Property card redesign

Streamlining the search results page for holiday bookers

My Role: UX Designer

Squad: 2 UX Designers • PO • 2 Devs

Tools: Figma • Miro • Contentsquare

Duration: 6 weeks

Background

Sykes Holiday Cottages offers over 21,000 properties across the UK & Ireland. However, research revealed users struggled to find and compare key information on mobile property cards, making their holiday home search overwhelming.

Hypothesis

We believed that reducing visual complexity and improving information hierarchy in mobile property cards would help users find and compare key details more efficiently, leading to increased conversion rates.

Previous version

Competitor analysis

To identify industry standards and best practice, I analysed property cards across direct competitors (Airbnb, Booking.com) and various travel industry brands.

Key insights:

  • Limited use of call-to-action buttons

  • Modern, minimal design to emphasise key elements

  • Clear typography for improved readability

  • Swipeable imagery for easy property comparison

Wireframing

  1. Sketched potential solutions to improve visual hierarchy and reduce cognitive load, following minimalist design principles.

  2. Mocked up both best and worst-case scenarios for each concept to ensure a comprehensive evaluation.

  3. Ran a feedback session, gathering dot votes to narrow down solutions.

Usability testing

  • Compared two new card designs against the previous design (100 participants per design)

  • Click tests measured success rates and time on task for locating key information on the property cards

  • Integrated survey captured qualitative insights

Key findings:

Both new designs outperformed existing control design, with users locating key property card information more efficiently. Users had increased confidence with Design A and strongly preferred its swipeable imagery feature.

“The info is displayed in a digestible manner, the size is good and the colours make it easy on the eye.” - Participant A

Final Design

Based on research findings, I moved Design A forward for implementation, featuring:

  • Reduced property card size for better scannability.

  • Improved hierarchy of key details.

  • Refined colours, typography and spacing.

  • Introduced swipeable property images.

  • Removed unneeded primary button.

Previous version

Updated design

Impact

↑ 4% conversion uplift over 4 weeks

+ 190 bookings

↓ 9s time on search

↑ 345% increase in image interaction

Next steps

  1. New desktop and tablet property cards are ready to be tested, iterating on the successful mobile experiment.

  2. Exclusion tests on mobile property cards to move towards a further streamlined layouat.

Previous design

Experiment