Context

Avito is the lead digital marketplace in Morocco across verticals and categories. Given the actual circumstances of COVID-19, vacation rental raises itself to be a significant growth opportunity in the real estate field locally.

In fact, regulations have been put globally to prevent traveling for unnecessary purposes. COVID-19 Data Center, a free resource and combines industry-leading on short-term rentals, you will see here that Airbnb lost more than 80% of their business in Morocco and more than 90% in other European countries.

All in all, the vacation rental market is growing +5% CAGR with online segment gaining share YoY (where CAGR is the Compound annual growth rate).

Problem Statement

In addition to what is mentioned above, our platform is not verticalized enough to allow vacation rental users a fluid experience based on their needs.

Responsibilities

I introduced the Lean UX framework to the cross functional team, and relied on it on the discovery phase. I also ran usability tests, analyzed their insights and designed the UI solutions.

The Process

The process followed when solving this problem consisted of 3 phases, below is an overview of the latter:

Discovery

Relying on the Lean UX approach, we executed the discovery of this topic alongside the stakeholders.

We set a weekly meeting and collaborated using Miro given the situation of quarantine. This allowed us to have inputs from different perspectives, e.g, sales, marketing, client service...

Based on the previous inputs, we stated the hypotheses that we will evaluate in the research phase.

I built prototypes for each user type, Host and Guest on different devices in order to test the usability of this feature.

Research

Usability testing

I used Google Sheet to document the tasks to be executed by the participants, their evaluations and notes. I used Invision as well in order to share the interactive prototype.

Learnings

Going through the recordings and extracting the notes yielded so many insights and information. Below are the most critical & important ones.

Guest

• Users want to have all relevant filters visible at first.

• One user had difficulty understanding the calendar interactions.

• Users need to know the total nights of the stay.

• Most users found the modal component very user friendly and has a short learning curve.

• The selection review items proves to be relevant. 

Host

• The term “Availability” is misleading in this context, since the user is required to select the "unavailable dates.

• After all, the calendar has a short learning curve interaction-wise.

• Users could block months easily and found it useful.

• Users need an onboarding for this new feature across touch points.

Design

At this point, we have a narrowed down vision of the issues to be tackled.

I altered the designs based on the previous feedbacks. Then created a detailed flow of the interactions of the components, in order to make sure every case is handled properly, and so that the developers have all the specifications they need to start the architecture.

Screens

The final steps of the design phase include providing the user flow in term of responsive design UI for the stakeholders.

I created the screens and reviewed them with the UX team. Then, I shared them with the product manager for textual content and specifications.

Onboarding

The first step the host user encounters when inserting in this category, in order to introduce this new feature, and highlight its benefits to the user.

Availability

This is the step where the host can define the availability of his property.

V0

V1

In this version, the calendar container is accompanied with an instructions’ section, since users had difficulties understanding the interactions. This was also tested in a non formal usability test, and proved helpful.

Search

As a guest user— interested in renting a property for a couple of days, I need to set my determined period of time to avoid any back and forth experience where I have to call to the host to ask if the property is available or not.

💡 Tip

Instead of pushing users or forcing them to use the calendar component, only nudging them has led to remarkable increase in its conversion rate. And that is by automatically prompting the calendar once the user selects the vacation rental category.

Ad view

The property presentation with the new availability parameter.

Components

After confirming the usability of the new components, the next step was to include them in our design system (Mosaic).

Impact

The reason why I chose the lean ux strategy is because it is highly beneficial in understanding the problem on different levels. And also, to reach that alignment with stakeholders in terms of business and high level vision.

This approach has led this problem solving to yield positive impact and honorary impressions.

KPIs

The direct impact was on the NAAs (New Approved Ads) which grew by 29% on the web platforms (Mobile and Desktop). The calendar lead CTA generated an extra average of 90 leads per day.

Impressions

Given the circumstances of COVID-19, the media has praised our efforts’ direction that are aligned with the economical solutions to support the tourism sector. And that is by encouraging the local tourism.