At Appear Here, I’ve delivered a chat based booking system as a new way of renting retail space. This was a major change to how our business operated internally as well as how we priced landlord products.
It had an immediate increase in booking margins by 5% and it made our business scalable long-term while also improving the users experience.
Role
One of two designers responsible for research, design and delivery of the final
Appear Here is the leading marketplace to rent short-term retail space – it’s basically the Airbnb for retail.
Previously, a brand who wanted to book a space would have to rely on a person from our team - a ‘concierge’ - to help facilitate any communication with the landlord. The product itself did not allow direct communication between the two parties.
This was creating several issues
1. It wasn't scalable as a business at the speed we were growing. We had to continue hiring more and more concierges to handle the most basic tasks rather than leveraging them for the experts they are.
2. Brands and landlords complained about the uncessary back and forth.
3. Time spent on scheduling viewings was frustrating for everyone.
My role
I was involved in the full spectrum of the project from the problem definition stage all the way to shipping incremental versions and testing them with our users.
I’ve worked in parallel with another product designer and collaborated closely with 2 product managers.
The solution
We’ve introduced a chat 💬 that connects landlords and brands where they can trigger different actions to self-serve their needs. But this of course had many considerations to be taken into account that had to be carefully analysed, the key ones being: - Will both parties exchange numbers and book outside the platform? - Will most landlords be willing to even use messages? - How can we incentivise them to respond on time? - How do we communicate how the booking process works? – How do we ship before the opening of shops post-lockdown? A lot of testing and prototyping went into this project with the collaboration of most departments in the company and our trusted key testers 🤝
We also took this opportunity to conduct research 🔬 and analyse the different pain points our users faced while booking. Since we were changing the end-to-end flow, we wanted to create the best experience possible within our technical constraints.
Bottom line, we built a self-serve platform that allowed a booking to happen without the need of a concierge, plus a new revenue stream in case the landlord would like us to handle communications for them.
Key takeaways
Reduction of time spent on viewing stage. It’s now easy for users to agree on times directly ⏳
Improved NPS score overall. Happy users 😊
5% increase in booking margins 🙌
New revenue stream proven to be successful. Landlords that don’t want to bother messaging pay us a premium to manage it for them.
This product is currently live. To check it out, you’ll need to signup and enquire about a space to get a message chat with a landlord. Check it live
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