Content designer and published author
Industry: Rent tech
Apply to rent – Core language change
HousingAnywhere, 2024 – 2025
Problem
HousingAnywhere’s core terminology doesn't align with users' mental models of mid-to-long term renting, causing friction and harming conversion.
Solution
Reframe HousingAnywhere’s product experience using rent-based language. Replace core terms:
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Booking request > Rental application
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Invitation to book > Rental offer
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Special offer > Custom rental offer
Impact
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25% YOY increase in rental applications
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16.64% YOY increase in conversions from Start conversation > Paid
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Increased user understanding
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Decreased support inquiries
Overview
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Preliminary research findings (pre project launch)
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Internal teams research
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1. Introduction
About the company
HousingAnywhere (HA) is online rental marketplace where landlords can list properties for tenants to rent. Landlords and tenants can exchange details, message each other, and agree on rental conditions before signing a contract.
Problem
Throughout HA’s user experience, the company used terminology that their users do not instantly understand, including:
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Booking
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Booking request
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Invitation to book
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Special offer
As a result of this unclear terminology, HA increased the cognitive load of anyone using our website. Increase the cognitive load means decreased user motivation. I.e., users are more likely to fall below the trigger point for any prompt.
"To simplify our users' experience, we should use terminology that they are used to and can process with minimal cognitive effort."
2. Rationale and UX Writer's hypothesis
HA’s terminology was a result of a legacy decision that tenants should be able to ‘book’ their home online. While these origins are ambitious, they're in conflict with how people actually think about mid- to long-term rentals. People expect to 'rent' their home, not 'book' it.
In other words, HA was intentionally disrupting users' mental models associated with the concept of renting and enforcing their own agenda via linguistic means.
This has a negative impact on user experience, as users struggled to understand how HA works and, by consequence, their own situation as they navigate the platform throughout their rental journey.
Hypothesis
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By talking about renting instead of booking, HA can use plain language and simplify how they talk about their offering.
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This will increase user understanding, leading to:
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Increased motivation, decreased friction
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Increased conversion
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3. Competitor benchmarks
View competitor benchmarks here. These design files show the rental flow for our main competitors.
5. User research and testing
Preliminary research findings (pre-project)
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HousingAnywhere wants to move away from the concept of booking, towards the concept of renting.
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In general, users understood that a booking request was a request to rent a property for a selected period. However, they compared it to an instant booking on airbnb, which is a misconception.
Some thought that a booking request was an enquiry about the availability of a property on a selected date. They were not sure whether the list of search results showed them properties available on the date they selected, or that they could only send a booking request if the property was available. -
The confusion stemmed from a lack of understanding of the HA operating model. Direct booking is something they expect from airbnb or Booking.com — not a long-term rental site.
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Users struggle with booking requests, misleading booking requests, and confirmed bookings, booking requests with contact advertisers. Searchers often do not understand that booking request must be accepted by the advertiser.
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Additionally, users frequently send booking requests without prior communication and are unsure of the next steps.When testing HA’s booking + payment flow recently, we replaced the concept of ‘booking request’ with that of ‘shortlist’.
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Users did not experience the same confusions observed in earlier user tests. This instils hope that a terminology change can have a significant impact on user understanding.
Sources
Internal teams research
Unmoderated user testing
6. Localisation
At HousingAnywhere, we localise into the following languages:
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Dutch
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German
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French
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Italian
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Spanish
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Portuguese
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Polish
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Romanian
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Ukrainian
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Russian
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Swedish
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Simplified Chinese
HA was using its own non-industry-standard terms in some locales, whereas in others they were using industry-standard terms. For example, in Spanish 'booking request' was translated as 'solicitar reserva'. Based on HA’s localisers' expertise, this works because in Spanish there is no difference in meaning between 'book' and 'reserve', whereas in English there is a subtle difference.
When moving forward with 'Apply to rent' concept, we eliminated the concept of booking entirely and localised all terms to industry standard for online property rentals, in consultation with HA’s localisation experts.
7. Final outcome
Apply to rent flow
Ask a question flow
8. Impact
“Apply to rent” scenario is now separated from the “Send a message” scenario. This change was released to 100% of users on July 17th, and it introduced quite some changes in the distribution of proposals and conversations. Some highlights:
Increase in 'booking requests' (rental applications)
The main effect that we were aiming for: the number of booking requests has increased by 25% YoY.
Changes in distribution of proposals
The share of booking requests changed from ~30% to ~40% of all proposals, which was the intention, because the conversion from booking request to booking is higher than for landlord-initiated offers. This shift impacted the following:
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Contributed positively to Conversation → Booking conversion rate (currently at 6.73%, +16.64% YoY)
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Contributed to a positive trend for the Proposal → Booking conversion rate (currently at 36.28%, +10.11% YoY)
Decrease in number of Conversations started
That was partially an expected outcome (we saw the same decrease during the A/B test), but partially caused by a few bugs in the “Ask a question” flow. As a result, we saw a bigger drop between July 17th and July 28th, when the issues were fixed.
Decrease in number of Offers
Also an expected dynamic, as more tenants are now initiating booking requests. The decrease in offers created is also especially noticeable because of the issue with conversations started from the previous point.
Along with the release of the split flow, a few additional, quality-of-life changes were introduced to the “Ask a question flow”. It’s not possible to track the impact on bookings from each of these changes directly, as they were released without A/B experiments (all were released on July 18th). But we think the cumulative effect of these changes had a positive impact on Conversation → Booking and Proposal → Booking conversion rates.
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Pre-emptive answers to applicant questions
When an applicant selects a category of their question, we display aggregated information on this topic (from the listing information + our FAQs), and in case tenants find an answer, they can switch to the “Apply to rent flow”. This feature has increased the share of tenants switching from the “Ask a question” to the “Apply to rent flow” from 10% to 12%.
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Guiding applicants to complete their profiles
After an applicant submits their question, we nudge them to complete their profile on the success screen. About 30% of applicants interact with the CTA, and 90% of those who interacted successfully add their details (which leads to better-filled profiles → more clarity for landlords → better response rates and engagement).
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More clarity for landlords in the inbox
In the inbox for landlords we highlight conversations created from the “Ask a question flow”. This way it’s easier for landlords to distinguish if a new inquiry is coming from the Application or a Question flow, and react accordingly (e.g. prioritize applications over questions for faster reaction times on actionable inquiries).