Yirental Homepage Redesign
Duration
Feb 2020 - Mar 2020
My Role
Product Designer
UX Researcher
Introduction
Overview:
Yirental a home rental platform for renters and homeowners.
Problem Statement:
Based on feedback from users, the marketing team and the design team, the initial Yirental website failed to convey insightful information with effective visual language. A new design is needed for better web user experience.
Users:
Renters and homeowners in the U.S.
My roles:
I collaborated with another designer to discover problems, define goals, complete prototype, hand off to developers and track metrics.
Constraints:
As a product with new features rolling out continuously, the redesigned homepage does not cover some new features released after this project.
Research
After being assigned with the homepage redesign project, I did research to discover existing problems.
Receive Feedback
The initial website was basically based on the mobile app design. After analyzing the feedback from users, marketing team, and design team, the results indicated that the existing version of website failed to convey insightful information with effective visual language.
Define Problems
For users:
Cannot get the information for the product features efficiently. The existing homepage does not provide enough information for users to understand the product features at a glance.
For marketing team:
Lack of brand identity information. Most of the information is about listings without showing company branding identity.
For design team:
Unattractive UI because of empty data situation. For regions with none or few listings, the homepage looks empty and unattractive.
Lack of guidance for users to register and interact with the website. Other than browsing the rental listings, there is not too much to view or take action on.
Define Goals
User growth. As a startup, Yirental aims to attract more new users with a well-designed homepage that showcases the strengths of the product.
User engagement. The redesign of homepage is expected to increase user engagement and decrease the bounce rate.
Define Metrics
To measure the success of redesign, several metrics are defined to measure whether the goals are achieved.
User growth.
Sign up rate
Number of new users per week
User engagement.
Average session duration on page
Design
Design Solutions
Problem: Cannot get the information for product features efficiently.
Solution: Combine different types of rental data into a tab menu.
The tab menu makes use of space more efficiently.
Users are able to select and view the content they are interested in and avoid scrolling up and down.
Problem: Unattractive UI because of empty data situation.
Solution: Integrate CTA and guidance into empty data messages.
New UI indicating empty data creates a refreshing look.
Guiding copies make users less frustrated and provide additional options to request rentals and roommates.
CTA buttons could potentially trigger other features and increase user engagement.
Problem: Lack of brand identity information.
Solution: Increase branding content for new users to learn about the product
The introduction of the key features showcases what makes Yirental different from other competitors.
Concise branding content helps new users to quickly learn about key features and decide whether they need this product.
CTA buttons encourage users to register, post and learn more about the product, which can increase user growth and user engagement.
Responsive Design
According to the user data, a large amount of users access the website via the ads on social media mobile apps. To attract these users, responsive design was considered in the early stage of the design to ensure the design works well on mobile devices.
Grid Design
12 Columns | Width: 65 | Gutter: 30
Mobile Web Experience
Final Design
Conclusion
Impact
One month after the launch of the new homepage, we checked the metrics defined at the beginning of the project. There is a significant increase in the user engagement metrics, and user growth metrics.
Next Steps
Optimize responsive design. Our team members are improving the responsive design for the homepage to ensure users with devices of different screen sizes all enjoy high quality navigation experience.
User Testimony section coming soon. To provide more information for new users, a user testimony section is planned for the next phase.
Update homepage when new features rolling out. As a fast growing start-up, Yirental is continuously developing new features for renters and homeowners. Important features need to be showcased to keep users updated.
Reflection
It is important to define goals and problems to solve at the beginning of the project.
It is beneficial to involve developers in the early stage of the design to ensure the feasibility.
Responsive design needs to be considered in the early stage of design.
Bug Bash for the demos and communication with the developers before the launch are important to ensure the released version matches the design.