Sold and off market experience

Improve our google SEO ranking across our sold and off market pages so we are first on Google when user searches for specific address or location to find property valuations and recent sales records.

My role

UI/UX design

Survey analysis

Competitor analysis

Product prioritisation

UI/UX design, Survey analysis, Competitor analysis, Product prioritisation

Team

Designer, Product Manager, Business Analyst,
4 developers, 1 tester

Designer, Product Manager, Business Analyst, 6 developers, 2 testers

Platform

Web

The problem

Although Trade Me is Kiwi’s portal of choice when it comes to browsing properties, we are rank low on Google compared to our peers for sold and off market. Our users tell us the ability to research property valuations and recent sales records is lacking when compared to local peers. Getting the correct and quality property information is important for property buyers, sellers & owners to make confident decisions for the next steps in their property journey.

Also, our customers (property agents) have limited ability on site to promote their recent sales to attract a seller lead (appraisals). The sold and off market experience provides a great platform for customers to reach out or for the seller to get in contact with agents as they are in the research mind set of seeing what is their property or area for worth.

The solution

Prior to this project, I designed a full sold and off-market map experience within our app. We utilised property data from Homes.co.nz (acquired by Trade Me in 2021) to provide users with recent sale records and property valuations.

This project aimed to enhance our SEO ranking by bringing the sold and off-market experience to our web platform. I adapted my app designs for the website, focusing on Google bot crawlability rather than a 1:1 copy. I created an additional suburb page specifically for the web, allowing Google to crawl more pages.

When searching for an address that is not 'For sale' on Google, Trade Me doesn’t even appear on the first page of the search. Our 'For sale' listings are short-lived on-site, therefore when users are searching for off-market addresses, Trade Me does not rank at all. There are 100s of 1000s of address pages that Trade Me is potentially missing out on. This project aims to reduce the keyword search gap so we can rank better against our local competitors, but to do so we need to build those pages first.

Prioritising what we build

It will take a couple of months before we can start seeing results therefore we want to release a version of each page as soon as possible so Google bot can start crawling. The team building this project is a SEO focused team therefore UX and product priorities were not front of mind for the team. In order to ensure we not only rank well on Google we need to ensure the user experience is up to par as users will be interacting with the product, also customer product features needed to be consider to ensure the business relationship with our customers are maintained.

I took the lead to ensure all the requirements are clearly communicated and considered by creating a must, should and could list. With the team we prioritised each item based on technical constraints and project requirements. By doing this we formed what we must have for the first initial release for each page.

Beyond the first initial release

With the first release decided, the ranking helped the team size and project the duration of the project. In the end the team was able to commit to all the must haves and most of the should haves. This is a great achievement as it went beyond what we were expecting from just SEO requirements. We now have an experience that has SEO, UX and product considerations in mind.

The experience designed spans across multiple pages and journeys. Each page with a goal in mind to help users get the information they are looking for.

Homepage

The property homepage is the launchpad for users' property searches and deserves its own category in our search, distinct from the 'For Sale' experience, as it provides a unique and dedicated experience.

Search

The aim is to allow users to see all properties on a map, giving them an idea of prices in their desired area. The page also features a list view to meet SEO requirements, as Google cannot crawl links on a map that requires JavaScript.

Property page

The goal of the page is to provide valuation and sale records for specific properties, helping users understand the factors behind a property's value. This is also where we introduce customer value with offering opportunities to expose agents to sellers to get leads.

Suburb page

There have been many entry points to this page peppered through out the other pages. The aim of the is page help a user to get know a specific area.

The results & next steps

We are ranking?

Next steps, there are many opportunities to expand on to engage our passive audience—those not actively looking to buy or sell. Work to leverage these pages and its data across the property journey has begun.

NEED TO ADD SOME STATS AFTER IT COMES OUT.

Next steps, there are many opportunities to continue enhancing this experience by adding more valuable content for our user and for GoogleBot to crawl to improve our ranking even more. Work has begun to leverage these pages and their data across the property journey.

View next project

About

Projects