How we renovated our homepage from the ground up
The opportunity
At Opendoor, we’re making the experience of buying, selling, or trading in a home simple and stress-free. Over the past 2 years, business has exploded. We doubled the number of cities we serve, brought on hundreds of new team members across the country, and most importantly, we helped tens of thousands of people start a new chapter in their lives.
Our homepage is a critical touchpoint for potential customers. Each month, more than half a million people find their way to the page to get more information about Opendoor. Whether they clicked on an ad or heard about us through a friend, they’re curious, and often they’re wondering whether this Opendoor thing sounds a little too good to be true.
Earlier this year, we set out to create a page that gave these visitors the information they were looking for. As we grew, our our homepage didn’t keep pace with the changes in our business, and we believed it wasn’t the best reflection of what we offer.
We’d made small optimizations over the years, but the last comprehensive redesign of the page came at a time when we had around a third of the traffic we have now. We were longing to take a step back and create a homepage that was more aligned with the needs of our customers. It was time for a renovation.
The groundwork
Like any good renovation, we knew we had to start by laying the groundwork. We pored over previous homepage experiments and audited our existing page. That led us to a few key findings:
- Showing social proof (ratings, press articles, stats) encouraged people to request an offer
- The page could be better optimized for mobile, especially given that nearly 70% of our traffic was now coming from mobile devices
- Certain pieces of content drove much higher engagement than others (notably, a table that compared Opendoor to the traditional process of selling a home. It was one heckuva table.)
We worked with our Research team to determine what questions visitors want answered when they visit opendoor.com. We came up with 12 possible questions, based on previous research. Here are a few examples, in no particular order:
- What cities is Opendoor available in?
- What are the steps to sell my home to Opendoor?
- Why should I use Opendoor?
- How much does selling to Opendoor cost?
Rather than asking survey respondents to rank these 12 different items, we conducted what’s called a MaxDiff analysis. Put simply, the MaxDiff is a type of survey used to determine people’s preferences, especially when you’re dealing with a large list of items. We’ll do a separate post on why we love the MaxDiff soon! (It’s more exciting than it sounds, I promise.)
From the analysis, we discovered that our customers wanted to know three things, above all else:
- How much does selling to Opendoor cost?
- How does Opendoor calculate my offer price?
- What are the steps to sell my home to Opendoor?
Armed with these insights, we gathered a team that included product design, brand design, content strategy, product marketing, engineering, and research. It was time to decide what we were going to build.
The blueprint
We arranged an off-site sprint, where the goal was to emerge with three different homepage concept sketches. Much like a blueprint, these sketches would give us a clear picture of what we were going to build. The process would also allow us to explore a range of solutions without spending valuable time fussing over the details.
The process
- First, we reviewed the consolidated findings from the research, so we were working from the same information.
- Next, using our customers’ top questions as our guide, we white-boarded several different content outlines, debating what content to include and what sequencing made the most sense.
- Finally, we split off into smaller groups, each tasked with sketching a version of the homepage.
As each group presented their homepage sketch, we found that some elements overlapped, and we began to bucket them as quick wins that we should implement regardless of the direction we chose.
Other elements (like the treatment of the hero, and how much detail to provide in our “How it works” section) were hotly debated. At the end of the day, we came up with three distinct sketches for our new homepage. It was time for stress testing. (Actually it was time for a celebratory happy hour, but I assure you, the stress test came the next day.)
To test our designs, we turned the three sketches into prototypes and ran them through usertesting.com. We ultimately found that specific parts of each prototype resonated; this was a key step developing our final design.
The finishes
For the next week or so, we finalized the page, ensuring that there wasn’t a comma or a pixel that felt out of place. Here are a few examples of the improvements we made:
Overall improvements
- We made social proof like our reviews, our press logos and quote, and key stats much more prominent
- We updated our hero image to reinforce our trusty blue yard sign
- We created a more scalable way to display our active markets in the footer of the page
Content strategy improvements
- Remember those three questions our customers asked? Those became the outline of our page, and we answered each of them directly.
- We explained how selling to Opendoor works in easy digestible steps that also describe the benefits.
- We included reassuring microcopy to our address entry field on mobile.
- We reduced the amount of content overall, making sure that people knew where to focus.
Mobile improvements
- We converted the nav to a sidebar, ensuring each page was easy to access
- We created a sticky address entry field, so that users wouldn’t have to scroll all the way back up the page to request their offer
The results
Compared to the control, the new page drove a 7% increase in the number of people who requested their Opendoor offer. We believe this is because the new page is more effective at explaining the value of Opendoor and building credibility with our audience.
We also found that visitors were scrolling further down the page, and entering their address faster than ever before. To us, this implies that people are engaged with the new content and getting the information they need to request an offer.
And that’s it. Thanks for reading. We’re proud of the results of the new page, but more importantly, we’re excited that it will help thousands of people get to their next chapter in life, stress-free.
Psst! Interested in creating a dramatically simplified way to buy or sell a home? Check out our careers page or message me directly.
