Exploration of online booking planner
Problem to solve
Currently, both the consumer and the real estate agencies experience a pain when planning and processing house viewings. In addition, funda has no insight into the data to track success when consumers contact a real estate agency when they are interested in a house that is for sale. After ideation, we came up with the idea of an online planner to schedule house viewings and take away the pain from all 3 parties involved (consumer, real estate agency and funda). A planner is a much-seen functionality these days that we can piggyback on. Consumers are used to making reservations online. Think of restaurants, hairdressers, etc. We wanted to test this assumption before we started developing it. The question we asked ourselves: How much appetite do brokers and consumers have for scheduling house viewings online?
What I did
We made use of a research pilot to answer our research question(s). The reason we decided on a pilot was that this project was a research owned initiative and we did not have design and development capacity to help us set up a prototype to validate. To get the product teams on board we had to do a quick validation method to collect insights. The pilot would run for 2 months. Our target (metric) was to recruit N=5 real estate offices and run 100 objects via the pilot. We aimed for a positive satisfaction response from consumers and realtors of a 7.5 out of 10.
Kick-off
For starting this research owned initiative we did pre-research and a kick-off with the research team to discuss the knowns and unknowns. Noted down our critical assumptions and the risks when a hypothesis was true or not. Based on this information we defined our method (pilot with interviews, surveys and data analysis) and created a research plan.
This plan with our idea was presented during one of the bi-weekly validation sessions with our complete product organization. Even though we couldn’t make use of design and development capacity, we got agreement from all 15 team members to do a quick validation.
Research pilot
For the pilot we made use of our existing website, in specific our object pages, in combination with the tool Optimizely and GetFeedback. As we decided on a quick validation, we choose to recruit realtors to participate that were already using an online planner to schedule house viewings via their own website, so we could piggy bag on them. I recruited N=6 real estate agents to join. It was a win-win. For real estate offices it was a nice way of promotion and it helped them with planning house viewings. For us it was a nice way to gather insights from both the participating real estate offices, but also from consumers who made use of the pilot.
Working of the pilot
We worked closely together via a Google sheet where each participating realtor can note down their upcoming objects that go live anytime soon. Behind the scenes, I created via the tool Optimizely a new variant for one of the contact buttons with a 100% targeting so all users who were visiting that specific object page would see the new contact button which would link the customer directly to the planner portal of the participating realtor to schedule the house viewing. Next to this ‘new’ variant of one of the contact buttons, I created a pop-up for that specific object page which explained the consumer that it is possible for this specific object to schedule a house viewing online via the scheduling portal of the realtor.
Interviews
Before the pilot I did a 0-measurement with the participating realtors to gather insights in their current way of working, including the use of their own planner tool. Why and how they use it, what it does for them. The pains and gains of the tool etc. I gathered this information via remote Teams interviews.
During the pilot we had bi-weekly check-ins with the participating real estate offices to check the results of the pilot. How many house viewings were scheduled, compared to before the pilot, the number of no-shows etc.
After the pilot we did another measurement with the participating real estate offices to determine the result.
Data analysis
Next to the qualitative information, I also dove into the analytics. Via Optimizely and GetFeedback I could track the conversion ratio. I also compared the number of scheduled viewings of the participated realtors with realtors that didn’t participate and did a comparison of the number from the participating realtors during and before the pilot. The interesting finding here was that the number of scheduled viewings went up in total, which was our dreamed scenario. The no-show rate stayed the same.
Questionnaire
Next to the realtor interviews, we ran a consumer poll on our search result list where we asked our consumers what contact option they would prefer for scheduling house viewings and asked them how they make reservations at a restaurant to focus on actual behaviour instead of only hypothetical answering. The outcome was that 80% of our searches preferred online scheduling over calling or emailing.
Market research
Next to the customer research, a market research was done to gather insights into what our peers were doing in this field of online scheduling. The output of the scan is used to create possible models that funda could adopt.
Result
The outcome of customer and market research was a set of learnings and insights on our research question(s). Based on these findings we we ideated and created several concepts in different gradations (from skateboard, to kick-roller, to bicycle, to motorbike, to speedcar) to have options to choose.
I presented this outcome to the entire product organisation. We discovered that there was enough appetite from both consumers and real estate offices to make use of an online planner to schedule house viewings.
Impact & Learnings
The pilot was a success. Instead of N=5, we recruited N=6 realtor offices, and we got more requests during the pilot. Instead of the 100 objects that we wanted to run the pilot on, we had 150 objects. This was quite some work to handle on the back, but it was worth it. The outcome whether there is appetite form both parties is a definitive yes. 80% of our funda searchers said that they prefer online scheduling over calling/emailing. The participating realtors were already in favor as they were already using an online scheduling tool. However, during the pilot we also got many requests of other offices that want to join the pilot, which was a very positive signal. Still, the use of a planner is market dependent. In a sellers market it would be a delighter. In a buyers market it was not an unanimous yes. After presenting the outcome to our stakeholders and the Executive Team (ET). We got everyone on board to see the potential, which was a gain. Unfortunately, the ET is decided to put the initiative on-hold for now, as the market is changing and that funda is facing a lack of development capacity.
