CHOREFREE NEW BOOKING SYSTEM
Designing a seamless booking experience for a new market during COVID times.
My Role
Complete product design from research to conception, prototyping and testing, and future iterations.
Lead designer for branding and marketing materials.
Overview
Chorefree’s new service, Move in and Move Out cleanings – which can be booked in just 90 seconds through the new website – resulted from months of iterations and user research to find a new market due to the pandemic situation.
The Problem
Chorefree is a cleaning company in Vancouver that has done residential and Airbnb cleanings for eight years. However, everything changed when the Pandemic started. With the closure of borders and a worldwide lockdown, the company lost 90% of its monthly income, so we needed to iterate or die.
USER RESEARCH
We stepped back and did some general research of the current situation and the different markets that hired cleaning regularly. We found that, unlike other industries, the real estate in Vancouver was better than ever, having 22.1% more property sales than in past years (Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver, 2020).
We conducted interviews with realtors and surveys amongst realtors from Vancouver, and based on this data, we created a target group profile.
JOHN CHEN / 40 year old realtor
“I have too much on my plate when selling properties, and I want the cleaning to be the least stressing part for me.”
John is a realtor of Century 21 Real Estate, recognized as TOP 1% OF REALTORS® IN GREATER VANCOUVER. With more than ten listings to handle every month, John will likely be out of his office all day, showing units and attending calls from Downtown to North Vancouver.
Ordering a Clean
When it comes to cleaning, he has used several companies and freelancers. However, he is not attached to any of them because results are never consistent, and pricing varies according to the cleaner rather than the company.
When booking with freelancers, he had some bad experiences where they wouldn’t show up, and no other company would take the job with less than 24 hrs notice. Although cleaning is not required to sell a property, he considers it part of his excellent service and a gift to the client. He recalls cleaning a unit himself once, which he hated, but “my client satisfaction will always be my number one priority.”
I want a fast and easy way to book a clean for my clients. I feel stressed when it comes to ordering a clean. My biggest concern is quality and reliability, and my priorities are time and transparency.
About John
John is a realtor of Century 21 Real Estate, recognized as TOP 1% OF REALTORS® IN GREATER VANCOUVER. With more than ten listings to handle every month, John will likely be out of his office all day, showing units and attending calls from Downtown to North Vancouver.
Ordering a Clean
When it comes to cleaning, he has used several companies and freelancers. However, he is not attached to any of them because results are never consistent, and pricing varies according to the cleaner rather than the company.
When booking with freelancers, he had some bad experiences where they wouldn’t show up, and no other company would take the job with less than 24 hrs notice. Although cleaning is not required to sell a property, he considers it part of his excellent service and a gift to the client. He recalls cleaning a unit himself once, which he hated, but “my client satisfaction will always be my number one priority.”
I want a fast and easy way to book a clean for my clients. I feel stressed when it comes to ordering a clean. My biggest concern is quality and reliability, and my priorities are time and transparency.
We also created a User Experience Journey Map to understand real estate managers’ main paint points when ordering a cleaning.
We also created a User Experience Journey Map to understand real estate managers’ main paint points when ordering a cleaning.
Design Process
How might we create a seamless and reliable booking experience for realtors?
Confirmation and reminders: reassure that we will be there
A less stressful booking process: an easy flow to follow
A transparent quoting system: so they know what to expect from the beginning
Have an ASAP option: so in case they have a last-minute clean, they can rely on us
Mobile-first approach: so they can book anywhere
Unlike other e-commerce sites, a cleaning booking has many different elements: number of rooms and complexity for each room to get an exact quote, calendar availability based on the current workload, information about the unit and the customer, etc. This is why most cleaning companies would instead make each quote manual or charge by the hour.
We conducted brainstorming sessions to find new ways to make the experience unique. Once we got the main flow, we iterated to simplify the booking process as much as possible.
I led a brainstorming session to develop ideas for a more straightforward booking process with coworkers from finance and operations departments.
This whiteboard shows some early iterations of how the process would look if realtors could create an account and have a dashboard.
We invited some realtors to assemble their ideal flow using the printed screenshots. This helped us understand their priorities and what information is relevant for them when booking.
I asked some realtors to book some real cleanings using the flow we had and to give us feedback on the process. We got inspiration from Airbnb’s booking buttons – not only because those are elegant and functional, but also because many realtors already use Airbnb’s app daily.
Observations from testing
The two main points a realtor wants to know before scheduling is cost and availability for a specific date. That’s why we added both elements to the beginning of the process.
They will likely not add extra services if they are presented as a separate product. However, if we add them to the flow as part of the clean, the chances of selecting them are higher (18% more).
Realtors would drop off if creating an account was mandatory to complete the booking. We removed the “create account” section in the flow so everyone could checkout easily as a guest.
The Solution
Chorefree’s Move in and Move out cleaning is a new service created especially to cover all realtor’s needs and can be booked through the website in less than 90 seconds.
The website features an elegant yet functional 5 step process to book a cleaning:
1
Quoting
You can start booking directly from the home page. With just a few clicks, you can know the pricing for cleaning the property.
2
Addons
Specialty services can be easily added to the cleaning. All the information needed is on the page, so you know what is included.
3
Scheduling
You can schedule your cleaning right away, or you can select the ASAP option for emergencies. We are ready when you are!
4
Additional
Information
Property address and contact information are asked almost at the end, like a guest checkout.
Order Breadcrumbs
Go back and review any step by clicking the “Order summary” button.
5
Checkout
Although all the credit card information is required to confirm the order, we will only charge the total 48 hrs after the cleaning is done, so we can be sure that you are delighted with the service.
And that’s it! Your clean is booked in under 90 seconds!
Chorefree Experience Journey
We worked on every element of the app and the cleaning service to make the experience easy and enjoyable.
Chorefree Experience Journey
We worked on every element of the app and the cleaning service to make the experience easy and enjoyable.
Design System
Branding and Promotional Material
The Results
800%
Growth in a year
The new website was released in October 2020, and from then to December 2021, the company had a growth of +800%. (Considering that the company didn’t break even for several months because of the lockdown).
6,000
Interested Realtors
As of December 2021, the company has a list of more than 6,000 thousand realtors interested in the services, and we achieved having a 10% increase of recurrent customers every month.
3
New Cities
The company has expanded to 3 cities and has constantly grown the cleaning team since the website launch.
Iterations
After releasing the website, we conducted surveys and user testing to get feedback. Based on the results, we did some iterations on the flow:
ADDITIONAL STEPS
We needed extra details for the cleanings (access instructions, notes about the unit, optional personalized message on the welcome card), so we added them to the process. However, the cart abandoned rate increased due to having more than four steps to get the order done. We decided to add those steps after the checkout as optional, so the realtors wouldn’t need to fill it out in case they were in a hurry, and they could fill it out after by sending them the link on their email.
SHARE QUOTE BUTTON
Some realtors recommended us to their clients rather than paying for the service. That’s why we added a “Share quote” button so that the realtor could send the quote directly to the client, and they could go straight to checkout and book it.
“
We recently used Chorefree for one of our listings for the West Haven Group. We were impressed by the amazing job that was done; the home looked like new! They truly went above and beyond to make us and our clients happy. The process was easy, and of great value as well.
— Juan Leano / West Haven Group
Review recovered from Google Business page.
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