How I increased search funnel step conversion by 30%
Hopper Homes
Consumer mobile app | ShippedUX, UI, and content design for a native mobile appOVERVIEW
As a product designer at Hopper, I owned all the UX/UI elements across the Hopper Homes marketplace experience. I worked directly with the product manager and engineering team to brainstorm, test, and implement UX/UI improvements. I created user flows and journeys, led UX research projects, spearheaded prototyping, supported QA testing, and owned the visual design of this vertical to bring experiences to life.
DESIGN PROCESS
Customer-Centric Discovery: I conducted quantitative and qualitative research to establish clear objectives and gain deeper insights into our target audience. By engaging directly with customers and understanding their needs, preferences, and pain points when booking vacation homes, we developed user personas tailored to our primary audience segments. I collaborated with the product team to translate these findings into user stories and product requirements, creating comprehensive PRD deliverables for the engineering team.
Competitive Analysis: I performed a thorough analysis of popular vacation home rental apps and websites, such as Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com, to identify features, patterns, trends, best practices, and opportunities for differentiation. This analysis informed the design direction and feature set for Hopper Homes, ensuring we offered a competitive and user-centric experience.
Visual Design: Leveraging Hopper's Figma design system, I optimized the existing Hopper ecosystem for the vacation home rental vertical. I enhanced the UX by improving navigation, information architecture, and visual hierarchy while maintaining consistency with Hopper's overall brand. I also identified opportunities for UX/UI experimentation to further improve the user experience and drive conversions.
Accessibility and Inclusivity: Throughout the design process, I prioritized accessibility and inclusivity, ensuring that the Hopper Homes experience was accessible to users with diverse needs and abilities. This included considerations for color contrast, font sizes, and clear labeling of interactive elements.
Product Design: I created high-fidelity mockups of all screens, incorporating usability principles and animation to enhance the user experience. Key screens included the search results page, listing detail page, booking flow, and user account management. I paid close attention to the unique needs of vacation home renters, such as displaying amenities, house rules, and local area information.
Testing and Iteration: We adopted a hypothesis-driven testing and implementation approach, using tools like LaunchDarkly to gradually roll out experiments and iterate based on user feedback and data. This allowed us to validate design decisions and make data-informed improvements before finalizing new features.
PRODUCT OUTCOMES
During my tenure at Hopper, I led the design for over 70 feature developments and critical experiments that increased conversion and improved performance for Hopper Homes. Notable projects included:
Search Funnel Improvements: We redesigned the 3-step search funnel to align with industry best practices, streamlining the user journey from search to booking. The toolbar in the search results was revamped, and the filter menu was reorganized based on user research insights, making it easier for users to find their ideal vacation homes.
Promotional Campaigns: For Travel Day Tuesday, we implemented cross-selling carousels and banners across Hopper's ecosystem to drive awareness of Hopper Homes. Users booking flights to popular vacation destinations were targeted with personalized offers for home bookings, and similar tactics were applied to those searching for hotels. We also launched a dedicated Homes landing page during this campaign to showcase featured properties and destinations.
Overall UI Improvements: As Hopper Homes expanded its offerings, we made significant improvements to the marketplace UI to better differentiate between entire homes and private rooms. This included optimizing the search results layout, enhancing the information hierarchy on the listing detail page, and providing clearer pricing breakdowns and booking options.
BUSINESS IMPACT
The design improvements and experiments I led contributed to a significant business impact for Hopper Homes. Key metrics included:
Search Funnel Redesign: 30% increase in conversion rates, driven by a more intuitive and user-friendly search experience.
Messaging Redesign: 18% increase in user retention, attributed to clearer communication and personalized messaging throughout the user journey.
Search Redesign: 60% reduction in search result load times, improving user satisfaction and reducing bounce rates.
Market-Specific Campaigns: 20% increase in repeat bookings, driven by targeted promotions and personalized recommendations based on user preferences and booking history.
These improvements not only enhanced the user experience but also drove substantial growth for Hopper Homes, solidifying its position as a growing player in the vacation home rental market.
My work at Hopper was appreciated by the product leads, with the revenue leader for Hopper Homes, Susan Ho, saying, “Maria is an incredibly talented designer who's excellent at collaborating with engineers, delivering beautiful and thoughtful UX/UI designs that consider data and optimal customer experience while taking into account technical considerations. She takes feedback well and adapts quickly, delivers with high output, and leads with a hypothesis-driven approach. At Hopper, she was responsible for the App UX of Hopper Homes, including coming up with ways to merchandise Homes in Hotels, showcase promotions, and also completed work for our Hotel Admin portal. I highly recommend Maria for any product design roles and would happily work with her again.”