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Scaling Guides
Problem
Overview
Planning future projects is a key revenue and re-engagement stream for Thumbtack; the more projects planned, the better the app performs. The average user had 2.5 projects planned.
In H1 2024 our team focused on increasing the average number of planned projects by 3% with our guidance content. At this point, we only had 5 guides that focus on general home maintenance topics. In order to help hit our goal, we're introducing more specificity and personalization by creating 15+ new guides around life moments, home features, and goals. In order to support this update, the new UI must scale seamlessly to support fast production.
Existing designs
Business
Only 18% of customers engage with Guidance after onboarding. We need to drive deeper buy-in and trust to solidify the long-term relationship that customers will have with it.
User
The content is too general for my specific needs and interests as a homeowner.
"How might we create guides for customers tied to the home features, location, and goals feel more personalized and motivate more adds to plan?"
Research
Goals
I partnered with my researcher to:
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Understand where homeowners currently seek out inspiration and guidance for home projects
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Decide the top 15 topics that homeowners are interested in
Method
We surveyed 250 homeowners
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Non-Thumbtack participants
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Equal mix of genders
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Mix of homeowner experience levels:
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17% novice
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69% somewhat knowledgeable
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14% experienced
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Key learnings
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88% of participants stated they were extremely likely to spend time researching their home projects upfront
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89% of homeowners look for inspiration on YouTube
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The other most common sources of inspiration are:
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Pinterest (57%)
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Instagram (46%)
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Reddit (46%)
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50% of participants stated they follow home influencers or experts on social media.
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The topics that have the highest likelihood of driving engagement based on interest:
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Increasing home value
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Home maintenance 101
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Cleaning & decluttering
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Preventive maintenance projects
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Remodeling or renovating a room
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And the list goes on...
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Design
Old design
In order to scale the content as efficiently as possible, we must make a few changes. The custom illustrations for each guide take several rounds of feedback with the design team and collaboration with engineers to get the custom proportions in the right spot. The playful background colors are limited, leading to repetition. Lastly, the project cards will be a huge driver in engagement, so changing them from a carousel to a list view may be a huge win.
Unique background color
Custom illustrations for each guide
Carousel view with 1.25 cards present at a time
Low-fi
I shared my first round of mocks with design, product, engineering, and data science for feedback. I’m a big fan of using Loom videos for async updates before design handoffs—it saves meeting time and helps catch overlooked edge cases.
A user should be able to:
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Hire a pro
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Learn more about the project
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Save the project to their plan
Usability test
I wanted to see how far we can simplify the new project cards to reduce the amount of text and clutter on the page as much as possible. I ran a quick usability test with 10 participants to understand if the icons for hire, learn more, and save to plan were intuitive.
Key learnings:
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Magnifying glass - Hire a Pro
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8/10 understood
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“I know its a search icon so I should be searching for something, but not sure exactly what”
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“Expected to magnify the image size”
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Light bulb - Learn more
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5/10 understood
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“Expected to get more pictures for inspiration”
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“After clicking it, I notice that it’s giving me more information so I am learning”
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Bookmark - Save to Plan
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10/10 understood
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Takeaways:
Hire and lightbulb icons was understood by the majority, however, a label would be more clear for users to understand that it leads to hiring pros.
High-fi
Scalability was a key focus, as this feature has the potential to significantly drive users to save more proactive projects to their plan. The new card design is versatile enough to be repurposed throughout the app, offering quick, relevant guidance wherever users need help deciding what to do next for their home.
Inspiring hero image and unique icon to visually differentiate the guides
Ability to hire, learn more, and save the project to the user's plan
Accessible navigation bar for better comprehension and visibility to the Plan
Curved header for a fresh, welcoming feel
3 stacked cards per section that are personalized to the user's home features
Insights
Product evolution
Overall, the team created an efficent and scalable template for our guidance content.
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Reduced the time to create a new guide by 85% with the help of scalable iconography and moving all of our content into Contentful. Now, designers are able to update copy and imagery without the help of backend engineers.
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Successfully scaled our guides from 5 to 20+
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The average planned projects per user ended up being neutral, however we saw the “Learn More” & “Hire” CTAs with a relative improvement in the click rates of +100% and +27%, respectively.
Future iterations:
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Improving the relevance and personalization of project recommendations
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Ranking and filtering updates
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Making the ‘Save to plan’ CTA more prominent by simplifying the amount of actions a user can take on a card
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