Validation of multi-tenant and flex concept
Problem to solve
For commercial real estate it often happens that a building has multiple offices (units) underneath. These are called multi-tenant or flex offices. We got complains from commercial realtors as from business users that it is hard to present and search for these units on funda in business. With all the information gathered we decided on a better positioning of these multi-tenant and flex offices. As we wanted to test it fast and low key, without making too many costs, we decided on a pilot with a small set of participating commercial real estate offices (N=12). Instead of making changes to funda desk (our CMS realtors work with), we created an easy portal to upload the building and units. This was called the flex UI. For these uploaded building and units via the flex UI a ‘new’ type of building and unit page was created. On the funda in business two different versions were visible at that time. This was also functionating as sort of an A/B test.
What I did
Kick-off
Kick-off with PO, product marketeer and designer to discuss knowns/unknowns, most critical assumptions, and questions.
Research
Based on this input I set up a research plan with research goal, questions, approach, scope, timelines and discuss this with the stakeholders to agree on the plan.
We decided for two separate researches:
- one research with commercial real estate offices to gain insight into the use and satisfaction of the flex UI and the satisfaction and added value of the new multi-tenant and flex pages to estimate the potential of the new multi-tenant and flex pages.
- one research with funda in business users looking for multi-tenant and flex offices is evaluating the usability of fundainbusiness.nl when it includes multitenant units and flex objects among regular listings, including emphasis on understanding and navigation.
Recruitment
The recruitment was done by me. The commercial real estate offices were recruited via called calling. For this group I sorted out the larger offices doing a lot in multi-tenant and flex offices. We recruited N=12 offices in total. For the funda in business users I made use of a pop-up recruiter (GetFeedback) on the search result list of funda in business. Also making use of a recruitment script to select participants that are valuable and representative. We recruited N=6 participants in total. After selection, the participant were emailed with the invitation an with a statement of consent for recording the meeting.
Interviews, surveys & usability test
The interviews and usability test were led by me. I invited all stakeholders (PO, Designer, Product Marketeer and Business Developer) to observe the research via a live stream. This helps in better understanding the pains and gains, but also in committing to act on the results. One of the stakeholders was making notes when I was asking the questions.
The material we used during the interview was the live website and a Marvel prototype with some new ideas we had that we wanted to discuss.
For the usability test in specific I gave the participants short tasks to perform on our live website and app, so we could observe their approach and understand their reasoning of their behaviour.
Analysis
The day after the interview days a short analysis session was planned with the main stakeholders to run over the highlights of the sessions. This gives a first grasp of insights. The actual analysis was done by me. For this all input is collected on one board, together with the research goal and questions. After reading everything, all the data is grouped and bundled into insights.
Debrief
All the insights and recommendations were bundled into a report and presented during a debrief to the complete product and marketing organisation.
Next steps and ideation
After the debrief a next step session was facilitated to collaboratively discuss the next steps.
Impact & Learnings
Based on my insights the necessary changes were made to the product, who are running live. Some examples of changes we made: the hierarchy of the building and unit pages was improved, the copy was improved, prices and sizes of units were better presented, the availability of units is moved to the top of the page. During the pilot we got a lot of new requests of offices that wanted to join the pilot. Instead of the original 12, we now have 50 offices using the pilot setup to create their multi-tenant and flex pages. For these offices the half year satisfaction score rose from 6.1 to a 7.5 (out of 10) after implementing the features.
