DogVacay Customer Experience
Website · 2015-2016
DogVacay helps pet owners find independent pet sitters in their area as an alternative to kennel boarding.
Customers can search for hosts nearby, view their profiles, and request a reservation for pet boarding, daycare, house sitting, dog walking, and other services.
In addition to working on host tools at DogVacay, I also redesigned the customer journey from the Homepage to Search and Profile Viewing, as well as incremental improvements to the existing Booking experience.
Aside from a brand refresh, our goal was to facilitate better matching so that a customer can quickly find a host that meets their needs.
After someone requests a reservation, the new web experience clarifies next steps and encourages customers to reach out to other hosts.
The improved user interface, information design, and workflows on the mobile and desktop websites have already resulted in better customer conversion and loyalty.
My Role
- Product Strategy
- Design
Other Team Members
- Ashley Lewis, Product Manager
- Stephanie Redmon, Product Manager
- Wayne Chang, Product Manager
- Seth Broomer, Software Engineer
- Christine Hong, Software Engineer
- Tena Percy, Software Engineer
- Marques Jordan, Software Engineer
- Natalie Aleman, Quality Assurance
- Scott Korchinski, Quality Assurance
Search
Search is at the core of the DogVacay customer experience, and presenting the right information and filters is key to helping people find the perfect pet sitter.
With the help of surveys, A-B testing, and data analysis, I worked on several rounds of incremental improvements to the mobile and desktop web search UI and results cells.
Early in the process, we tested ways of increasing the density of search results through a grid presentation and created alternative arrangements of the search filters.
This work was eventually scrapped for the desktop web interface, but found its way to a redesign of mobile web search.
Focusing on quicker, higher impact work, we eventually made improvements to the UI that made it easier for customers to set filters for Size, Age, and Instant Book.
In parallel, the search result cells were redesigned to put more visual emphasis on elements that had greater simpact on customer conversion.
Incremental Redesign of Filters and Results
Through the research, the team validated our instinct that location is an important consideration.
To address this need, DogVacay enlarged the map, making it stretch to the height of the browser viewport, then created better interactions between the list and map.
Clicking on a pin in the map scrolls to the corresponding result list item, and rolling over any list item highlights the corresponding pin on the map.
Improved Map-to-List Interactions
DogVacay is experimenting with the use of additional filters in order to further improve Guest-to-Host matching.
Exploration of Additional Search Filters
Host Profile
The old host profile page was problematic in its information design—key information about a host, such as his or her dog preferences, booking policy, and deal-breakers, were not well presented or prioritized.
As a result, customers would often contact hosts that were not a good fit.
Taking advantage of structured data collected in the new host sign-up experience, the new host profile design presents the most critical information to a customer near the top of the page.
Hosting preferences and information about a host's home and style of boarding are presented in a more digestible way.
New Profile Design
Considerations were made to ensure the information design on the new profile page could be applied to the mobile web site.
New Profile Design for Mobile and Desktop Web
