Airbnb: How can we improve user experience on Application?

Airbnb was started in 2007 with an interesting story where two hosts welcomed three guests in their homes and provided an authentic stay experience. Today, Airbnb has up to 5.6M listings across 100K+ cities in the world. Airbnb provides local experiences, unique stays and homelike stay experiences to the guests. Airbnb leverages the typical "Network effects" where one side of users are the hosts listing their properties and the other side as the guests subscribing for that property for their stay.

In this article, we are going to discuss about how can we improve the user experience for a guest who is booking a stay on Airbnb. I will be looking at version 21.32 on ios browser.

User Journey

Screen Diagnostic

1. Homepage Screen

Recommendations:

• Provide cues about what to search in the search box (Filter Chips)

2. Search Screen

Recommendations:

• Search Filters for destination selection

• Location based Search by importing locations from another source

3. Experience Selection Screen

Recommendations:

• Skip option to Fast track to the listing page

• Examples of experiences through visual key

4. Guest selection Screen

Recommendations:

• Provide an option to type the number in addition to Plus and Minus Sign

5. Stay Listing Page

Recommendations

• Explain the significance of the reviews number clearly

• Many people drop off later at the summary sheet due to price increase (tax and fees), hence there should be an option to reflect the complete price in a summary box

• Place map icon on the side

• Quick Filter chips to simplify the search

Chaitali Bansal