Rightmove couldn’t see its own homeowners. So I designed the engine that could.
Rightmove is the UK's largest property portal, with 140 million+ visits per month. Historically, we operated as a search platform, with the relationship ending once someone found a home. Homeowners are a highly valuable audience, yet we had no existing way to identify, understand or serve them.
Identified homeowners
1.8M
from zero, now visible to the business
Tracked properties
7.8M
with 500k added every month
Registration driver
#1
company-wide for new accounts and sign-ins
Valuation leads
42%
of Online Agent Valuation leads originate here
My role
Senior product designer Continuous design owner for Homeowners.
From 0 → 1 and beyond Shaped strategy, MVP and the evolution of this initiative.
Duration
MVP built within one quarter. Three years of building, iterating and scaling.
My contribution
Driving the vision from day one.
For three years, I was the continuous and sole design owner of the Homeowners initiative. While product managers and engineers rotated through the team, I remained responsible for shaping the long-term vision, uncovering new opportunities, and evolving the product through more than 35 experiments, roughly one every sprint.
The journey, at a glance.
MVP live within a quarter. Then 35+ experiments, roughly one every sprint, and a single placement change that tripled registrations in one month.
The full story
Three-plus years, told as six headline chapters. Open any one to go deeper.
The product
From a single estimate to an ownership hub.
What started as a simple property estimate became a hub homeowners return to throughout their ownership journey, helping them understand, improve and finance their home, while surfacing relevant products and services when they matter most.
Renovations
Estimating what the work would actually cost.
Beyond what a renovation adds, homeowners wanted to know what it costs. Answer three questions and the tool reads room sizes from the property’s floorplan, then returns costed estimates by room at three levels of finish.
Entry pointThree questionsAI reading the floorplanCost estimates by room
Honesty
Learnings & honest misses
I'm not going to pretend every bet worked. These are the four I would call out plainly.
The miss
We didn't hit a return-rate target.
The goal named 15% of homeowners returning within 90 days. We delivered identification and revenue, but not the habit. Identification proved a far easier problem than return, and I would treat retention as the primary design challenge from the start, not the chapter after acquisition.
The measurement
A lifetime average hid the real trend.
We tracked homeowner share as a lifetime average: it moved from 47% to 62% over two years, which read as steady progress. But a lifetime average is diluted by everyone who came before it, so a strong month barely registered. Monthly cohort mix would have shown the shift as it happened, and led to sharper calls.
The pattern
The biggest opportunities weren't new features. They were sequencing.
Our highest-performing experiments rarely added functionality. They asked the right question at the right moment: moving the email opt-in into onboarding, moving registration to the end, building trust progressively. Sequencing consistently outperformed bigger feature ideas.
The lesson
Trust proved more valuable than accuracy alone.
We focused hard on improving the estimate itself. That mattered, but what moved behaviour was helping homeowners understand why they could trust the number. Context, transparency and honest caveats unlocked more engagement than incremental gains in the model.
Strategy
Decisions that mattered.
These are the choices that made the work strategic, not just well-executed.
01
Make value free.
Trust came before monetisation. If the product felt like a lead trap, homeowners would not identify themselves.
02
Design for non-sellers.
Most homeowners were not moving. The product had to work for curiosity, confidence and ownership, not just transaction intent.
03
Earn the right to scale.
We fixed the funnel before chasing distribution. That sequence made the biggest growth moments durable rather than spiky.
04
Keep the agent the expert.
The estimate opened the conversation, but did not pretend to replace professional valuation advice. That protected the business model and user trust.
Cross-team collaboration
Keeping every stakeholder aligned.
The work crossed multiple products, commercial, data, legal, marketing and engineering. My job was not just to design the interface, but to keep the tension visible and the direction coherent.
Executive stakeholders
What they needed
Confidence that homeowners could move company-level OKRs and create a new commercial growth engine.
How I helped
Kept the story tied to measurable outcomes: identification, registrations, repeat use and valuation leads.
Product partners
What they needed
Clear prioritisation across discovery, MVP delivery, optimisation and scaling work.
How I helped
Maintained the long-term design thread as teams changed, so each experiment compounded rather than reset.
Commercial & legal
What they needed
A product that created homeowner value without undermining agents or overclaiming valuation precision.
How I helped
Designed language, interaction patterns and decision principles that made the estimate useful but appropriately caveated.
In their words
What people said
“
Add a quote about maintaining the long-term product vision while the team changed around you.
PM / Design leader
“
Add a quote about how you helped the team make sense of ambiguity and align on the right bets.
Engineering / Product partner
“
Add a quote about the business impact: registrations, homeowner identification or valuation leads.
Senior stakeholder
Looking forward
Where the leverage is next.
The wins are banked, but the bigger opportunity is still ahead: turning Track from a property estimate into a durable ownership habit.
Retention
Build the reason to return.
The next design challenge is not another front door. It is making the fifth visit feel as valuable as the first.
Commercial
Close the valuation conversion gap.
With 42% of valuation leads already originating from Track, even small conversion improvements could create outsized commercial impact.
Platform
Track as the ownership hub.
Finance, renovation, local market movement and selling readiness all belong in one coherent homeowner destination.
