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.
I would hate to see the ‘invite to sit’ button disappear, for the same reasons already mentioned. As has already been said, there’s more pressing things to ‘fix. One of them being that I spend a lot of time putting information into Neighbourhood section the Welcome Guide, including maps and notes and links… And the sitter can’t see them! And they don’t get printed either. Another is actually putting in seeing details about your pets’ likes/dislikes/routines/food etc - it is quite well hidden in the WG.
@Marion, curious. we’ve had multiple repeat sits. each has been initiated by THS Message or WhatsApp by pet parent prior to any active THS listing. we have not received repeat housesit via invite feature after THS is active. all of our blind invites for active THS listings have been from unknown pet parents, not repeat housesits. from your comment then guess process differs by pet parent. our experience may not be representative but good that THS receives feedback from different perspectives.
I don’t think there is a different process. I think I wasn’t clear about what the interface looks like from a homeowner perspective.
Here is what I do when I want to invite a sitter privately: When I have my dates firmed up, I will go to my settings and create a private dates. This means the dates are NOT published publicly. I can then invite whatever sitters I’d like to apply to sit on those dates. Usually, I’ll invite one sitter at a time who previously sat for me or whom I’d had some back and forth with but the logistics didn’t work out. This allows them to apply and then I can confirm them.
I can also start this process on WhatsApp or outside of the system by asking the sitter if they are interested and can do the dates, but once a sitter shows an interest, in order to make the sit official, I’d need to send them a private invitation by creating a private date and inviting the sitter. I could also invite other sitters if I wanted to as the sitter would need to accept the invitation before they could be confirmed and then would have to accept the sit.
Maybe I have it wrong, but it sounds like the new system may make it more difficult to do this. Maybe it just refers to random invites. I’m not sure. But THS has a tendency to reactively change things and solve problems with a sledgehammer where a surgical tool would be better.
I understand that some new homeowners invite random sitters and are frustrated that they can’t come. I understand that some sitters are apparently swamped with invitations from random homeowners. But I don’t know the extent of what THS is planning to do. All I am saying is that I wouldn’t want to lose the ability to privately invite someone. There are other reasons that private invites work. For instance, it can be used as a way to reach out to sitters about future dates. So if lets say, Fred has Afghan hounds and really needs someone with Afghan experience on account of how “special” Afghans are, Fred could in the current system send an invite for a fake date to Terry saying, “Hi Terry. You are an Afghan specialist. I would love to take my first dog-free vacation in five years! I’m thinking of traveling for 2-4 weeks in sping 2026, I wanted to know if you would be interested in coming to my chateau in Cannes to watch them and am willing to work my schedule around yours.”
Under the new scenario Fred would lose the ability to do this I think and Terry would lose what could be the sit of a lifetime.
if the issue is that some new homeowners don’t understand how the system works, that means THS needs to do a better job of prompting them. It does not mean they need to muck things up that work.
@GotYourBack – So I’m curious. Are you saying there was an active PUBLIC listing on repreat sits? In other words, did the homeowner give you a headsup that they were going to post and you should apply? If so what happened to the other applicants? I think THS probably wants there to be a public listing – but then it’s a kind of bait and switch since the homeowner will likely decline anyone who isn’t you.
Per what I wrote, I’ve been bypassing the public system to invite previous sitters – or at least get an idea of their interest before putting out a public listing. This might not matter much for some sits in not-so-great locations that aren’t likely to get a lot of applications, but in sits that are likely to fill up and then keep filling up it’s likely homeowners will just decide it’s impossible to invite someone back. That may be how the system wants it in order to spread opportunity around.
On multiple occasions, a Pet Parent for whom we’ve completed a housesit has reached out to us - before any THS listing - to ask about draft dates of a forthcoming trip; our availability; and our appetite to return to their property/pets for a repeat housesit.
We invest time/effort and periodically keep in touch with some historical pet parents as we’d love to go back, for one reason or another, to their location/property/pets.
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