8 ms·

Airbnb UX Wins and Losses

35 points by jason_shah 15y ago

jason_shah 15y ago
Collaborative consumption sites have unique challenges in earning user trust. Anyone know of successful UX tactics other applications have used?
- kenrikm 15y ago
  Mailchip has a really nice site and is very easy to use considering email campaigns can get pretty complicated.
untog 15y 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.
jsavimbi 15y 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 15y 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.
  - untog 15y 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.
  - jsavimbi 15y 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-maps-js-api-v3/ibIknTkPTho https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/google-ma...
- bluetidepro 15y 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
  - jsavimbi 15y 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.
jaredsohn 15y 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 15y ago
  "but rather does a search for everything." We're fixing this.
  - jaredsohn 15y 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 15y 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.

35 points by jason_shah 15y ago

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

kenrikm 15y ago
Mailchip has a really nice site and is very easy to use considering email campaigns can get pretty complicated.

untog 15y 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.

jsavimbi 15y 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 15y 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.
- untog 15y 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.
- jsavimbi 15y 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-maps-js-api-v3/ibIknTkPTho https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/google-ma...
bluetidepro 15y 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
- jsavimbi 15y 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.

jaredsohn 15y 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 15y ago
"but rather does a search for everything." We're fixing this.
- jaredsohn 15y 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 15y 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.