Finding The One With Apartment.com
JRMC 7010E: Digital Media Design and Aesthetics
Background
Launched in 1987, CoStar Group, Inc. founded Apartments.com in an effort to reach millions of renters nationwide, driving both qualified traffic and highly engaged renters to leasing offices across the United States. Ranked as the third best application in real-estate search as of 2019 and as a champion of online apartment listing websites, Apartments.com offers renters access to information on more than 1,000,000 available units at a time and is the leading provider of commercial real estate information, analytics, and large-scale online marketing. These online services enable clients to analyze, interpret and gain unmatched insight on commercial property values, market conditions and current availability in just a few clicks, with easy access to its listings through a responsive website and iOS and Android applications.
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The Problem
While Apartments.com prides itself on its easy-to-start search process, their primary form of user interaction stems from their website, not their mobile app. While their website gathered approximately 59.81M impressions between November of 2020 to May of 2021, their mobile app only generated a mere 87.4K during the same six month time period. Additionally, over half of their mobile traffic has been generated through referral in reference to other competitors apps, specifically that of Zillow, Realtor, and Trulia. And while 92.45% of traffic was organically generated, what money is poured into advertising has resulted in a poor overall return on investment, with only 0.26% of traffic being driven by display ads and with only 7.55% occurring as a result of paid promotion.
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Despite its reputation as a friendly rental web experience, a quick dive into review sites such as Consumeraffairs.com or Trustpilot.com also indicate that many users have become frustrated with the mobile interface due to issues with account registration and a constant need to re-enter information.
fruitsmiles | 3 out of 5 stars
09/10/2020
“Not sure why, but almost every time I return to the map after viewing more details about a property it reloads the map and resets all my filters…This is especially frustrating when I have several filters to narrow down my search, so it’s not just an easy (still unnecessary) step to reapply the filters.”
Additionally, while the tool offerings are fantastic to have, many have indicated that they wish for a more detailed, yet simplified breakdown of their favorite properties, desiring a form of comparison and quick reference to use when looking for a new home. Prioritizing real-time updates and a quick and easy listing of interested properties thus becomes vital to catering to users needs, especially to keep them from switching over to competitors in a highly competitive and overly saturated real-estate market.
Jacqueline of Humble, TX | Verified Reviewer
Original review: March 5, 2021
Apartments.com has a simple interface and the listing available are extensive, so it is great. I like the image quality and mapping features they offer. However, I’m mainly looking for something that has current listings, not rental property that isn’t available any more. It is very simple to use, but doesn’t offer some of the detailed tenant features that Tenants.com offers.Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Looking into more of their reviews on the App Store as well, many users have also noted that there are inconsistencies between the filters available on the app and on the website, with many favorite tools — including the commute filter — being completely absent from the interface as of the most recent update. More filters seem to be the best option to reduce the overwhelming process of property selection, however it seems that there is a sense of distrust due to the search results not matching the number of shown listings on top of the app not remembering prior saved searches.
Mreeves336 | 4 out of 5 stars
04/30/2021“…it will say I have hundreds of results but only show like five apartments. I’m not sure what that’s about but I would much rather it say five and be five then say hundreds and list five. When I apply a bunch of filters, I don’t want a lot of options, if I did, I would apply less filters. No need to be misleading.”
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The Solution
To combat these issues, I developed an app extension that focused on a fun, innovative way to have Apartments.com maintain previous filtered searches with an easy to access swiping format. With a goal of prioritizing first-time renters, I wanted to capitalize on the more tech-savvy generations of Millennials and Gen Z, catering to these individuals who value time and customization in their day-to-day interaction with technology. After creating my user personas, I was able to distinguish 5 major “pain points” that needed to be addressed in my proposed app addition to keep consumer satisfaction up: these included access to short summaries, a quick browsing process, a save feature, strong visuals, and customizable, personal listings.
In terms of the experience map, I wanted to create key touchpoints throughout the app that would cater to the rollercoaster of emotions that the user would encounter in such a fast-paced environment. Going from Awareness to Usage and to eventual Deletion, I wanted to create an emphasis on Matching and Selecting for consistent use. Having the app take on the brute of the mental labor associated with property availability and stats allows users to focus on the important part: having fun dreaming of their new home.
Experience Map
Additionally, I wanted to use the on-boarding process to assist in providing alerts and updates automatically so that users can keep real-time availability both offline and on. In particular, the New Property Alert Email and the Unavailable Property Message serve to check in with the reader on two complete opposite sides of their emotional spectrum: one dealing with curiosity and excitement for a new listing, and the other mitigating the frustration and sadness accompanies with losing a “perfect” candidate. As such, tone must stay increasingly flexible at different points of the house-hunting process, wherein the Property Summaries and Reference Lists aim to provide glanceable, referenceable information in a format that is not beholden to a designated time limit.
Prototyping:
Taking initial inspiration from Tinder’s interface, I related finding the “perfect house” to that of finding the “perfect date”: it’s all a matter of finding what you’re looking for in the right place and at the right time. Using the dating app’s “swipe right” set-up, I chose to incorporate this feature to aid in the selection process and provide users with different category lists that provided 3 choices for the user to file their new properties into. This consisted of “yes’s,” “maybe’s,” and “no’s” that would save said selections automatically and reduce the cognitive load users needed when assessing various different properties. Within this listing mechanism, I also incorporated a comparison feature to allow for easy side-by-side analysis of interested properties within said listings.
Once prototyping for the new features began, one of the main concerns of the first iteration was to maintain the existing good features of the UI while adding the new features. As stated in the Laws of UX (Jakob’s Law) by Jon Yablonski:
“Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.”
In the context of Apartments.com, a lot of their traffic has previously been generated from the sites of their competitors — on top of the current sellers market brought upon by the aftermath of COVID-19 —and the real-estate market continues to grow to provide consumers with a variety of property availabilities that go almost as fast as they can blink. As such, I maintained the main landing page to be a simple on-boarding process that directly allows the user to jump into searching for future properties as soon as possible. A location search and top rated filter buttons are present at the very top of the landing page to allow users to begin stating their specifications right away, and images are prioritized to entice the viewers with the newest available properties near their designated area. Also at the front of the page are two new buttons: “Find my Match” and “View my Lists.” This helps to begin the matching process for them to reference early on, and once they become more comfortable with the interface, their lists are easy to access both from the landing page and from the static menu button present at the bottom of the screen.
Taking the filters selected, users would tap on the “Find My Match” button, which would allow users to begin swiping through their options. Here, I proceeded to add the overlay screen which would then be used to display the bare-bone synopsis of the property as well as the buttons for rejecting, contemplating, or adding the property to the users list of available locations. If they wanted to view more, they would simply click the read more button for a more in-depth breakdown of the designated offer, with it’s applicable filters at the top for easy-to-see applicability. Navigation between various pages was thus crucial due to the multiple access points that a user is able to go through to view different properties at any given time. As such, decreasing the number of clicks and maximizing the quickness of result generation with minimal to no thinking meant that the list access itself was the most important aspect that I needed to focus on. In the words of Steve Krug and his book, ‘Don’t Make Me Think Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability’ :
“It doesn’t matter how many times I have to click, as long as each click is a mindless, unambiguous choice…if I’m going to have to drill down the same path in a site repeatedly, or if the pages are going to take a long time to load, then the value of fewer clicks increases.”
Considering the two above notions from Steve Krug, I thus decided to capitalize on the filter feature because of its capabilities in search volume reduction. I then provided the ability to navigate between each list — from rejections, to maybes, and to accepted properties — to allow users to review their previous choices and edit their lists as needed. This in turn also allowed users to be more flexible in their hunting necessities should their situation have to change, and by reducing the finality of choice, they become more able to truly weigh the pros and cons of each property and better assess what they are willing and are not willing to compromise on. Finally, I also placed a greater emphasis on real-time updates by prioritizing new listings and top rated properties at the forefront of the landing page, meaning that users can instantly see what is now on and off the market and have it automatically updated in their lists and in push notifications or email announcements. The result of those iterative prototypes is the version which can be seen below:
Through this process, I wanted to put the fun of house-hunting back into the hands of the consumer, and help to make Apartments.com become more competitive as the real-estate market continues to climb. With this new swiping feature and listing feature, users are able to safe and reference their favorite properties without being beholden to a desktop. By emphasizing mobile, people can also choose to peruse their options around their own schedules and availability. And finally, by removing the burden of comparison, memorization, and the stress surrounding finding new properties to place that responsibility on the mobile interface at hand, finding “home sweet home” truly becomes just a swipe away.