Rightmove Plus settings

Background

Rightmove Plus is the b2b platform of Rightmove where Estate Agents upload and manage their properties. The customisation features where incredibly limited, with only a few product settings scattered across the platform, and basic profile information (name, surname, phone number) that lived inside a webpage named “My profile”. There was no centralised settings hub.

Moving forward, we knew we wanted to offer our partners a bigger level of customisation, so we decided to design and launch, a centralised, scalable, settings hub.

The problem space

• Fragmented Settings Experience: Settings are spread across multiple products, lacking a unified, centralized hub, making it difficult for users to manage their preferences efficiently.

• Limited User Autonomy: Customers cannot update or manage their own profile information, leading to dependency on support or system administrators for basic changes.

• Inconsistent Profile Management: Profile-related settings are isolated within a single page, rather than being accessible as part of a cohesive, global settings framework.

• Scalability Issues: As the product evolves, the lack of centralization might hinder the introduction of new settings or features across different modules.

• Impact on Efficiency: Both users and support teams face inefficiencies due to the disjointed approach to settings and profile management.

These issues were detrimental to the user experience, leading to confusion, frustration, and diminished trust. It was clear: We needed to create a settings hub in order to improve operational efficiency and customer satisfaction by reducing support dependencies and streamlining settings management across products.

Business goal

Besides the obvious problem of not having a settings hub, we also wanted to start gathering more information about our users like job title, focus area (sales, lettings, dual) so we can offer a more personalised experience across our platform.

Defining project requirements

After several conversations with the different product teams, customer support and marketing, we’ve created a list for all the settings requirements. For our MVP version, we’ve decided to keep the Settings to the most minimal number of features while still be functional for the launch. Here are the features I prioritized after a short brainstorming session. Some were reprioritised after the first iteration of the designs.

A scalable settings hub

I needed to create an intuitive and scalable settings hub that will stand the test of time and meet the growing needs of Rightmove Plus. In doing so, I had to figure out 2 things.

3. Overall layout

The foundation of every design is the layout, so the first step was to nail that down. In my pursuit of intuitiveness and scalability I drew and prototyped various layouts, some of which didn’t quite hit the mark.

For instance, I explored settings within a modal, different full-page models, and leveraging the primary sidebar as the settings navigation.

2. Inner layout and editing method

Initially, I’ve created a more modern layout with multi-columns and exposed fields that could be edited and saved directly without a confirmation button.

I've also created a stacked layout which is more scalable, and added individual buttons for every field.

After gathering some feedback from the team and Security, we’ve decided to create a stacked layout, since the profile information can be publicly displayed, we wanted to ensure that there won’t be any accidental editing.

Defining the user flows

Alongside my product manager, we’ve defined all the user flows required, which I then translated into detailed screenflows for a better engineering handoff. I was in constant communication with them to ensure all the necessary error states were mapped as well.

Personalisation through user data

Over the years, many of our users complained that we offer a one-size-fits-all solution, and the platform is lacking personalisation. Unfortunately, the data we collect from our users are very limited, so offering personalisation is quite challenging. We needed gather more data about the individual users that log-in to our platform, and we figured that settings is a great place to collect that.

We've decided to add Job title and Focus area fields in the profile settings so we can start collecting data. Data from a free-text field would be too hard to analyse as every agency has different naming conventions for their roles. Therefore a dropdown would be a more suitable solution. With the help of my PM, we've embarked on a journey to identify all the job titles that exist out there and their responsibilities. We've identified 246 unique job titles. After various conversations with industry experts and an excruciating refinement, we've managed to narrow them down to 15.

Even though we were confident that our list was generic enough to cover the majority of the job titles out there, we wanted to ensure that our users have the ability to add a custom job title in case the list couldn't cover their role.

Documentation

I needed to ensure that Customer Support teams and Account Managers were aware of the upcoming changes and had time to prepare. So, I’ve documented some of the core flows and send it over to them 2 months before the launch.

Announcing the changes

To notify our users about the new feature, I created a tour component with some eye-catching visuals.