Making it easier to manage your listing

Product Updates
1

Managing your Listing
Managing your Listing1852×1022 172 KB

We’ve been working on making it easier to create and manage your listing, so you may notice that the listing hub now looks a little different.

What’s Changing?

Instead of everything appearing on one long page, listing information is now split into smaller sections:

  • Your Home & Location
  • Your Pets
  • About
  • Safety & Security

You’ll move through each section step-by-step, rather than scrolling through one very long form. The information we ask for has been reorganised into a simpler, more manageable flow.

Why are we making this change?

We know creating and managing your listing can sometimes feel overwhelming, particularly for new members.

By breaking things into sections, there’s less scrolling, clearer guidance, and it should feel more intuitive overall.

We’re also using this work as the foundation for future improvements to listing creation over the coming months.

When will I see it?

We’re rolling this update out gradually across app and web, so not everyone will see it immediately. The rollout will continue over a couple of weeks.

Is there anything else?

For app users, we’ve also added new tabs for Pet Parents to see the status of each application. We hope that this makes it easier to manage conversations.

  • New = New applicants
  • Invites = Sitters invited by the Pet Parent
  • Archive = Cancelled, withdrawn, declined or inactive applications (inactive are members who have a lapsed/Inactive) membership)

Application Status
Application Status1854×1030 173 KB

What’s next?

This is part of a wider project to improve listing creation and help pet parents publish high-quality listings more confidently.

Next up, we’ll be looking at improvements to image uploads of your home, we’ll share more on that closer to launch.

We’ll also include information about this update in the upcoming TrustedTimes email.

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Riiiiight, because they haven’t recieved enough negative feedback already about the sectioning in the Welcome Guide, causing so many homeowners to create their own shorter and more coherent documents, and enough feedback already that people can’t “find” where to edit stuff like “guest policy” on their own listings.

I already have these sections, and I’m finding it much LESS intuitive and natural than something more narrative which is actually how the human brain works.

3

@Mark_B, will this impact Welcome Guide content?

We always want to keep an off-line copy of a Welcome Guide. Say to check something if walking dog where no internet connection. THS refuses to provide a credibly formatted PDF version of Welcome Guide. So we have to print-to-pdf each section and then stitch together output into a single PDF. Several months ago, THS introduced new sections and it increased the number of sections.

If THS seeks greater sub-sections then please can THS introduce a Print-to-PDF function for a credibly formatted version of THS Welcome Guide.

For what it’s worth then there’s oodles of research on people’s tendency for needlessly excessive organization of information. Sub-sub-subfolders within email clients, file storage systems, etc. Across many topics in life, simple is often good.

4

As a sitter, why do I get the feeling that this improvement is for homeowners to attract more sitters and ultimately make THS more money. Meanwhile, improvements that have been asked by homeowners and sitters for years have had no improvements. The abysmal calendar availability is pathetic and so many of us have asked for that to be improved but to no avail. THS seems to focus on improving aspects that don’t need improving making us think they are making improvements but not the ones we want!

5

I honestly think at this point they have some kind of metrics that drives “changes” and people want to keep their jobs so they come up with “ideas” that they think will work based on A,B,C. There is very little actual thought about how humans think or act or react going into this. There is sometimes reaction or some big idea goal that causes them to make a change they think will get them to the goal and then they stick to it no matter how many people hate it. People also join for a year and new ads will bring in more new members.

I’m old enough to remember the new coke debacle of 1985. When they changed the coca-cola formular, the outcry was enormous and the sales immediately went down so the company changed back with “classic coke”. THS doesn’t work that way. They make the money no matter how terrible things get.

6

Hi @GotYourBack,

Thanks for your question.

No, the welcome guide isn’t impacted here. The change focussed on making it easier to create and update listings, primarily reduces the amount of scrolling involved, and if any section is missed and an error message appears, it’s much easier to see and correct.

This is particularly useful for pet parents who use their mobile/cell phones to create and manage their listings.

7

Absolutely, data is a key part of any prioritisation and decision making.

8

I didn’t mean it as a good thing. “Metrics” as applied now seems to be geared toward making more money – more membershp dollars, and/or other fees. So that means they might make decisions geared toward selling more PREMIUM memberships like making cancellation less of a hassle or adding booking fees on other tiers.

What they aren’t doing, is making the premium cancellation plan or even the perception of it better or doing anything to lessen the number of cancellations like actually track them. The changes coming don’t seem to be anything that anyone actually using the site wants.

IMO making cancellations easier and more likely to happen may in the short run cause more “upgrades” to premium, but it has hidden costs like homeowners who don’t have premium or don’t want to use the insurance “taking a chance” on a less than stellar last minute sitter leading to real world issues, or homeowners and sitters just getting fed up. But if the business model/priority is (1) always be selling new memberships and (2) figure out how to squeeze money out of each transaction (booking fees) the end result isn’t better for users.