Increasing listing inventory on VTS Marketplace
Context
~2 years ago, VTS launched a office space listing site for tenant representatives to search for spaces for their tenants, referred to as “VTS Marketplace".
The problem
Low inventory on VTS Marketplace. Our customers, landlord brokers, were not consistently listing their spaces, which resulted in low inventory on our Marketplace. To attract more tenant representatives to use our Marketplace over other competitors, we needed to increase inventory.
My role
I was responsible for the design of the listing management features on our core product: listings table, listing creation, listing editing, and listing lifecycle ( taking listings off-market + re-listing them).
Tools + Skills
User Research
Journey mapping
UX Design
Visual Design
Figma
Team
Role
Research, UX, and Visual Design
Duration
Ongoing project
Listing creation workflow
This workflow diagram illustrates all of the steps involved in creating a listing for both the customer and VTS support team. After launching our MVP, we updated and improved upon multiple stages of the process.
User Research + Insights
My PM and I interviewed landlord brokers and internal customer support team members to understand the barriers to listing on VTS Marketplace. We then took these findings and used them to improve our listing management features.
The existing features our product offered didn’t allow for users to seamlessly manage their full portfolios in one place.
1
Broker teams find the process of getting a listing to market and subsequently editing/managing their content to be cumbersome. They felt a lack of control over the process and relied heavily on our support team.
2
Broker teams use notes + annotations on their leasing reports to communicate important details such as creating a strategy around how many listings to publicly show at once, or renovating a space before listing it.
3
Opportunity areas
Restructure the listing management features in our platform, to allow for users to manage their full portfolios in one place.
Add in relevant content + features to the listings table to guide broker teams in making their listing marketing decisions.
Make the listing management features self-serve and more efficient to give our users more control over the process.
1. Listing request
The problem
Brokers expressed frustrations with how cumbersome the MVP version of our listing creation process was.
The competition
Our main competitor, Costar, has a white glove service where brokers can email very basic details + photos, and the rest is taken care of by their team.
Our market differentiator
The downside to Costar’s process is that listings have minimal information, and tenant representatives have to call to get more details + media.
VTS Marketplace listings are more comprehensive and media heavy. However, capturing all of this information resulted in a lengthy listing creation process.
Listing request updates
// Added side + sub navigation - more organisation + clarity on the contents of the form.
// With anchor links, users now have more control to select parts of the form they want to fill out.
Listing content re-shoot process
Our existing features did not allow for users to preview the photos + videos that were shot for their listings, in-app. I created this workflow diagram to demonstrate the existing solutions we had in place, which were both problematic.
2. Preview draft content
// Existing option 1: Photos are uploaded to a live listing. Customers can reach out to the VTS support team to remove/edit photos.
// Existing option 2: Listing is taken off Marketplace and put in “Needs review” status, where customers can preview + publish the photos, or reach out to VTS support team to remove/edit photos.
Old form
Current version of the media section on the edit listing form only displays existing photos that have already been uploaded to the listing.
Updated form
In our updated designs, we organised the photos section into 2 categories: public and hidden photos. This allowed users to preview the new video shoot content, and hide/show photos without relying on our support team.
Updated listing content process
3. Listing table enhancements
MVP
Our MVP focused on the first time listing process, but as our product matured, we wanted to enable customers to re-list their spaces.
Offline process / Smart availability report
Our support team sent customers a report called “smart availability”, which highlighted listings that had leases expiring within 12 months. However, we knew that customers rarely used this report.
We conducted interviews with our customers + support team to understand more about why the report + offline process wasn’t helpful for them.
Unlisted tab
We decided which data to include on the unlisted tab based on the conversations we had with our customers.
Size:
Listing size is a factor in determining how soon to list a space. Larger spaces are generally marketed sooner.
Current lease info:
Current tenant name, lease expiration and tenant sentiment were all critical data points to determine when/if to start marketing a space.
Status:
Unlisted (spaces that have never been listed before) + Off market ( spaces that had been listed before).
Media
For brokers to see if they needed to create or upload any additional marketing collateral.
Internal notes:
An area to capture any important details that would all team members should be aware of regarding the space.
Measured success
Business KPIs
// 5% increase in percentage of spaces in landlords portfolios that were created into listings.
// 75% reduction in support team requests + JIRA tickets, 2 months after launching the preview draft features.
// Reduced time to market: 15%
UX KPIs
Decreased time in finding the space to list on VTS Marketplace.