Apartment Hunting on the Web

I've been looking at a number of Apartment Search-type Web sites lately and it's been a rather frustrating experience. Since I build Web sites for a living, I have a high standard when I visit others. While I don't particularly want to name any names, I have a list of gripes. These are nits that began to bother me as I searched, they may apply to other kinds of sites, as well.

• Respect the browser — The #1 most annoying Web site trick (tricks, really) when one is searching for a new apartment, is (are) anything that breaks normal browser behavior. Several sites that I was using would somehow "lose" your search criteria if you hit the 'back' button (some of them, if I were lucky, had a "refine search"-type button that took over this function). Others used JavaScript links of one sort or another (usually something pointless like, "onclick="window.location='blah.html'".

  I think the 'lost' form business comes from ASP's implementation of WebForms, because I see it far more often on ASP-based sites than others. The JavaScript-link bit is just spectacularly frustrating to me, because it's so rarely necessary, and it breaks so many functions. Those links break the most fundamentally useful part of the Web experience: the link. You can't open those links in another window. They don't work in JavaScript-unfriendly browsers. You can't use the right-click-copy the URL menu to email or IM the link to your wife for a quick consult. True, all of these are minor annoyances, and many of them can be worked around, but the link is the fundamental building block of the Web. You are violating some majorly sacred space here.

  In general, I see this as a variation on the "lazy man's burden" (or so I've heard it called — this happens when you need to bring several loads of groceries in from the car but, by being "lazy" and trying to take fewer trips you make fewer, dangerously heavy loads, often generating more work for yourself in the process). These JavaScript tricks might save you some work (it may be easier to put together a JavaScript onclick event than to build a URL rewrite system) but you're cheating: You're transferring the burden to your customers.

  I call this "respect the browser" because it's really a catch-all for all the fancy JavaScript tricks that wreck a browsing session. Apartment Search-type users/visitors do a lot of searching. They are going to hit the back button frequently. They might want to open two listings in separate windows/tabs for a side-by-side comparison. When you take the "browser functions" (remembering form data, preserving the back button, using normal links) away from the user/visitor/browser, you diminish the customer/user/visitor's ability to use your site the way they want to use it. You are, in effect, making them work harder to use your site. Why would you want to make your users do that?

• Details — Details about the property are the "heroin content" (WebPagesThatSuck, number 8) of the Apartment Search. In our case, Liz and I found ourselves going back to some Usability-Deranged sites because they offered more comprehensive views of their apartments than the competition. Our favorite details:
  
  • Pictures: If at all possible, any apartment listing should show the exterior, at least one interior view (if only one, make it the kitchen) and photos of any "extras" — swimming pools, workout rooms, hardwood floors, etc. It's easy to overlook little details (like "pool") in the text listing; it's hard to forget a picture of a pool. And they don't need to be fancy-pants, multi-media, slideshow extravaganzas, either. Just put up some pictures.
  • Floorplans: It's amazing how few sites provide these, but almost all modern building managers have them on hand. Scan them in and put them online, people! Liz and I, at least, are pickier about floorplans than we are about pictures — its easier to see how our furniture will fit (or not!) into the apartment. Oh, that reminds me: Put measurements on the plans (eg, "17 x 10 ft").
  • Don't Hide Things: We saw at least one site that hid details behind "Mystery Meat Navigation". While MMN is bad enough to merit several articles on it's own, the point here is: You actually *want* potential customers to know that you have Fitness Facilities, yes? Don't hide it and make me find it on my own, put it right on the page!
  • Content Accuracy: Make it easy for owners to de-list or update their listings (and encourage them to do so — it's a waste of their time to have to answer the phone all day from would-be tenants who got the wrong info) Provide the right information for the customer: If they searched for 3 bedroom apartments and a particular listing has both 2 bedroom and 3 bedroom options, show the customer the price for the 3 bedroom option first. Otherwise, it feels like a slimy "bait-n-switch" style tactic. If you can, go deeper than "available in some units" — that's another slimy-seeming tactic — if it isn't available in the units that are currently vacant, don't tell me about it.

• Be friendly to the geographically impaired — Assume your visitors aren't terribly familiar with the area. Map-based searches are easier to use than "Select your city from the list:". Allow both/either if you can. In any case, allow/encourage visitors to search in nearby towns. If they search for something in "Town X" you might include properties in Town Y that are just across the border. Sometimes, we didn't so much care about "Town X" as "Greater Town X Area". And link individual properties to an online mapping service. Again, your visitors won't always be familiar with the area, give them a hand-out.

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