Increasing adoption of Hide and Report Listings by 400%
PropertyGuru, 2023
Web Desktop, Web Mobile, App
My Role
Senior Product Designer
Key Activities
User Research
Visual Design
Test and Validation
Prototyping
Overview
As part of Trust Marketplace initiative, our main goal is to improve trust and transparency in our platform.
On PropertyGuru, reporting and hiding listing functions exist in both Singapore and Malaysia markets. That helps users to hide listings that they don't want to see on their search result as well as report them (for several reasons).
Both functions give the product signals that are indicative of listing and agent quality and so actions can be taken. However, when hiding a listing, consumers are not obliged to inform a reason. Such behaviour is not possible when reporting a listing.
The problem
Signal is quite small in Singapore, insignificant in Malaysia
In Singapore, less than 0.2% of active listings get reported.
For hide listing, on the contrary, more or less 20% of active listings get hidden at least once. It contributes to approximately 50% of monthly listing impressions and views. However, only 5% of those come with a reason.
Good portion of active listings were getting hidden but a few hide actions stated the reason especially on search result page.
01
How aware are consumers on both functionalities?
02
50% of the times consumers don't complete report submission. Why?
Current screens for Hide & Report on Desktop
🧠 More cognitive load: In both cases, reasons are grouped in such way that it might be difficult for consumers to figure out which reason to select.
🤹 Hide & Report are very similar functions that are currently separate. They could benefit from alignment to obtain combined signal.
Obtaining combined signals
In the current experience, we get similar signals from Report & Hide Listings. However, the list of reasons are not synchronised. That means, some are only collected in one but not the other.
“Others” represent a significant number of reasons on both Report & Hide Listings. How can we better structure such signal?
We realised that the reasons from report could be also be used for hiding. That said, most are related to either agent or listing quality. However, we would still need to streamline in such manner that would give us more detailed signal.
We started by restructuring the reasons
Based on our learning and the current structure, we decided reorganise the way reasons are surfaced. That would and give us more detailed signal as well as direct consumers better.
It was important to differentiate issues that were related directly to agents and listings. If none of these reasons matched consumer's pain-point, they would still be able to write more details and that option would fall under “Other” reasons.
Tackling discoverability on search result page
From research interviews, we found out that consumers weren't actually clear what the button was meant for and therefore would ignore it.
Popover displayed on Search Result Page
Increasing adoption surfacing more reasons on listing hidden card
On search result page, when a consumer hides a specific listing, the same is replaced by a “Listing Hidden Card" — we made the card more useful and meaningful.
When we were first iterating, we realised that we were missed the main goal which was to make it more contextual and surface more reasons.
Consumers should be be able to easily hide a listing when searching for properties. We wanted to keep the same simplicity and behaviour but surfacing more information that would guide them better.
🕹️ Consumers still have the control to undo the action when hiding, if they clicked by accident for instance.
🛟 Helping consumers to easily select a reason that are purely related to hide a listing from a search point of view. Reasons that likely related to reporting a listing were placed under “More Reasons” which is more contextual.
Reducing friction in a more comprehensive and direct flow for consumers
Based the new architecture, users are now able to select specific reasons on a bottom sheet with just one tap/click — same experience on both mobile and desktop.
Combining reasons when hiding a listing
On a listing detail page, consumer are also able to hide and report a listing. It's arguably a more intrusive experience compared to search page. Instead of displaying a “Listing Hidden Card”, consumers are prompted to select a reason even though it's an optional step — listing will be hidden before any confirmation.
The new experience
Gives more context to consumers when selecting a reason as well as reduces cognitive load.
Streamlines the information which gives more clarity and therefore enables us to take action.
More friendly and less disrupt mobile experience.
Results
01
In the first month after the release (September 2023) there was an increase of 69.2% of Reported Listings with identified reasons. 69.3% increase on the following month.
02
On the same month, Hidden Listings with identified reasons that are related to listing quality increased by 400%. On the following month, increased by 79%.
Currently, signals have been helping us to better understand consumers’ behaviour and pain points in the Marketplace. That gives us more clarity when tackling issues and prioritising .
That will continue giving us more clarity to plan the next steps and when tackling specific issues, especially regarding trust and transparency.
