When I joined Rentler in 2013, the company had only one product – a classifieds ad product for apartments and homes available for rent. The product was provided through a partnership with KSL.com, one of Utah’s largest news media outlets. Rentler was hosting the listings within KSL.com online classifieds.
As a new member of the Rentler team, I was challenged to update the listings offering and build an alternative experience on Rentler.com that would allow users to come directly to our site. My development team and I started with rental listings, which became the first of many projects we worked on together.
The rental listings product had two components – tenant-facing and landlord-facing. I worked directly with our development team and led the marketing and user research teams, introducing the concept of rapid prototyping and implementing a user research program. This allowed us to quickly design a new listings system, including a map-based search that was not previously offered to users before I joined.
Between 2013 and 2016, rental listings remained our core product. We were able to grow by monetizing the listings, which served as a tie between other products we developed, such as applications, credit/background checks, rent payments, and property management tools.
During this period, we saw traffic from two sources: Rentler.com and KSL.com Classifieds. Renters could start their rental search directly on rentler.com or through the KSL online classifieds, which was the original way to browse Rentler before I joined. I introduced the ability for users to open their current search in Rentler, where we advertised a better map-based search experience. This led to us being able to turn over half of our visits into direct traffic to Rentler.com.
The attached wireframes show some of my first tenant-facing pages from the rental listings product between 2013 and 2016. Having laid the foundation for Rentler’s listings product, I remain committed to continuously improving and innovating our platform to ensure it remains the go-to destination for renters and landlords alike.
Attached samples are property of Rentler.
