UXUI Design Lead — UX Research, Interaction Design, Visual Design, User Flows, Rapid Prototyping
3 Weeks – This project is conceptual and has not been officially launched
Loopnubo was a service based business providing photography and videography solutions to real estate agents and brokers, that I launched as a personal project in 2020 with a straightforward Squarespace website.
For this project I looked back 3 years to spearhead a complete web experience redesign, informed by insights gather by interviewing ten NYC-based real estate agents.
The redesign's cornerstone is a user-friendly MVP task flow that enables agents to seamlessly schedule and purchase multiple services for different properties in one go, eliminating the hassles of endless email chains and phone calls.
Projected impacts include enhanced customer satisfaction, increased repeat business, and a distinct competitive edge for Loopnubo in the crowded NYC real estate market.
When I started Loopnubo, my main avenues for acquiring new customers were cold calling and networking events and transactions were pretty much all handled through email conversations and QuickBooks.
This led to a challenge for our business, as we were frequently asked by prospective clients, agents, brokers, and home sellers about our website and work.
I realized that having a website could not only streamline the booking process but also lend credibility to my business as a trustworthy company.
So, I turned to Squarespace to put together a simple landing page.
Although Squarespace made it easy to get started, every time I looked back, I saw huge potential for improvement.
I conducted a UX audit and found that a lot could be improved—from information architecture and copy tonality to imagery and web accessibility (WCAG).
However, while I knew these areas needed to be addressed, I also knew there was more that I could do. How could I transform this web experience from a mere landing page into the best possible customer experience for agents and brokers in need of Loopnubo's services?
Well, why not talk to a few of them and find out?
I reached out to a few real estate agents that I had worked with in the past to see if they would be willing to have a quick conversation about their experience working with videographers and photographers.
I quickly started learning that the biggest pain point, excluding pricing, was the booking process.
For the most part, agents either directly called or emailed the service provider they worked with, which often led to hard-to-manage onboarding processes.
Some service providers did have online forms that agents could fill out, but these forms were often lengthy and required agents to submit multiple listings individually if they had more than one listing.
I saw this as a problem worth pursuing. However, before diving directly into it, I wanted to take a look at what some of the best-known photographers and videographers were actually doing to solve this issue on their websites.
I took to Google to search for the most well-known photography and videography services working in New York City.
The goal was to take notes on their content positioning and calls to action, as well as possible features that made them stand out from their competitors, including pricing.
But most importantly, I looked at their online booking forms. I quickly realized that our user interview participants had a very real pain point. I either encountered a simple contact form that led to email exchanges or long-winded forms that users could fill out.
Through the process, I looked closely at the few websites that did have scheduling flows and took note of the questions and workflows to determine what would make the most sense for Loopnubo.
There were many different approaches to this problem that I could take; my ideation spanned from thinking about integrating a chatbot into the landing page to step-by-step funnels users could follow.
Ultimately, I decided that from a feasibility perspective, introducing a task flow that users could access from the homepage was probably the best approach. However, the introduction of the task flow created its own set of questions, here are just a few that I worked through:
My goal was to test the work-in-progress task flow early to ensure that the direction I was taking made sense to potential users.
To maintain objectivity, I refrained from leading the participants toward specific actions or choices, however did define the objective as follows: "Imagine you've just had a conversation with a landlord or homeowner who wants to list two units." I provided the locations and the services required per unit, and allowed participants to navigate their way to the 'Confirm and Pay' screen on their own.
Along the way, I asked users to vocalize their thoughts and actions, taking special interest in questions such as: Did the content make sense? Was there anything they didn't understand? Did they have any questions about the flow? Was there anything they expected to see?
The results of our testing were excellent; overall, participants thought that the idea for a task flow like this was great and found it easy to use. One participant even noted, "I wish my brokerage offered something like this."
However, I did notice some confusion when users arrived at the review steps. I observed that this was primarily caused by repetitive content. Upon reviewing the flow, I realized that this was likely an area where I could consolidate actions.
Users appreciated the service picker and the scheduling system, but found the 'Review, Create Account, Pay' step to be somewhat lengthy. This was something I definitely wanted to address in my revisions.
Lastly, when I tested this task flow, I hadn't fully conceptualized what the confirmation page would look like. So, I asked participants what they expected to see. One insight that surprised me was the desire for individual expense reports for each listing. This was important to participants because, depending on their situation, they could receive reimbursements, which would require them to provide individual invoices.
Now the question is, how do I incorporate these insights into the task flow experience?
Incorporated improvements to the task flow based on the feedback from my usability testing & create a high fidelity prototype.
It has been rewarding to see how my problem-solving skills, design approach, and overall workflow have improved over the years.
As I neared the completion of the project, I began to think about how the workflow I had built could be adapted for different settings. In addition to real estate photography services and brokerages with in-house teams, a few other industries came to mind:
They could use a workflow like this to schedule various services for their multiple units.
Companies in this sector could benefit from a simplified, one-stop scheduling system for coordinating deliveries or pick-ups across multiple locations.
Such a workflow could be helpful for scheduling multiple appointments, tests, or procedures for a single patient or multiple family members.
Given the tight timeline of just three weeks, there were natural limits to what could be accomplished. However, if this were a real-world product, there are numerous areas I'd like to dive deeper into:
The primary deliverable for this project was the main task flow. With more time, I'd refine the account creation and payment sections based on additional user feedback.
I'd aim to gather more insights from users to ideate and iterate on ways to improve the overall experience.
Introducing a survey to collect Customer Effort Score (CES) and Net Promoter Score (NPS) is on the wish list. The challenge would be to position these effectively within the user journey.
I would also like to delve into the dashboard that I mocked up, particularly focusing on the experience for returning users who already have an account.
All in all, the possibilities for enhancement and fine-tuning are endless, offering an exciting path forward for future development.
