Background
Carousell is a marketplace platform that sells anything from fashion to property. Regardless of categories, all listings comes with 'Chat' and 'Make Offer'.
'Make Offer' trivialise the purchase of a high value item like property
For such a high commitment item, it is extremely unlikely a buyer would simply make offer.
Current situation
1. More than 70,000 property listings but <10% of 'Make offer' against all categories
2. CTA (Chat + Make Offer) per property listing averages around 0.63%
'Make Offer' is a foreign term or action that is not part of a user mental model when considering a property purchase
Opportunity
Replace 'Make Offer' with a lead generation enquiry form for high-intent buyers.
Goals
Objective
To connect high-intent buyers with agents
Personas
Supply—Property agents and direct owners
Demand—Homeseekers ready to buy within 6 months
User interviews
Key observations
1. Agents perceives buyers on Carousell as low intent and do not invest time to reply.
2. Buyers think agents on Carousell are not responsive.
3. Both find it troublesome to converse on in-app Carousell chat, prefers SMS or Whatsapp
Key insights
In-app chats are perceived ineffective and inefficient for property transaction
Benchmarking
We studied competitor’s similar features. Our intention was not to revolutionise an enquiry form. Rather, to design for users’ familiarity such that they do not have to relearn.
Iterations
I explored a wider expression of modality from popovers to bottom sheet drawers—as it does not force users to leave the current context—making the flow cognitively less taxing.
Usability testing
Objective was to validate the ease of sending an enquiry. I focused on a good information hierarchy to improve the ease of scanning for a faster task completion rate.
Final outcome
The final flow included SMS and email notifications to our agents.
We closed the agents’ loop by leading them back to the Carousell app again
Ultimately, our goal is for agents to recognise Carousell property for its' quality leads and invest more on the platform.
Align with the new brand
As Carousell rebranded in the same timeline, the last piece was to coordinate and implement the new design system.
Impact
Post launch, we achieved almost doubled in chats and enquiries (Refer: 2019W05). This meant an increase in probability of transaction.
1. CTA per listing saw a 47% lift from an avg. of 0.63% to 0.98%
2. Exceeded our target of 20% at 0.83% CTA per listing
Reflection
Through this project, I've gained a better understanding of a property agents' daily tasks.
The final outcome provided a funnel of high quality leads for agents to serve their clients more efficiently.
However there were still many juicy UX challenges that were out of scope.
Looking forward, these are some questions that I would like to explore;
1. How might we help agents and buyers mutually match each other?
2. How might we ensure the funnel is only high quality leads?
3. How might we transform the perception of an ineffective in-app chat?
What could be better?
1. Asking the right questions before we tracked the data
• "Did the enquire button help kickstart a chat?"
• "Did the feature encourage more conversations?"
• "Was low-intent buyers deterred from sending enquiry?"
These are some questions that I was only asking after the launch. If I had the foresight to consider these earlier, we could have obtained a more insightful comparison.
2. Conducting A/B Testing
It was an intentional decision to not conduct an A/B test for this feature as there was low risk in replacing the ‘Make Offer’ button. However, this decision meant that our team lost an opportunity to learn. Even if the A/B test is likely to validate our decision, the results of the test could potentially reveal new insights.