Yowo Home Finder

This case study recounts the rollercoaster journey and the learnings I gained from creating and running the holistic real estate service, Yowo Home Finder （有窝找房）. The service was launched in 2015 by the company I co-founded in China.

My Role

As a typical co-founder of a startup, I was involved in almost everything. For the most part, I acted as a product manager and designer. We also had a couple of developers and social media specialists who supported this project.

The Problem

In China, finding rental properties can be frustrating because real estate agents prefer to focus on selling, where they can earn higher commissions.

However, because rental properties have a lower margin, agents are willing to share listing information with competitors and split commissions when a property is leased. We saw an opportunity to revolutionise the home searching experience by taking advantage of this working dynamic. Our hypothesis was that we could vastly improve the rental home searching experience by starting a real estate agency, redesigning the way customers interact with real estate agents, in the mean time, working with other agents to obtain listing resources.

Approach

We established several principles based on a combination of early user research and an understanding of our strengths:

• Prioritise digital experience with a human touch.

• Streamline online to offline workflow.

• Minimise operational costs.

We set an ambitious timeframe in order to launch the service in time for the uni graduation season which was 3-4 months away.

User Journey

Starting with mapping out the current user journey.

We identified 3 areas to improve in the existing user journey:

• Communication. Communicate and understand customers’ needs and requirements better before recommending any properties.

• Listing presentation. Allow customers to do virtual tours so they don't have to physically visit an agency.

• Inspection experience. Be transparent about properties before taking customers to inspections.

In the redesigned customer journey, we changed the way agents and customers communicate home search requirements. We eliminated the physical shopfront and moved traditionally face-to-face touchpoints online. We created a sense of human guidance with a conversational search experience. Unlike most portals that require customers to fill out a search form, we prompted customers with a series of questions to understand their needs.

We have included questions that are important but often neglected by other services. For instance, if someone wants to live near their workplace but is unfamiliar with the area, we ask for the name of their workplace or nearby landmarks instead.

A lot of action is taking place in the background.

After customers submit a search, they will receive a confirmation message. As we do not have a direct source of listings, we then work with partner agents to find matching properties and present them in the best possible quality, allowing them to decide which to inspect.

We notify customer of the best matching properties that we have shortlisted for them. The customer can then review and send an inspection request on those they are interested in. Once the inspection time is confirmed, one of our ‘agents’ will borrow the keys from the partner agent and take the user to inspect the property.

After the customer made the decision, we handle negotiation and contract signing . The app will keep a record of progress. When everything is finalised, we took a step further by offering a moving kit with packaging supplies and recommend moving companies.

Shot and Miss

After launching in May 2016, we promoted the service through social media and sponsored a startup competition at a local university. We quickly gained popularity and received many inquiries, but that's when problems began to surface.

In short, the listing supply could not keep up with the demand.

• Overwhelming enquiries. The team struggled with unrealistic rental demands from inexperienced college graduates.

• No instant results. Customers want instant search results but our operation model isn’t as efficient as it needs to be. Low efficiency is not acceptable for personalised service.

• Staff shortage. Organising inspections is challenging with limited resources.

• Uncommitted partners. Our partners are not actively supporting us in acquiring property information and high-quality images. This has sabotaged the bottom line of our operating model.

We knew it was time to rethink the service.

The Pivot

What went wrong and why

I organised workshops to analyse customer feedback and findings. We concluded that experience design tweaks were not enough. We need to review the business model and strategies.

One life lesson I've learned is that helping customers get their tasks done is far more important than how it's done. If customers can't find the properties they want, the rest of the experience becomes irrelevant.

Therefore, I have decided to conduct a more detailed study of our target customers and identify a solution that can better meet their needs than the existing options available to them.

Understand target customers and their demand

After interviewing around 10 young professionals working in the software park, we found that one particular type of accommodation tends to fit their limited budget most of the time: a one-bedroom with an en-suite bathroom. This type of accommodation often comes from three sources:

1. Sub-leasers. They often manage a large number of apartments and transform them into multiple en-suite rooms, which they then rent out individually.

2. Youth apartments. These are transformed from old warehouses or office buildings and represent the higher end of en-suite rooms.

3. Low-rise buildings in urban villages. These are privately owned buildings, typically three floors tall, where landlords turn them into organised apartments. They represent the lower end of the supply.

We interviewed landlords or managers about property marketing. They often use 58.com (China's largest classified advertisements platform) and/or work with local agents. Although there didn’t seem to be any obvious opportunities for us to join the game, we would still like to give it a try.

Redesign the service

We’ve learnt the lessons from the first launch. We simplified the service flow by working directly with landlords, thus skipping the middleman. We would like to focus on building relationships with landlords and presenting their property information in the best quality possible.

We aim to deliver property details in an informative and delightful manner, saving customers time on inspections. We’ve introduced 2 features to achieve that:

1. Video Tours.

   We didn’t adopt virtual tours due to its high cost and long processing time. Instead, we developed a technique for creating stable, high-quality videos using only mobile phones.
    
   

2. Suburb Reviews.

   We have conducted a series of suburb reviews that analyse and rated suburbs based on various criteria such as transport, shopping, education, recreation, and environment. Customers can access these reviews from the list details page.

We also negotiated to offer customers discount coupons for selected apartments.

The Inevitable Failure

We worked through many sleepless nights to launch the redesigned service one month later. However, we struggled to compete with classified ad portals that offer many more listings than we can. Even though we provide more reliable information and better presentation, it wasn't enough to make a difference. These low-cost accommodations can find tenants without relying on the high-quality marketing that we offer. It's not the right product-market fit. Without a substantial user base, communication with landlords becomes harder and harder to maintain. This project quickly spiraled downward, and it's time to make the tough call.

Takeaways

Despite the failure, I’ve learnt invaluable lessons throughout the journey of "Yowo Home Finder". To summarise a few key takeaways from this experience:

Identify and empathise with all roles involved.

We were obsessed with the end customer's needs and pain points, but we overlooked the importance of landlords and real estate agents. Arguably, they play an even more influential role in the property search experience. For our service to be successful, we had to create a compelling value proposition that will encourage them to get on board and support our service. If user research suggests that they are not passionate about the idea, do not hold onto it.

Define the measure of success.

The success of our product relies heavily on the success of our customers. Therefore, we must prioritise providing them with a vast array of listings to choose from. This ensures that they have the best chance of finding the right property through our service. On top of this foundation, we can add a beautiful and user-friendly experience that makes the process of finding a property enjoyable and seamless.

Be Lean.

This statement has several layers of meaning. Strategically, we need a vision that resonates easily with our target audience. Regarding the product itself, we need to be rigorous in identifying the one feature that can set us apart from the competition and also be meaningful to the customers. Additionally, many people are familiar with the "build, measure, and learn" approach, and we have already done well with the second launch. Allow ourselves to fail quickly in order to take feedback onboard and quickly iterate the product and service to adapt to the latest learnings.

I believe there is always more to learn about a project when reflecting on it, and that is the exciting part of personal growth.

(Note: The service was originally delivered via the Yowo WeChat public account. For the purpose of this portfolio, I have designed the iOS UI with an overall experience consistent with the original version.)