Solution
Rightmove is the UK’s largest property portal, attracting over 140 million visits each month. Until now, it existed as a search platform, with the experience ending once users found a property. Sent Enquiries extends that journey, helping people stay organised and engaged up to move-in. It turns what was once a process managed in spreadsheets into a visual timeline that also captures valuable data to enable more personalised experiences across the site.
Role
Lead Product Designer
I led this project as part of a company-wide initiative to keep users engaged on Rightmove after contacting an agent about a property. Together with my PM, I identified Sent Enquiries as the best opportunity to achieve this and defined the strategy for how it could extend the experience beyond search. I led the design process end to end, running card-sorting tests, prototyping across devices, and facilitating workshops to align the team on a scalable solution.
Activities
Product & UX strategy
Behavioural design
Journey mapping
User research & testing
Information architecture
End-end UX design
Cross-functional collaboration
Workshop facilitation
Prototyping
UI and visual design
Team
Duration
April - June 2023
Designed and built within one quarter
Impact
Increased engagement
37% of users on the page interacted with the tool and time on page rose by 12 seconds.
Unlocked new revenue opportunities
New data gathered enabled timely offers and a 4% rise in contents insurance sales
Positive user response
74% of users liked or loved the update in post-release surveys.
Expanded product scope
A new team was created to extend Sent Enquiries into a full moving journey experience.
Problem
Sent Enquiries already existed before our redesign, but it functioned as a static list of properties a user had contacted via Rightmove. Users could view images, the messages they sent to agents, and their own notes, but engagement was low. Around 40K people used the tool each month, yet it offered little reason to return.
A few months after the initial launch, a Hotjar survey revealed a clear pattern: people wanted a better way to organise and track their progress. Across other research, we often saw the same behaviour, with users creating spreadsheets to track progress, copying property links from Rightmove, adding notes, and assigning statuses. Together, these findings highlighted a gap between how people wanted to manage their move and what Rightmove supported.
Research
Our goal was to help users categorise their enquiries in a way that reflected their real moving journey, bringing structure and clarity to what is often a messy process. I mapped out potential statuses for both buying and renting and ran a card-sorting test to understand how people naturally grouped the stages of their move.
The results highlighted that users think in milestones rather than dates, and that clarity around progress was more valuable than granular detail. Working with my Product Manager, I refined the list to capture the essential stages while keeping the model simple enough to scale. To validate our assumptions, we created the following journey stages for buyers and renters, that became the structure in which users moved properties within the tool
Buyer statuses
Enquiry sent
Viewed
Made an offer
Offer accepted
Offer rejected
Purchased STC
Moved in
Renter statuses
Enquiry sent
Viewed
Made an offer
Offer accepted
Offer rejected
Contract signed
Moved in
Development
I led a workshop to align the team on how users should interact with their list of enquiries and to explore scalable navigation patterns across devices. We distilled the strongest ideas into two directions: a side panel and a tab-based layout. I ran comparison testing to evaluate both, finding that mobile users preferred tabs while desktop users favoured the side panel. To ensure consistency and scalability, I chose a hybrid approach that used tabs on mobile and a side panel on desktop.
I defined the information architecture for the property cards through a card-sorting exercise with users to establish a clear hierarchy of content. Key details appeared on the cards, secondary information was placed in a modal, and low-priority elements were removed. As users progressed through their moving journey, I adapted the layout to reflect their priorities, highlighting the address over price once a property reached the offer-accepted stage.
To create a more balanced emotional experience, I replaced the “offer rejected” category with an archive option to avoid a sense of loss or failure. I added moments of joy through celebratory interactions, such as a confetti burst when a property reaches the offer-accepted stage, to highlight the gravitas of this moment. I also refined motion across the experience, including dynamic counters and hover states, to make the interface feel more responsive and alive.
Maximising Value
I proposed the “What happens next” section to help users take their next step in the moving journey. Each stage became a trigger for relevant content and products, from blog guidance to Rightmove services such as Mortgage in Principle, broadband, and contents insurance. It was the first time Rightmove used journey data to deliver contextual product offers, leading to an 8% increase in traffic to Mortgages and a 4% uplift in contents insurance sales.
Final Designs
Users can now organise their enquiries by moving properties through stages that reflect their progress in the moving journey. They can add notes, archive old properties, and track their progress at a glance. The redesign turned Sent Enquiries from a static list into a goal-oriented experience. After launch, 37% of users updated their property stages, time on page rose by 12 seconds, and 74% said they liked or loved the update in post-release surveys..
I introduced a walkthrough anouncing the update. For those starting a new property search after a break, the flow offers to bulk-archive past enquiries, giving them a clean slate for their next move. This recognises the cyclical nature of property searching and keeps the tool relevant each time users return.
This project showed Rightmove a path to keeping users engaged beyond search. While the redesigned Sent Enquiries had limited functionality (simply moving properties through stages), it set a vision for what a full moving-journey experience could become. The concept opened up possibilities for future tools and revenue opportunities at each stage - from moving van bookings once an offer is accepted to, renovation calculators at move-in. The potential was so clear that a dedicated "Moving Journey Tools" team was created to build on this foundation.
Learnings
This project taught me the importance of designing not just for users, but for alignment across teams. As a moving-journey tool, Sent Enquiries naturally became an entry point into other parts of the experience, including rental services, mortgages, and insurance. Some of these teams later felt they could have contributed more if they’d been involved earlier. We designed and built the tool within a single quarter, and in that pace, it became clear how easily fast delivery can outpace cross-team alignment. Now, across all of my projects I create dedicated Slack channels for design updates and stakeholder collaboration. I find that this approach keeps delivery fast whilst keeping everyone on the same page.
Check out more of my work at Rightmove