sections & properties tab. She was also the lead for user research & helped me with backup every time we had to defend a design decision. Her work on property discovery helped this project get significant gains in conversion.
Manoj B. & Rishabh for their guidance & feedback on the visual design.
Yashsavi, our content lead who joined in the last leg of this project & helped us improve communication across various touch points before we went live.
Abhishek Verma, my manager, who trusted me with this amazing opportunity & gave me the freedom to shape this project, while always having my back when things got intense.