Agent Paid Premium Package (Turbo Listing)
PropertyGuru is Asia’s leading property technology company, an online property search platform for people who are looking for their dream home. Also, a marketplace for property agents and property developers to advertise their properties to customers. PropertyGuru is now running the business in 5 different countries, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam. Property seekers can access PropertyGuru via website or app.
PropertyGuru company website:
https://www.propertygurugroup.com/our-company/
PropertyGuru website based on market:
Singapore: propertyguru.com.sg
Malaysia: propertyguru.com.my
Indonesia: rumah.com
Thailand: ddproperty.com
Vietnam: batdongsan.com.vn
ABOUT PROPERTYGURU
PROJECT BACKGROUND
In PropertyGuru, in order to market the properties ads, Property Agents need to purchase a listing package. Before we released the Turbo listing package, PropertyGuru had 4 different types of paid premium listings (Regular, Boost, Spotlight, Feature Agent). In this project, PropertyGuru wants to add and offer a new latest package called Turbo.
The business goal is to achieve our monetization target in 2021. From the product perspective, we want to provide a new listing card design that can increase the number of leads (number of buyers who contact the agent), in order to achieve business metrics.
The challenge with this project is not only to provide values that serve what property agents need, but we also need to consider the benefit or values that our consumers can get from Turbo listing.
WHAT I LEARNED
If you have ever read a predictably irrational book, you might find a theory of the decoy effect. Well, basically we introduce a new item as a decoy of the existing product but with better and higher value compared to existing items.
For example:
Item A: Boost
Item B: Regular
New Item called Item C: Turbo is the new Boost but we offer plus service with the price offer that is not too far from the Boost package.
Because of this phenomenon, agents will be comparing the values of each package and listing card design and simultaneously making irrational decisions. And as the result we expected, the majority of agents chose to purchase Turbo rather than Boost. This action is influenced by human nature, which likes comparing things when it comes to purchases. And there is a mindset that every time they compare items, they want to get the best one but still affordable. That’s why many agents choose Turbo because the design of the card is bigger and it means that they can get a bigger impression from the user who sees the listing card in search results. Also, the position of Turbo listing in rank is leading them to make them more irrational.
01 Empathize
At this stage, I took a step back and thought of these couple of questions before jumping to a solution.
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What is valuable information the user actually needs in searching for a property?
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What are the value-added features that PropertyGuru can offer to Property Agents in Turbo listing package?
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How does listing design play a part in Turbo's value offering?
To answer those, I took a chance to review and collected past research studies about the existing listing package (Regular, Boost, Spotlight, Feature Agent). The goal is to understand the values we offer in each listing package. Other than that, I tried to figure out what kind of benefits consumers can get from Turbo. Also, I did a competitor benchmark to collect insights from our competitors.
MY ROLE
I was working as a Product Designer who has responsibility to
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Define Turbo listing card design for Property Agents and Consumers.
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Design the solution concept & experience into a wireframe, high fidelity, & prototype.
In this project, I was working with 2 different squads, Consumer Conversion Squad and Agent Monetization Squad to formulate the Turbo product and deliver the design to display on PropertyGuru website and PropertyGuru App in all markets (Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, & Thailand).
DESIGN PROCESS
02 Define
After collecting enough insights, My manager and I tried to formulate all the benefits and possibilities we can propose in Turbo. And then, we discussed with other stakeholders (Agent Product Team, Consumer Product Team, and UI designers) to collect feedback and concerns about whether all the benefits and values are feasible to build and valuable to agent and consumer.
The new benefits and values for Turbo should answer these HMW statements:
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How might we provide valuable information to consumers with Turbo listing card design
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How might we help agents display better property listings and increase the listing impression
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How might we increase the number of leads (conversion rate) with Turbo listing offer
Here was the initial proposal of benefits and values we had:
03 Ideate
When it comes to ideation, I usually create some design variants. The design didn’t come out in 1 design iteration but after 3 times design iterations, I managed to produce 3 variants after discussing with stakeholders (product managers for agent product and for consumer product, engineers, and other consumer designers in design critique. In this step, my team also validates the Turbo listing card design with the property agent (this activity was done by the Agent Product Team).
In the design, we need to cover not only information value, but we put the position in the second rank in the search results for Tubo Listing above Boost and Regular listing card. We could say that Turbo listing provides similar information as Boost listing but it has one factor that makes it look like a better choice, it is higher ranked and bigger card design on desktop view. And we decided to go with variant 1. So, the agent who bought this package can get the maximum impression for their listing view.
04 Prototype
In this exercise, there is no prototyping activity, because the final output is a new listing card design for Turbo. (You might refer to the final look at the ideate stage).
05 Test
My team decided to test this new package in Singapore market first (web and app) and collected the sample size from a few districts in Singapore to see the traction and impression from PropertyGuru consumers and property agents. The result was successful, we exceeded the monetization target. Because it’s confidential, I can’t mention the exact number here. In the latest update from this project, we now release this Turbo listing card in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand.