Name and the one sentence āhead lineā
Pictures
Reviews
References
About
Why we want to house sit
Experience
I would actually like all the other info before reviews and references. They are important, of course, but thereās no point reading them before I know who the sitters are! Luckily I have the freedom of reading the sections in which ever order I want, but it does mean some annoying and unnecessary scrolling up and down.
Edited to add: the app version is much easier and logical to read
@Twitcher Sorry, just edited and added the couple of sections I forgot.
I appreciate THSās intention to improve user experience but this test makes me feel more like a pawn than a valued member. I spent a lot of time writing and editing my profile to tell my story and put my best foot forward. Reading it now is like starting a movie in the middle of the action.
Iām glad Iām not currently applying for sits or Iād be really ticked.
I also just discovered the āIntroduce owners to the pets youāve cared forā subsection in the Experience section. It asks us to upload photos of pets we currently own, have owned in the past, or have cared for.
Is this part of the test too or has it been there for a while and I didnāt realize it?
I already have photos of many of the pets Iāve cared for in my profile so this seems redundant. But if I donāt populate it, my profile seems lacking compared to others whoāve populated theirs.
Do you understand that this ātestā has resulted in many sitter profiles not making sense?
Yes you do! How do I know?
I can see that you felt the need to edit the Experience section of your own housesitter profile to make it read like an introduction. You would not previously have mentioned where you live in the Experience section when it appeared right at the end.
@Debbie If we are applying and didnāt know about how it looks now we may not have put how many years experience we have or listed pets weāve cared for. If a home owner sees that, we may not be selected. We all put work into writing our profiles and now sections are visible that we didnāt know about. It looks like we didnāt fill everything out.
I am all for continuous improvement and not against change per se. I can understand that possibly there is no need to alert HOs about the test so as not to skew the results .
However it is only fair to notify the individual sitters that are affected . They are paid members who could miss out on a sit because their profile is one that has been randomly chosen to be one of the Guinea pigs .
Changing the order means that their profiles no longer flow in a logical order. ( because they were written in a different order )
If itās decided that this new format will be going ahead - sitters will then be able to adjust their profile accordingly. So not to give them the opportunity to do so during the test is not a fair test and will have the unintended consequence of distorting the results and may also loose them the opportunity of a sit which they would have otherwise been successful in securing .
I think it would be fairer to contact all sitters who have been randomly chosen to be part of the test and give them the full information with the opportunity to opt out of the test .
@LovingLife I too just discovered that section yesterday. Itās laborious to complete and there are dog breeds missing like Groodle that I needed and you canāt free text. Then you have to search for a photo to attach that will properly fit in to the small circle. I gave up after putting in 4 family pets as that took a while. Like you, all pets we have cared for are in our sitter prolie photos so I couldnāt be bothered putting duplicate photos in another section, unless it becomes easier. Also, after 20 sits our profile would be filled up with 50+ small circle photos and look very cluttered. No thanks.
Thanks for sharing @Crookie . I too recently discovered this section and wasnāt sure whether to invest the time in filling it out, given pets I have sat also feature in my profile photos. Iām not going to bother, given the UX/UI issues youāve described, and also knowing that this is a potentially temporary change associated with split testing. That we could invest time in this content to have it disappear is rather frustrating as a paying customer!
I am glad I am not the only one thrown by this. I went back and forth with support until they pointed out that the text on top is now on the bottom. I am not sure how long this test has been going on but for that time my profile talked about my career, travel etc with no context or introduction, and my pet care and home care experience were hidden below to the point that I didnt see them at all even after several screenshots. I have now rewritten my profile for the new order of things.
I know testing requires a level of ālets see what the lab rats do ifā¦ā (not being pejorative) but when it is something as essential as our public facing profile when we are trying to form relationships and make travel plans, It would be great to know when changes like this are being tested. We are paying for this service after all.
@Knowmad Ben is currently off line, but he posted this 21 days ago, so it looks like the test is yet to finish and there will be an update when it does
Hi there - hope youāre all having great house sits!
Iāve just been updating my profile and there is a section for introduction which Iāve filled in. However on viewing my profile, under the photos the information begins from the āMy experienceā section. Iām just wondering. Has it always been like this? Why have an intro section if itās not viewed.
Look all the way to the bottom. They are conducting a test that has reorganized our well-composed profiles. I ended up rewriting mine so that I wouldnt get rejected for sits. When they reorganize again I will rewrite again. Have a good day.
This really feels like the last nail in the coffin for THS as far as Iām concerned. Following this thread, I went into my profile (which I only updated two months ago) and found all these new changes; they have messed about with things that I spent a lot of time composing and drafting, set my experience years to 0 years - I could have lost out on sits because of that (thanks for flagging that little gem @Debbie) and added a whole raft of āpets Iāve cared for in the pastā thing that restricts form entries but isnāt an exhaustive drop-down list. Whatās wrong with allowing freeform entries there; it feels so restrictive & controlling for no good reason (and how do I know what breeds of chicken Iāve looked after?)
After the 5 application limit my membership was teetering (oops, there goes this post, whisked into the locked thread ether) but now Iām really, really hacked off with the constant and secretive tinkering. Grrrr
@Amethyst@Shella_in_the_Forum@saltrams Thanks for this reminder ā¦I just checked mine and it was also in the wrong order . So I have added the about us information at the start of the experience section so it doesnāt get missed.
I also see that my years of experience had been set to O !!!
Wondering why didnāt member services advise everyone effected so they could manually change this ?
Prior to this change we used to receive lots of requests to sit direct from homeowners and I was wondering why this had dropped of recently but the 0 years experience would definitely put me off if I was a homeowner -
I have corrected this now - but disappointed that THS didnāt inform us that we needed to update this . Lots of members who arenāt on this forum will have no idea.
Does anyone know what date the test ends ? I want to set a reminder to rewrite it .
EDIT i see that this was supposed to have finished already according to this post from @Ben-ProductManager on 15 June .
And because this is an A/B test, some (like me) still see your profile info in the original order. So when you update your profile to make sense for the new in-testing format, it seems odd for those who are seeing the old format So, I donāt think you can win in this game, the profile is going to look odd to someone anyway
I am very curious @Ben-ProductManager, are you able to update us on when the test will be over and when we might want to re-check our profiles to make sure our profiles communicate what we would like? I am also very curious as to what the purpose of the test was? What was the improvement THS was exploring? I am sure it must address some of the needs of pet parents or sitters, but my unscientific brain isnāt seeing the connection. Thanks in advance.
So, I donāt think you can win in this game, the profile is going to look odd to someone anyway 