Wednesday, March 05, 2008

 

Thanks Redfin For The Open Homes Feature!

After getting responses from Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman on my previous post, I want to write feedback about their new open house feature.

Pros
- easy to understand icons
- no change in usage

Cons
- difficult to see all open homes and dates
- need to load specific home to see dates

Summary
I like this feature a lot. It's an outlet from having to use the clumsy interface of SFGate's Open Homes Guide.

I think however there is room for a slight improvement. What I pictured originally when I mentioned the Con in my previous post is a monthly calendar. I think having the monthly calendar would be very helpful to see the entirety of open homes and also to help control the search results. Each day in the month would show the amount of open homes and in turn would be an action to update the search results with just open homes for that day.

Anyway I'm sure Redfin already has ideas or is comfortable with it; I'm just an anxious software developer. :)

Extra: I read Matt Goyer's response to my Con about Redfin displaying "Undisclosed Address". I understand it's not Redfin's fault and apologize that it was directed that way. I forgot where I saw this but I remember seeing an online video interview Glenn Kelman had with Robert Scoble in which Glenn talked about some of the data that Redfin can't disclose due to agreements with MLS. Unfortunately from a consumer's perspective it's annoying to see missing data. I realized that the problem isn't quite with MLS but more with listing agents and/or sellers. For some personal reason or another, listing agents sometimes don't disclose the address or other information when they input the house on MLS. This however now becomes a problem for Redfin's new Open Homes feature. I have seen one listing on Redfin where the address is undisclosed and there is open house information. Where do I go? :)
Also on the price per square foot, I figured Redfin was displaying it to help consumers identify a bidding price. So naturally I thought the price per square foot should also be included.

Comments:
Hi, you're welcome! We're pleased to hear you like the new icons. Especially since icons are so hard to do well.

Just so you know, in our next release we'll add filtering to search so you can only show listings with open houses or listings with open houses for the upcoming weekend.

We had discussed a calendar and focused grouped it but the feedback we got was that the most important thing was open house search on the map so users could look for open houses that matched their criteria so that's what we're focused on next.

Matt Goyer
Lead Product Manager - Redfin
 
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