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Background
What is Homify?
Homify is an international home and living B2B2C SAAS platform, connecting consumers with professionals to build or renovate their homes.
Hundreds of thousands of home and living professionals (eg. Architects, Interior Designers and other home builders) use the homify platform to network, display their work, and promote their businesses. Tens of millions of monthly users visit the platform to search for inspiration, build a community and look for professional help on their home building and renovation projects.
When I joined Homify in the fall of 2016, the company had just reached over 120 thousand registered professionals with business profiles and projects featuring images of their work.
The Homify editorial team employed a content marketing strategy, curating images from the professionals’ projects, featuring them in articles, created and published on the platform and shared across social media channels to generate traffic. In the fall of 2016, the main site boasted over 21 million unique monthly visitors.
How people were using the Homify Platform
- Users can find inspiration in the platform’s published articles and browse Professionals’ profiles.
- Professionals can create a free profile and upload projects displaying past work. Professionals enjoy superior reach with homify’s 20 million+ monthly unique visitors.
- Homify’s main revenue generating strategy, a paid Premium membership, offers greater visibility on the platform’s listings, search algorithm, and article features.
Problems
Although traffic numbers were strong, channels driving users to hire Professionals were limited and unintuitive. As a result, homify was struggling to sell Premium memberships. The value add wasn’t clear enough to Professionals.
Solution
Leads Generation Tool
I was tasked with developing a set of features to help generate leads for professionals. I began by initiating a user research process.
Research
User Interviews
I coordinated and inspected interviews with over a dozen professionals, conducted by our Market Research and Sales team members. I was not able to conduct all of these interviews myself, primarily because we were interviewing users across international markets including Germany, Asia and across North, South and Central America.
Key Findings
Professionals’ biggest Pain points:
- Wasted time spent engaging poor leads
- Frustrated by the volume of conversations with potential clients with unrealistic budget or time expectations
- Wanted to spend less time lead sourcing/pitching and more time working
- User ignorance: Most people don’t have a realistic understanding of what house designs/building costs
- Professionals wanted to speak with qualified leads
Design Phase
Strategy & Information Architecture
We developed a multi-pronged strategy for Lead qualification. First, users would select the category of their desired project and fill out a form with a series of questions. We developed a Price estimating feature which used regional house pricing data to calculate a quote based on the user’s answers. This was designed to discourage users with unrealistic price expectations.
After user leads were submitted, they would be compiled in a list for homify Sales and Account Managers to call and qualify with some confirmation questions. Once a Sales member approved the lead, it would be automatically posted on the platform on a dashboard visible to professionals only. Professionals would see leads posted in their localities.
High Level User Flow
Wireframes
Results
Company Revenue Boom
The Leads tool quickly established itself as and (at least until the the time of my departure in 2018) remained the company’s main value proposition for Premium membership sales.
Within the first month of the feature’s initial release, Premium membership sales shattered previous monthly records by over 300%. Membership self-registration conversions from the leads feature more than tripled the Sales team’s previous monthly record of memberships sold.
Over 10,000 Leads were generated in the first two months after the feature’s release.
By the time I left the company in 2018, Premium membership sales attributing Leads as their main incentive had accounted for over two thirds of the company’s historical revenue.
Next Work Sample
Homify Marketplace
Researched, conceptualized, designed and tested an online marketplace for homeowners to find home development professionals.
