Context
In Singapore and Malaysia new launch property is big business.
In Singapore, the majority of the population lives in government subsidised housing. However, though only 22% of people live in private properties, those properties account for 51% of the total value of property in Singapore.
In Malaysia, the inverse is true, with most people living in private housing, over 70% of which is landed, and with a huge 72.5% ownership rate.
In both countries, despite having different real estate landscapes, property developers are in a constant race to find land, build properties people want to buy, and find the right people to sell it to. This project comes in at that last stage, connecting the seeker and the seller.
Original New Launches Page (left) and the New Launches Page after Phase 1 (right)
Brief
Property Guru is SEA’s leading property platform. The core function of the platform is to be a marketplace where agents post listings and home seekers find them. But this function mainly facilitates the secondary market, where consumers sell to consumers (via agents).
To facilitate the primary market, where developers sell to consumers, Property Guru has two main solutions:
Project Listings, which are posted by agents, and advertise a single unit.
Developer Listings, which are posted by developers, and advertise an entire development.
At the project inception, the New Launches page, which is the main gateway to all the Developer Listings, had gone 7 years without an update and was filled with under used features. Developer Listings were getting only 60 total impressions per month from the New Launches page in Singapore.
The task was to revitalise this page by getting a better understanding of how consumers find and want to find new properties. We knew our focus was to get relevant projects in front of users faster, but how, we didn’t know yet.
Collaborative notes from the Phase 1 consolidation workshop, understanding user perspectives
Activities
Phase 1 kicked off like an open book. With no existing research into this topic, I organised a series of interviews with consumers who had recently purchased new launch properties in Singapore and Malaysia. To anchor our thinking, we formulated a set of hypotheses based on internal stakeholder alignment sessions. These hypotheses were put to the test in the consumer sessions, by way of both open conversation and prototype-guided discussions.
At the completion of the sessions I hosted a consolidation workshop, which enabled the internal team to embed themselves in the findings and empathise with the users. Putting faces and quotes to the analytics the team had been pouring over for months was incredibly valuable, and allowed us to agree on a first step design change.
This first step was the ‘skateboard’, with the ultimate aim being the ‘car’, because we knew it had to be made with existing UI components for speed, to start observing real results so developer sales could ramp up.
With the first iteration live, I began Phase 2. Once again, I worked with the designers to produce more design concepts. But this time I pushed them to take the topic further. They explored designs such as map-based discovery, and questionnaire-based filtering, but didn't settle for the basics, instead 'going wild' and adding interesting and sometime silly elements to be explored.
Phase 2 used much the same research methodology as Phase 1, except it started with the now-live MVP and ended with the 'wild' concepts. The findings from Phase 2 aligned well with the project's aims, as we were able to refine our understanding of how consumer search. At the conclusion of Phase 2, combined with Phase 1, we had a wealth of qualitative data from 17 users, with insights such as:
The key dimensions of a positive search experience are: impartiality and guidance
The primary and secondary market search experience are intrinsically linked and need more cross over points
Location is the most important factor to all users, followed by price and size together. Completion timing is an important factor for some. Upon matching a project with all 3 of 4 of those requirements users will send an enquiry.
Financial incentives are expected in Malaysia but suspicious in Singapore.
Developer reputation is paramount in Malaysia but not a factor in Singapore.
Some people simply do not want to consume any media content. Those that do tend to prefer analytical pieces over purely factual or overly opinionated pieces. Expectation of video format content is increasing.
An extensive series of usability improvements on the MVP.
Collaborative notes from the Phase 2 consolidation workshop, identifying winning concepts
Outcomes
This was the stand-out project in a basket of several other simultaneous projects to improve the primary market experience on PropertyGuru. Other projects included a revamp of the Project Listing Detail Page (the page created when developers purchase a Developer Listing), the creation of Basic Info pages (which allows the platform to maintain maximum coverage of the options in the market), and a 2.0 upgrade to the enquiry experience (allowing Property Guru to more accurately track the ROI for our clients by leads generated).
As the responsible researcher in this area of the business, I worked continually to ensure each project was embodying the same principles, to enable a cohesive experience between each page and UI element.
At its launch, the New Launches page redesign alone resulted in 360% increase pageviews and 30% increased enquiry rate for the developer clients. These great improvements were achieved just by implementing the major learnings from the research. At the completion of Phase 2, the product team still had a wealth of insights to use in the development of updates and additions to the MVP, many of which are now visible on the live site (included in the live site link at the top of this page). The remaining insights related to topics such as:
Consumable content and new buyer guidance
Discovery via maps
Unit-first search experience
Developer/project following
Altogether, the process of discovering new launch properties in Singapore and Malaysia is now vastly improved, and allows this sub-section of the business to generate more income and stand together with the secondary market offerings.
Presenting MVP findings to stakeholders