Decent site but needs some tweaks.
There are certain things which HomeSwapper could implement to improve my overall user experience.
To deal with users who ignore messages, restrict what they can see of other people’s ads, just like it’s restricted when you’re not logged in. Or, make it so they can’t see anyone’s pictures until they reply to any messages more than 2 weeks old. They will change their ways and show some common courtesy if their own user experience is affected. Restricting their messaging will not work, as they’re not the type that send messages. They are purely there to have a nose!
I have a ground floor flat and I don’t want to be in one again, but that’s almost all I get offers for because I’m matching with them. You can restrict your search ONLY to ground floor, but not filter it out. I would like to see an option to exclude ground floor.
There could be a field to put in whether your landlord allows under occupancy. It would help weed out some of the properties you definitely can’t move to and those who can’t move to yours. Users can put it in their description but most people won’t think to if it’s not an actual field to be filled out.
There are only 9 search fields to put in your preferred areas. If there are 15 areas you’re specifically interested in and you can only put in 9, you end up having to widen the radius of some of those to take in the areas you don’t have a free search slot for. The problem is it then takes in other areas that you don’t want, and you have people in those areas expecting you to be interested in their property because you’ve matched with them. Glassbob offers many more slots. There could also be separate slots that make it clear you are looking for multi swap properties in the area, but don’t want to move there yourself.
The email notifications need to differentiate clearly between matches from HomeSwapper, likes, and actual messages from users. Some people will ignore all the emails because they assume it’s just more matches that they’ve probably seen before (you tend to get the same matches over and over). They are less likely to ignore an email that says “User xxxxx has sent you a message”, rather than “You have new notifications“.
Saved for later allows you to save 2500 properties, which is great, but there’s no way to organise them. I might want to organise by town, or by which of my multi swaps they might potentially work for. I’d like to put them in named categories/sections, as it’s all too much of a jumble.
When I send a link to someone for a property that might work for them in a multi swap, it is not clickable in messages. Some people are not tech savvy enough to copy and paste the link into a browser. Clickable links need to be enabled.
There are too many “I don’t know“s in the tenancy type field. It shouldn’t be an option. They only need to make a phone call to find out.
“Features they need” could be divided into “must haves”, and “desired, but not essential”. Another reviewer suggested this, and it would definitely help to work out whether it’s worth enquiring when you don’t have absolutely everything someone says they need.
Simple searches can only be done within 20 miles of a specific location. Sometimes, say for the purposes of a 4 way multi swap, I would like to be able to find someone ANYWHERE who wants a certain place. If, for example, location A wants mine (B), but I don’t want A, and I can’t find someone in my preferred area (C) to take A and make up a 3 way, I could find someone ANYWHERE (D) who wants A and then use specific locations to find someone in C who’ll take D. Simple search is no good to find D in this scenario if you don’t know where D might be yet.
I would really like to see some of these implemented.
September 12, 2024
Unprompted review
