The User is Always Right: Our Journey to Build Better at RealBetter

At RealBetter we've always believed that the key to creating an exceptional product lies in understanding our users' needs and empowering our employees to meet those needs. Our recent initiative, "The User is Always Right," exemplifies this employee-first and user-first approach to solving real estate industry challenges and building an awesome product.

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Collaborative Insight Gathering

We divided our employees into four cross-functional teams, 4 teams, 30 members,16 ideas, each team tasked with gathering and distilling field-led insights. These teams ventured into the real world, engaging with real estate agents, developers, and builders to understand their pain points and desires.

Team 1 focused on the product tour experience, Team 2 explored the user verification process, Team 3 investigated property match discovery, and Team 4 delved into market analysis tools. They then came together to synthesise their findings, identifying common themes and unique opportunities for innovation.

Cross-Functional Engagement and Learning

The beauty of our approach lies in its cross-functional nature. Each team included members from product development, tech, design, marketing,sales and engagement. This diverse mix ensured that insights were viewed from multiple perspectives.

We organised knowledge-sharing sessions where teams presented their findings. These sessions became a breeding ground of ideas, with lively discussions and impromptu brainstorming. The marketing team gained insights into technical constraints, while developers better understood user psychology. Our sales and engagement provided valuable input on common user issues, helping prioritise feature development.

This cross-pollination of ideas led to innovations. For instance, a casual conversation between a UX designer and a data analyst resulted in a novel way to visualise property flow trends.

From Insights to Innovation

The insights gathered through this process have been transformative for our product. Here are some key outcomes:

Enhanced User Experience: design and implementation of an interactive product tutorial for the RealBetter homepage.
Match Distribution & Discovery: Increase the Opening Rate of Matches
Improve user trust by showcasing benefits to enhance organic user acquisition and engagement.

This project has not only brought about positive changes in our product, but it has also promoted the growth of a culture of empathy and user-centricity in our organisation. This has helped us take a vital step in the direction of our vision of becoming the best real estate platform by putting both our employees and users at the centre of our innovation process.

In our journey to meet the high commitments of the market, we are unwavering in this participatory, insight-based approach.