Optimized The House Booking Flow

Better product guidance and redesigned chat page.

COMPANY
Finpeak, Inc
DURATION
12 Weeks
STATUS
Shipped
MY ROLE
Product designer
TEAM
2 Designers
1 Product manager
1 Marketing mangers
2 Engineers

What is Airhome

Airhome.com is a flexible rental platform that helps travelers like traveling nurses and intern students to find a flexible weekly or monthly furnished accommodations.

The Business Challenge

How do we encourage guests to book stays on Airhome to fix the low conversion rate problem?
Low conversion rate (Sign up/booking): Airhome had onboarded 25000+ users (guests) but only had 2-4 bookings daily.
Solution Overview
Onboarding Tutorial
A quick way to show how Airhome works. The tutorial let guests know the booking booking process, reducing the drop-off rate significantly.
Booking Status Tag
Always know what to expect. We created the booking process chart and status tag to provide information about what to expect after booking a space. Guests will have sense of where their money goes. It enhanced the trust between Airhome and guests.

Impact

30%

Decrease in drop-off rate

2.5x

Daily booking amount

3.5x

Increase in weekly revenue

Meet Our Guest User, Jack

Jack is a business analyst who often travel to other cities. He found Airhome can help him to rent a 3 months furnished place.
28 year-old male
Travel to the Bay Area
Business Analyst
Working in consulting
3 months trip
Need furnished house
Goal
I need to find a 1b1b apartment with furnitures for 3 months.
Pain Point
Airbnb was a bit expensive. But renting an apartment usually need to sign a contract for a year. Most of them are not furnished.
Jack represents our usability testing participants and provides feedback.

Internal data research

Which part of the user flow went wrong?
I submitted a ticket request for our engineer to generate data from the user funnel and got 2 valuable insights.
Insight 1: High drop-off rate
From funnel, we found that guests on Airhome dropped a lot in the house detail page and they barely send booking requests.
The chart shows the user funnel and approximate drop-off rate.
Insight 2: Low response rate (guest side)
Guests were ice cold on the response rate.

15%

Guest's response rate

90%

Host's response rate

User Research

We did survey research to find out the reason behind the data fact.
The survey result showed that

80%

Guests felt the booking process was confusing.

60%

Guests feared getting scammed by paying on Airhome
Hypothesis
1. Airhome is a new website for them. The booking process has a learning curve
2. They don't know and don't trust the host. There's no information or service to cover incidents.
User Interview
We interviewed 6 guests with different backgrounds and asked detailed experiences and questions. Here are the 2 summarized problems.
Scenario for problem 1: Lack of confident of using Airhome
Guest don't know what to expect if I click "Send a request"
Scenario for problem 2: Payment's safety concerns
Guests were hesitate to pay on Airhome because they have doubts on Airhome and the host.
Problem 1: Lack of confident of using Airhome
How might we establish effective product guidance across the user flow to ensure guests navigate the booking process with confidence?
Solution 1
Onboarding Tutorial
We had very limited time on developing solutions so prioritize this task is important.
1. A clear and concise tutorial
2. An MVP design that can delivery quickly without sacrificing the upcoming users' experience
Decision Making
We considered option: Pop-up tutorial as the best because:
1. Easy and fast to build in terms of our tight schedule.
2. Sustainability. Easy for future revision and development.
The Design & Impact
The tutorial worked pretty well and reduced the drop-off rate significantly along with solution 2.
Accident Finding To Iteration
After 2 month, when we do the user flow usability testing , at the end of the testing, I always summarize for the guest:
Guests understood my explanation rapidly. It inspired us to integrate this concept to tutorial.
Final Design
Solution 2
Optimize The Action Items
The house detail page is where guests drop off the most from Airhome. We need to make sure guests are willing to use the product at this stage.
Resign The "Request Button"
Change the "Send a request" to "Get a quote." And we add an explanation to the button.
Create A Roundabout
After a guest hits the "Get a quote" button, a pop-up message appears. We add action items to encourage guests to continue website use and reduce drop-offs.
Final Prototype

Problem 2 - Payment's Safety Concerns

How can we optimize the chat page to deliver valuable information and boost Airhome's credibility, ensuring prompt resolution of guests' concerns?
Solution 1
Redesign The System Communication
We want to address concerns on the chat page because research showed that guests frequently have payment questions when chatting with the host.
Problems In The Old Version
New Design
The new system message answers questions even before a guest asks.
It covers everything before booking, making payment, and after booking.
Solution 2
Booking Status Badge
User feedback indicates a "Lack of confident of using Airhome" Guests need information on what to expect after booking a space.
Showing It In FAQ Page
The first thing we did was to put the info on all processes on a dedicated FAQ page. But how do we integrate the information into the chatting page to increase discoverability?
Brainstorm
What feature provides information and gives users peace of mind
Think of food delivery app or when you constantly tracking a package's shipping information. The status of the item let us know what stage we are in so we can expect the upcoming steps.
Explore The Design
Booking Status Badge, the way that guests can check and understand what's the current status and what's coming next
Integrated in the sidebar in the chatting page. Users can click to view the complete process.
Tool Tip
In case users ignore information, we created a walkthrough for first-time users.
We found that during the testings, some users easily ignore information even it's very important.
Status Tag In The Message List
Booking Status Tag will also be shown in the message list. Ongoing trip will be pinned on the top.

Reflection

About Metrics
1. We have reduced the drop-off rate significantly. We will continue to discover what we can do to increase the retention rate, making Airhome not only a tool but also fans' favorite.

2. This project was about fixing guests' experience. On the other side, we will track if the host side matches the experience.
Future Plan
1. We already have plan to polish the landing page. The new onboarding tutorial will be added to the landing page.

2. As we grow, we want to collect more potential questions that our users (guests and hosts) have. And continue to add the most relevant system message.

3. We are discovering if the booking status badge works for the host side. Hopefully to make it work on both side.