MindMyHouse redesign v2
Susan HolthamDear MindMyHousies,
well, it’s been over five years now since we launched MindMyHouse. It’s been an exciting time and throughout it all we have learned alot. The existing design has held up fairly well. Five years is typically the average lifespan for most decent websites. But there are many areas where we could improve things. There is also many new features that we would like to roll out to our users. Many of you have also written in to use suggesting ways that we could improve the service as well as listing features that you would like to see.
Well, we’d like to do all that. So it’s finally time to re-develop and re-design the site.
Design face lift
It’s also time for a fresh face lift for the site, including a re-branding of the MindMyHouse concept, from logo through to emails and the site itself. We will need to keep the parts of the design that work well, such as it’s simple and friendly feel, it’s global focus, it’s ease of navigation. Things that we need to fix and improve are the layout of the content, address the lack of overview and summary pages, and provide quick access to important site functions irregardless of where you are in the site. Basically we want to make the site more usable as well as more fun to use. The logo has been redesigned as well: gone is the old nondescript house; in is a more friendly ‘home sweet home’ bird house.
Sample help page mockup
Owner homepage mockup
Site help
We’ve been thinking about this for a while and one of the main areas we need improve is the help and support information on the site. This means we will be writing new help guides to help you get started. We will also re-organise the existing help content to make it easier to access. We are also going to sort through the many many emails we get each day to support and publish the most common and persistent ones, along with some detailed answers of course!
New features
So, what sort of new features are we going to pack in to the new site? Here’s a few things that we’ll try and build that you’ve been clamoring for:
- better help system
- more information on the sitter and owner adverts (eg. type of home)
- clearer information about house sitting assignment duration dates
- better, more interactive maps
- replace public homepage with user homepage
- better Message center notification
- improvements to the Message centre, eg. reply/forward; mark as unread; next/previous/search/report spam button; copy email function; contact list; viewing expired ads; etc.
- chat application
- upgrade the House sitter agreement form so that it can be filled out online and emailed to the recipient
- shareable links
- better writing/saving of adverts
- better image upload and display
- when first logged in, display a special ‘getting started’ page
- make the registration and activation process easier
Feedback
Well, what do you think? Of course, we would love to hear what our members think of our planned redesign – simply add a comment at the bottom of the page.
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June 20th, 2010 at 2:46 pm
Nice.
June 30th, 2010 at 7:29 pm
It looks very sharp and professional. Will it have the housesits in descending date order, i.e the most recent at the top? I hope so.
June 30th, 2010 at 8:38 pm
The redesign looks exciting – I use the website almost daily and, while it is great at the moment, any upgrades will make it even better.
I do have a problem though and I emailed support some time ago and didnt receive a response. When I try and copy and paste my covering letter into my application it just comes up as blank when the homeowner receives it. Instead, I have to write out each one which can take some time. Is this a common problem that will be rectified with the new design.
Thanks
Rita
July 6th, 2010 at 9:47 pm
Hi.
Nice logo`s and very fresh looking. Love the idea of more info and feedback on letters received.
July 13th, 2010 at 1:25 am
Awesome! Almost every one of those features are aspects that we have thought about. It will be wonderful to see these upgrades go live. Thank you for putting effort into what is already a good site, in order to make it a GREAT one.
The Twitteresque bird in the design reminds me: are you going to enter the world of social media soon?
August 13th, 2010 at 5:04 am
Yes, I like the new look as well!
And maybe it would be helpful , to create the possibility for both, owners and sitters, to leave a note about how the sitting has been.
As you know you will find some “black sheeps” in every place – so unfortunately here in your community as well. So an additional feature would say for example: Was the house, the pets (or just the amount of) and other things a owner wrote in his advertisment the same as in reality? Would a sitter like to stay there another time and/or would he recommend the place for others?
And on the other side: Was the sitter and his skills that way how he told in his advertisment? Was he reliable, tidy and kept the pets in good condition?
Of course you will find some other points of interests to read about before one (owner or sitter) will make his decision.
I´m just thinking about this because I just finished my very first and unfortunately very bad house sitting in Costa Rica. And I know, that I was not the first house sitter on this place who made similar dreadful experiences there.
Just a thought, but surely worth to think about it.
August 17th, 2010 at 6:45 am
Hi mindmyhouse, all looks well for the new site, just wondered if there was anywhere for housesitters to put references from previous housesits, either as part of their listing or as a separate attachment. It would be an advantage to the homeowner when looking for housesitters, not having to go and ask the prospective housesitter for them.
Regards, and keep up the good work.
Sandra.
August 20th, 2010 at 4:21 am
The new look is GREAT and cheerful! Do you think there will be a place for a housesitter’s picture? It’s always nice to put a face to a name.
So glad to be a part of this wonderful site!
Catherine