Redesigning Propertypro.ng | A UX case study of the property Giant in Nigeria
Why PropertyPro?
A friend was hunting for an apartment recently, and it sure was a hassle, touring different areas with agents, getting disappointed and not getting the right choice of apartment. I saw how stressed out she was about the whole process and I decided to visit tolet.ng (now Propertypro) to search for apartments that might suit her needs. Interacting with the website, however, still felt like walking about with agents as I couldn’t grasp full details of houses or view images in good quality. Moreover, after struggles of viewing houses, I either have to call agents or connect to them via WhatsApp.
That’s why I concluded that the whole website needed an upgrade in terms of usability. I felt a property website could offer more than just listing but also provide a complete experience where an individual makes payments for an apartment without having to visit the apartment.
Overview
My goals are
- Understand the scope of the business.
- Identify usability issues through user research.
- Create and validate design solutions.
- Improve the general aesthetics of the product.
My design Process
Understanding the product
PropertyPro.ng formerly ToLet.com.ng is a world-class Nigerian property portal powered by the consolidation of Propertypro.ng and Jumia House Nigeria (formerly Lamudi) which was acquired by Propertypro.ng in October 2017. (extract from the website)
It is a Nigerian property market with over 60,000 property listings including public and private property. The listings include houses, lands, shops, office spaces, and other commercial properties. Furthermore, small and large-scale real estate companies in the country who desire to scale up the sales and rentals of their properties, partner with PropertyPro by freely listing their properties on the platform.
Competitive Analysis
I approached this project by first analyzing companies that compete in the same space with PropertyPro. I compared it with 3 different companies in Nigeria to see where Propertypro stood in relative to them. The result of the analysis is shown below.
Match between system and the real world
I conducted the heuristic evaluation (a method that identifies usability problems by judging an interface based on recognized usability principles) to identify usability problems with the UI design of the website based on the listed heuristics
- Consistency and standards
- Flexibility and efficiency of use
- Aesthetic and minimalist design
- Help and documentation
I observed from the evaluation that the website didn’t meet the best practices. it had numerous problems including clarity, usefulness, accessibility, learnability, and delights.
User Interview
I conducted 6 user interviews to gain more insights into the platform. Specifically choosing participants that were searching for an apartment in Lagos, I needed to know users’ perspective about the website.
Most of the participants claimed to have had difficulties in searching for their desired apartments and complained about too many ads popping up on the screen while using the platform.
Some set of users just went through the website, selected the apartment that suited their needs, got the agent’s contact and did the needful. A particular user was uninterested in the product due to “bad design” and doubted its legitimacy.
During the interview, I took note of common issues users stated and could deduce that the main issues were that users get desired search results since the filter options were not detailed enough. Also, the fact that they have to contact the agent via phone call to continue the process wasn’t too impressive.
“ I will rather continue collecting numbers of agents from friends than getting numbers from that site because I will trust them more”
Who did I design for?
After the basic interviews and insights, I created two different personas
- Moyosore: a developer who recently got employed to a tech company on the Island, Lagos. She is currently squatting with a colleague and needs her apartment.
- Oladeji: an estate agent who wants to list his properties on the most popular property platform in the country.
With a great understanding of who I was designing for, I created problem statements to address each persona
- Moyosore wants to search for a house based on her budgets and location.
- Moyosore would like to be given recommendations based on the agent’s history
- Moyosore would like to know more about the neighborhood of choice.
- Moyosore wants to spend less time looking for a house.
- Oladeji wants to communicate with whosoever is handling the listing on the website without having to use any third-party app.
- Oladeji wants to easily manage his listings on the app.
- Oladeji wants to have his employees assigned to the platform.
- Oladeji wants to manage inquiries on a listing from the app.
After ideating on several possible solutions, I prioritized the features according to feasibility and impact.
Solution
Ideation
After identifying problems, I sketched out potential solutions in low -fi wireframes and my main focus was the Landing Page, Search, Navigation and Messaging.
This helped me with the architecture of the website. The important menus were selected and arranged in their order of importance. The information architecture laid the foundation for the design process and eliminated uncertainty about where pieces of information will be located.
With the new features I will be adding, I was able to create a user flow for the website putting into consideration business implications.
The basic pages I focused on are the
- Landing Page
- Search Result Page
- Filter Search Page
- Map view
- Message View
- Listing detail View
- List Property Home page
Landing Page
On the Hero page, the main aim was defining the business preposition and providing the search parameters to check out what the hero message sold to the user. The current hero message didn’t really sell the full idea of the company so it was redefined and the background image was changed to a more aesthetically pleasing one.
After the Hero page, are basic filtered results for a user that didn’t use the search feature but chose to scroll down to explore the page (Exploring the website by category and by location).
Tips, defining the working of the system were presented to help a user understand the processes to get his/her desired need.
Banners that also sell the listing features for the website were made available for users who would like to start listing properties to get started.
Next is a category displaying an array of featured listings.
Search Result Page
Users are presented with the best results based on inputs from the search field on the home page. Furthermore, users have the choice to turn on maps that shows areas where listings are located based on their search and also make a quick view of any selected marker.
Filter Search Result
I designed a more robust filter which can be accessed by clicking on the ‘more filter’ button on the search panel strip just below the navigation bar. This action brings out a side panel for a user to filter more on the result using available actions like pricing, amenities e.t.c
Listing Detail View
I designed a page that showcases the full details of a selected listing. The page contains basic descriptions, amenities, price, images, and marketer/Agent details. Additionally, the page allows a user to directly enquire about the listing from the agent with the send message feature added.
SignUp
I designed the signup distinguishing a customer (Moyosore) from an Agent (Oladeji) to give a smooth onboarding to each person. Not too much difference, just a view for an agent to add some basic company details.
List A Property
Oladeji is an agent and will like to list his properties on the website. He finds the ‘List your Property’ menu on the navbar or was probably directed to the website form any page advertising to him to list his properties. I designed a page to onboard a user on what it takes to list a property and the benefits of listing on PropertyPro. I also shared some testimonials and FAQs to help the user understand the platform better.
Message View
I added to a message view to the website to allow for easy communication between Moyosore and Oladeji. This message view is equipped with a bot that tells an agent the particular property a message is sent for.
Adding a property
The ‘adding a property feature’ has been made seamless. Users that registered to use the service to ‘list your apartment’ when registering to the platform are provided with a company profile view where it is easy to manage their details, see listings and the reviews they have on the platform already. I designed the ‘adding property; in a Wizard format to reduce information at once as seen below.
Final Interactive Prototype
Using Adobe XD, it was easy for me to prototype the design. I prototyped all the major pages, basic interactions, and micro-interactions to give users the feel of a live app. Below is an interactive xd Prototype for you to try out the solution created for the PropertyPro website.
Usability testing
I needed to know how much my design as helped to solve the issues as highlighted earlier, so I invited users to test the prototype against the PropertyPro website, giving specific tasks while taking note of time used to complete each task and the problems encountered(if any). The result was welcoming as positive feedbacks were received from every user and the time taken to do specific task reduced.
Conclusion
This has been a challenging and rewarding journey as I learned a lot working on this project. I hope PropertyPro and all its Nigerian competitors get to see this, rethink their current website and push the business forward by opening doors to great features to benefit the users. Design and innovation as we know, are major factors in a successful business.
Thanks for taking the time to read my work. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, Behance, Twitter and you can check out my portfolio.
