I wanted to give you all an update from the team around the owner landing page and navigation, after @frenchlifeposted to ask about some recent changes. I’ve also shared some screenshots at the bottom for you to take a look at.
Here’s what the team has to share:
Owner landing page and navigation
We’re working on some updates to the website to make the experience better for our Owner members. Our main goal is to create a more straightforward path for Owners, helping Owners get their listings live more efficiently and making the overall process smoother.
What This Means for Owners
We’re restructuring the site to highlight the key actions Owners need to take. Currently, some important steps, like checking messages, reviewing sitter applications, or sharing welcome guides, are a bit hidden. We want to bring these actions to the forefront, making it clear what your next steps are from the moment you join. This should lead to a more focused user experience.
Benefits for Sitters
While these initial changes are focused on Owners, we expect them to indirectly benefit our Sitters as well. By making it quicker and easier for Owners to get their listings live, we expect to see more available and higher-quality sits. We’re addressing some common frustrations, such as delays in responses or the lack of shared welcome guides, by guiding Owners through these processes more effectively.
Streamlining the Experience
We’re looking to make it easier for Owners to join the platform to publishing a listing. This includes reorganising the Owners’ navigation and clearly separating the Sitter experience from the Owner experience. Our focus is on making the key actions Owners need to take immediately clear.
A Note on Invites
You might notice that we have de-emphasised "Invite a Sitter” feature. We’ve found that most sits are secured through Sitter applications, and this adjustment will help prevent Sitters from receiving an excessive number of invites. So we are testing this change.These changes will be rolled out gradually over the coming months, and we plan to apply similar improvements to the Sitter side of the platform in the future. We’re committed to making the platform as user-friendly as possible for our entire community.
We appreciate your understanding and feedback as we make these improvements.
Thanks for sharing this @Jenny. I do hope where the Team are making some updates to help Owner members that they highlight the Third Party Policy and the Recording and Camera Policy, two policies that sitters frequently have issues with.
I understand that many new members over-invite. That’s a problem that could be solved by prompts.
But sometimes I want to invite people who have previoiusly sat for me to sits and sometimes people who didn’t because something didn’t work out but the chemistry was good. As it is, it is now more difficult to find these “old” sitters in the system since there is no way to search for them automatically. Now it will be even harder to invite sitters except by calling them directly which could be awkward if they are no longer members.
This looks like another unasked for change that might not make things better for anyone.
I really hope this doesn’t mean that I can’t choose a sitter anymore or invite someone back for second sit. Will it even be an option? Or will it be so cumbersome that we’ll just go outside the system? This really doesn’t sound like an improvement.
Is this possibly a ploy by THS to make sure that sits like mine – in popular areas – are “open” to more sitters so in order to invite Alice back for instance, I’d have to contact Alice and tell her when I’m posting so she can get her invitation in before the five slots full up? Then on pop up digital ads it appears like there are more “open” sits in popular areas which attracts more new members? In other words, this is not for the benefit of current sitters or homeowners.
Here is what an improvement looks like: Make a 5 minute video showing “How to choose a sitter.” Make sure it’s clear that looking at random sitters won’t work and why.
Here is another improvement: Bring back the sort and search features on homeowners’ emails so they can easily find the sitters that worked for them before.
Here is another improvement: Get rid of “ghost” pet information that still exists on the app but not on the website and that most homeowners aren’t aware of but may become very aware of it when sitters ask about long deceased pets.
While this is helpful, it is a mis-prioritised given the more important concerns re: recording and camera and third party policies. In other words, I second Temba !
I don’t know if this is relevant to this topic.
An experienced homeowner I have sat for before can no longer work out how to send me a private invitation. She didn’t have a problem previously.
Her first attempt resulted in her dates appearing on the website and attracting applications. She had to decline them and explain the situation.
Not great, she felt awful and it was frustrating and time consuming.
I still haven’t received the private invitation.
THS really do need to work through and test their ‘improvements’ before they launch them.
I see that it’s no longer possible for a HO to look at other sits using the web site. I often check out other sits in my area to see how many have dates open for the same time that I plan to list mine. I can still do that on the app and I hope that that possibility won’t disappear.
I thought the more pressing issues to address were to make sure the security camera legalities are clear, and to have clearer verbiage around the HO to sitter relationship (ie, we both pay for this site, it is an experiment in matching for mutual benefit, and not a place where HOs are informally “hiring” sitters).
Plus to have clearer understandings or even elimination around the random “rating categories” that get pushed on both sides at the end, especially the cleanliness one which has been a huge topic in the threads. All of these are huge topics in the threads….
@Jenny, sounds sensible stuff.
To support feedback from others, we’d encourage Owners required to read & tick acceptance of key policy documents - especially those that are problematic in practice.
We’d also support mandatory completion of amenities. While it may seem quick to skip over such details then it seems a false economy as a listing with only ‘basic wifi’ probably receives no/few applications (we’d dismiss) and so get frustrated and need support.
Anything that encourages/requires upfront completion of Welcome Guides is to be applauded. This clearly takes time. And qualities of WG vary a lot in reality. But there’s a huge jump from no WG to basic WG. Even better if this required prior to listing, or sit invitation.
De-emphasis of ‘invite a sitter’ seems super smart. We’ve received many cold invitations and progressed none of them. A small subset we’ve maintained contact as seemed good opportunity but wrong time. But most of them added questionable value-add and probably set poor expectations and therefore frustration to pet parent.
Good luck with functional enhancements .
Ugh. I think I may have been one of the sitters who applied (twice, including a 2nd time after the date on her listing changed.) I think we both ended up getting the wrong impression & now I feel like we’ve both missed out on the possibility of a great match-up for future sits, due to a misunderstanding.
While data may show that “more” sits are initiated by applications (I’m sure that’s true!), half my sits have been by invitation (local/last minute sits; I’m flexible & like to help out while building my experience), & planned repeat sits. Another recent HO didn’t know he could send invites to ppl who’ve favorited their listing.
PLEASE do not generically de-emphasize this feature. We all do this for different reasons and in different ways. Or maybe consider posting ideas for big changes before implementing them, to get input & help prioritize. Or at least create some sort of user group from community members to get advance feedback…? My company had an on-going user group for this purpose, & you already have a forum of users to choose from.
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