Product update from Ben Cottrell, Product Manager

Hello everybody,

My name is Ben and I am a Product Manager in the Member Experience Team at TrustedHousesitters. I have worked in product for over 10 years and strive to build products that customers love using. I have two miniature dachshunds who are cheeky, lazy and love a good tummy tickle (photos below). I’m also, like many of you, an active TrustedHousesitters member and love the platform and community that we are building.

As a team we are dedicated to driving member success and improving member experience. This is a huge area and we are continually making changes to improve the user experience for both our owner and sitter members. The Community Forum is providing us with constructive feedback to help with these improvements - thank you for all the suggestions that have been made so far, we do read and take note of them all.

So that you can get a better understanding of how the wider team works, we thought it would be good to provide a bit of an update on some of the things that we have been working on over the last few months. Updates take place on a weekly basis as we continue to improve the platform.

Welcome Guide

About 3 months ago we looked at some of the ways we could improve our platform. This started with fixing some issues with the Welcome Guide while also increasing its visibility among our owner members. 40% of sits last year started without a shared Welcome Guide, which meant there was a high chance of miscommunication between owners and sitters. 

One of the most significant improvements we made was to make the guide easier to share. It is still early days, but we have already seen a big improvement in the number of owners sharing their Welcome Guide. This will be something we continue to work on and improve. 

Owner Addresses – Now Mandatory

We’ve also made it mandatory for owners to add their home address, which is shared once a house sit is confirmed. This makes it clear for sitters where the location is and also provides a record for our Membership Services team, for security and emergency situations. 

Tracking Member Behaviour

We have built and introduced an internal tool for tracking member negative behaviours. For example cancellations without good reason, either on behalf of sitters or owners as these situations cause untold stress and problems. Now, if we have any new or recurring issues, we have a clear process in place for removing members who do not abide by our Code of Conduct. This is important, as it helps keep our community a safe and respectful place that we can all enjoy. 

Mandatory Verifications

We initially made verification mandatory for sitter members in October 2021. We have since been driving awareness and implementing procedures to make existing members fully verified.

This was prioritised because firstly, we identified this as a business risk, and secondly, because sitters with verification in place have an increased rate of success – more sitters are chosen who have verification than those who don’t. We also established that new owners were deterred from joining the platform because of the lack of verifications. Since introducing them, we have seen an increased number of sit opportunities.  

A core foundation for a marketplace is building trust, making it easy for members to tell the community about themselves and to be third party verified. We will continue to build on this and make sure we offer a foundation where every user you see meets a required level of goodwill and authenticity.   

Improvements to the App

We have been working hard on making improvements to the TrustedHousesitters app. We’ve fixed several bugs and added the capability to sign in with a Google account. We have also simplified the editing of your listing or profile, added the ability to copy messages and made navigating to profiles and listings easier from the Inbox. 

Our research shows that sitters who use the app see an increased chance in securing a sit. This is in part because you can easily set up push notifications (making you aware of new sits and newly added dates), and you can quickly communicate with owners on the go.

We have been making members more aware of the app and this has resulted in a 30% improvement in usage of the app. If you haven’t tried the app, please do give it a go and let us know what you think.

Well, this really is just a small snapshot of the ongoing work that happens behind the scenes, but we hope it has given you a taster of some of the things we have been working on. There are lots more improvements on the way and we will keep you posted with regular updates. 

Many Thanks, 

Ben