Airbnb UX Wins and Losses

http://blog.jasonshah.org/post/18135779651/airbnb-ux-wins-and-losses-how-the-airbnb-home-page

by jason_shah • 14 years ago

35 17 14 years ago

blog.jasonshah.org

jason_shah2• 14 years ago

Collaborative consumption sites have unique challenges in earning user trust. Anyone know of successful UX tactics other applications have used?

kenrikm• 14 years ago

Mailchip has a really nice site and is very easy to use considering email campaigns can get pretty complicated.

untog2• 14 years ago

I love these kinds of articles, they're always reliably interesting. And always kick up decent debate as well, given that people often have different opinions about what works, and no-one has access to the actual data proving anything.

In a previous job (life?) I was put onto a project to (effectively) clone AirBnb, and spent a lot of time staring at the home page. While it's nice to see it again, boy am I glad to have moved on.

An aside: airbnb.com takes 4-5 seconds to load for me, compared to near instantaneous load on other sites. You could spend days tweaking your home page, but if people get frustrated waiting for it to load then you're handicapping yourself.

jsavimbi4• 14 years ago

> there’s no need to outline the box and make it look misaligned with the “Search” button.

Wrong and poor advice to subvert browser functionality. Alert the user to which input they are currently working with. Eliminates [tiresome] user guesswork and is conventional. Also helps the visually challenged.

> via overlay boxes

I don't even.

> I enter my city and hit ‘Enter’. That triggers the search, without giving me a chance to enter my dates first.

It occurs to me that this is part of the design. They show you the inventory before asking you for your size, even though if you had the patience you can input your desired dates on the homepage. Also, note the date input is also available after form submission. Something tells me that they've done some research on user behavior.

> How else can Airbnb improve?

I'm going to stop now because if anything, this post is novice-level and poorly thought out if one is assuming that they can make better what they don't understand.

chrisacky• 14 years ago

I didn't want to sandbag the original poster, but this was the line of thought I was heading down also.

Additionally, the ranking of results when you search is processed by Google places autocomplete. The request never actually hits any AirBnB server for ranking. This is done on Google side via their friendly API.

untog2• 14 years ago

This definitely wasn't always the case. Around 8 months ago it was definitely pulling down a custom list in JS, but they do appear to have changed it since.

jsavimbi4• 14 years ago

My code-reading leads me to believe that they're using Autocomplete.js in conjuction with the Google Maps API.

.pac-container .pac-item

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/google-ma...

bluetidepro• 14 years ago

I agree with your above comments except "> via overlay boxes - I don't even." - Why are light boxes bad?

I personally agree with using light boxes, IF they are done right. If the connection speed and browser can easily handle it, why not? But still always having the permalink "/sign-up" (or whatever it is) so you can link to it.

Can you provide more insight on why you are against that? Just curious if I missed the boat on people hating light boxes now? haha

jsavimbi4• 14 years ago

Lightboxes are a dishonest metaphor for popups.

There's usually no indication within the content that what you're clicking on, usually a link, is in fact not going to take you to a separate URL where you can complete your business, which is conventional, but it in fact going to change your visual experience by [poorly] applying an opaque [non-universal] overlay to your content and present you with a form, content, media in a format that is completely unnecessary to the experience. In the case of the author's preferred third-party plugin, it adds an additional four steps to your experience: 1) activate overlay, 2) resize viewport to content, 3) present content, 4) user-activate close button.

All for content that is preloaded with the page. The author seriously thinks that inconveniencing the user with added steps and amateurish functionality at the moment of conversion is a good idea, but you can browse the code over at their webpage to get a feel for what they think is acceptable advice.

The author-suggested solution takes four to five times longer without even making a server call. If that isn't ignorant, I don't know what is.

jason_shah2• 14 years ago

Author here. Fair points. These are all my personal views and understandably not everyone agrees.

Subverting browser behavior happens frequently and can be a positive thing. Lightboxes achieve a UX experience that bouncing someone elsewhere does not.

jaems33• 14 years ago

> Wrong and poor advice to subvert browser functionality. Alert the user to which input they are currently working with. Eliminates [tiresome] user guesswork and is conventional. Also helps the visually challenged.

If look at Google.com, the outline is a single pixel color stroke that replaces the gray stroke that currently exists when it's not in use.

When you look at Facebook.com, they don't have a highlight either.

jsavimbi4• 14 years ago

On Facebook (not exactly a paragon of usability) it's there. Also tab around the page. Links are also highlighted in light blue.

Maybe it's my own view, but when a designer circumvents or subverts basic, conventional browser functionality it signals they don't know how to design for the web or they care more for their particular design than they do for the user's ability to process and react to the intended functionality.

calbear81• 14 years ago

> there’s no need to outline the box and make it look misaligned with the “Search” button.

Agreed it should outline per browser functionality but you can fix this by placing the button inside the input and highlight the entire box.

> via overlay boxes

I don't think lightboxes are bad for login especially if the user is already in the middle of a task. Different case if the site requires a login to function correctly like Facebook.

> I enter my city and hit ‘Enter’. That triggers the search, without giving me a chance to enter my dates first.

I've been thinking through this on our hotel search engine as well. We've decided to place the search box below the date inputs because dates are integral to pricing which is a major component of the shopping decision making process. For AirBnB, it looks like prices for properties are relatively fixed so it's not as big of an issue since they know the pricing even w/o dates that are right most of the time. The issue I have is availability. If I don't enter dates, would much of what I'm seeing actually be irrelevant to my actual travel itinerary if they are actually not even available?

jaredsohn2• 14 years ago

One thing that I don't understand about their interface is that if you click on a listing and then "back to search results", it doesn't return you to your search query but rather does a search for everything.

Also, it would be really nice if they would allow saving a search query for a trip being planned (I'm assuming they don't allow this now); it can be annoying to have to find and copy/paste some long address and fill out other parameters every time you want to resume your search.

picasso81• 14 years ago

"but rather does a search for everything."

We're fixing this.

jaredsohn2• 14 years ago

Thanks; look forward to it.

BTW, there is some other funkiness in the UI, too. If I choose a city and some amenities and some neighborhoods and then add on 'social connections', it says that my search is too specific. But I notice that after I do this, my neighborhood selection is no longer there. Amusingly, this means that if I uncheck 'social connections' and check it again it will be able to show me something since my search is no longer too specific.

jollysonali• 14 years ago

I agree here, I open a series of tabs of places so as not to loose the original, carefully culled search results.

+1 on saving a whole query vs. just a location, this will allow us to see new airbnb's that pop up with those parameters in the future. This is really helpful to people who are regular visitors to cities and have a price range and love a couple of neighborhoods.

Airbnb UX Wins and Losses

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