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RentBase
My Role
Product design and user experience
working directly with the CTO/Head of product
KPIs
10% lift to filter-bar usage
20% faster filtering for entities
The Why
RentBase is a SaaS product that automates the leasing process for real estate agents and discovers sales within their rentals.
One main value prop RentBase offers to users is, uniting their fragmented CRM tools into one dashboard that connects all entities and presents them in a single place. In a rental agent's case, that means they're available for rental listings, landlords, leads, and team members.
Owning this much data in one place means we needed to think of clever ways for our users to easily filter and segment content within the hurricane called rentals.
The existing filter system we designed, as part of the MVP, was using a familiar visual pattern agent recognize from listing aggregators like Zillow, with relevant entities to suit their jobs to be done.
The components were given a lot of real-estate (see what i did there?) so we:
1. educate our new users on what options they have with a quick scan
2. give users the ability to filter quickly a large amount of content.
3. ‘honeypot’ filters to get signals on which items are most relevant by usage.
The Process
Discovery
We took a heavily used quarter when agents need their CRM most and dove into the metrics and results were...surprising.
Only 5%
of users actually engage with the main filters component.
~94% of users
filtered using 2 or more filters
when using a filter
These numbers changed our entire perspective on the velocity and goals our users have from their database. At their busiest season, they weren’t looking to move fast but to ‘paint a picture’ through filtering and find pretty specific segments from inventory.
This might meant:
1. The pain we’re trying to solve isn’t around filtering - it’s around matching. Users are might be looking to find a pool of close matches. If we validate it - that’s a HUGE learning for us.
It has a direct effect on how we build the product roadmap and opened a new value prop and messaging lane for product marketing.
2. Such low usage means we’re giving way too much real estate for filtering components, and we can pull much more of the content over the fold for immediate scan ability.
3. Context for Active/Non-Active should be Active by default.
How might we ...
make it easier for agents to match a lead to available listings using filters
Our Approach
A context-driven single filtering component that unifies all filters to one scrollable view and lets users get a real-time number of matches out of the existing database.
Acceptance Criteria:
The agent should be able to see all filters in one scrollable view.
The agent should see how many relevant matches will show up before exiting the filter component.
UI should be ‘fat-free’ and minimal so as to give as much
real estate to actual database content.
Next steps:
How can we automatically match leads to listing inventory?
Our Hypothesis
1. By uniting the filters component and making it more contextual (seeing how filters open and close inventory options in real-time) Vs making it a quick single-action tool, we’ll lift filter engagement by 10%.
2. By giving more real estate to body content we’ll lift body content engagement by 15%.
Fresh Components
Container:
Sticky header & footer
1. Keeps a number of results front and center no matter what section the user is filtering.
2. Background inventory stays party visible in the background to entice users.
3. Keep competent and very actionable with quick familiar locations to take action.
Existing hierarchy
High prominence and real-estate
Updated hierarchy
Minimal real-estate and expandable components aimed to bring focus to the main body content
Full component
Grouping filters hierarchy by search relevance and unifying all for easy selection
Results
12%
Lift in usage over 90 days in.
(usage dropped initially and crept back up once users were more familiar with it)
39%
For 2 filters or more.
(What agent userd to get quality match)
Takeaways
☝️ New pain discovered. Agents are looking for quality over quantity and speed.
☝️ New job-to-be-done: ‘matching’ a listing to a new lead
☝️ Potential feature that will automatically matches listings to leads will cut an agents time to quality significantly and give us additional value prop and proof-points is now in the works
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