LUN.ua — Andrew Veles

LUN.ua

2013-2015

Product Design, Visual Design, User Interface, User Experience

2013-2015

Product Design, Visual Design, User Interface, User Experience

2013-2015

Product Design, Visual Design, User Interface, User Experience

2013-2015

Product Design, Visual Design, User Interface, User Experience

LUN is a search engine for real estate created to help people choose the best in Ukraine and Russia.

The real estate market in Ukraine is not as developed as its neighbors in Europe and USA. Choosing between different apartments for daily rent, lease and even buying one is a huge pain. LUN is a search engine that is aimed to solve the trade-off, aggregating the information from different web catalogs into a single feed with reliable description and photos of each apartment.

I was invited to work in LUN as a user interface designer. However, in several months it revealed that interface work is not enough and there is a need for improvement on a product side.

With my help, for one year in LUN, the number of monthly users increased from 20 000 to 200 000. We have also added a social project for searching the leasing apartment and new visual language.

I was invited to work in LUN as a user interface designer. However, in several months it revealed that interface work is not enough and there is a need for improvement on a product side.

With my help, for one year in LUN, the number of monthly users increased from 20 000 to 200 000. We have also added a social project for searching the leasing apartment and new visual language.

Global objectives at LUN

I highlighted two main goals in the current project. The first, contextualized, can be characterized as the generation of traffic in all possible ways. It aimed to change the behavior in searching the apartments via old-school web ads to the brand new search via a search engine. The second objective was usable search. In time, the company’s slogan has transformed to “Comfortable real estate search”.

Challenges

01

The most complicated challenge was working with the post-soviet markets. Many people simply don’t know how to use search and how the internet works in general. Accordingly, communication language with the user could not work similar to its western analogs. Still, I had to adhere to trends.

02

The second challenge was to adopt SEO techniques on each page. Initially, people searched their apartments via Google and Yandex, and LUN was bypassed because of low links ranging. After relining all the pages, LUN hit the top of Google and Yandex results. Today, Ukrainians and Russians are searching for the right apartment via LUN.

03

The third challenge is a wide variety of projects at LUN. It is divided into three separate departments, each of which has different visitors segment by solvency and level of awareness in a specific aspect of real estate. I had to divide the functionality by three different projects and adapt them for each type of audience.

Projects and team behind

My role

User experience

Working on layouts I had to empathize with website users. For each project. Every single day.

User experience. Working on layouts I had to empathize with website users. For each project. Every single day.

Visual design & communications

I had to follow guidelines, define and inherit the style and develop the brand.

Ideation, research, discovery

I needed to analyze competitors websites, references, and adapt them to Ukrainian realities, thereby generating new ideas.

I needed to analyze all the competitor websites, references and adopt them to Ukrainian realities, thereby generating new ideas.

Sketches

I have no deadlines, so the typical process of design development had no sense. I was advised to sketch all the ideas and present them to the management team.

LUN projects

01

Each UX of the project is completely unique so I couldn’t develop the general template for search results or landings.

02

Create a design for three different projects with separate audiences while inheriting the same guideline is the complex task.

03

Each page had to be optimized for SEO. This means that every page should be properly linked with another one.

LUN Daily rent

LUN
Daily rent

Search engine for renting the apartment like on Airbnb, but instead of the internal system of adding the listing items, the feed with all the apartment in selected area, collected from web ads.

— Attention Slide
Shows quantitive information about LUN Daily rent search as well as the fully-functional search form.

— Attention Slide
Shows quantitive information about LUN Daily rent search as well as the fully-functional search form

— Functional map
Contains all the information LUN has to search by destinations visually as well as linking all the pages between each other (for SEO).

- Popular directions
The intent to design this block is linking with page that contains featured points of interest and search results by this city.

- SEO text
I’m against writing SEO text without context so I proposed divide the text written by copywriter in semantic blocks.

- Popular directions
The intent to design this block is linking with page that contains featured points of interest and search results by this city.

- Tablet map
The map looks slightly different on a map to keep it accessible on touchable devices.

- Popular directions
The intent to design this block is linking with page that contains featured points of interest and search results by this city.

Filters are hidden in the “Filtering” combo box. The most valuable things are showed up.

Call to action “Check out available dates“ is located right on the most valuable things in the ad – on the image.

The map that shows pins of the items from listing, and other ads, hidden above the fold.

You can check out details and book the apartment right on the site the ad is located.

SEO text that has to be on every page.

Complex filtering options
on mobile.

Complex filtering options on mobile.

LUN Real Estate

This is the most profitable project of LUN, which works in a way where the data is not aggregated from the real estate websites, but the information catalog constantly updates instead by the sales team.

Attention slide
Shows semi-functional search form in the middle and featured links in the bottom.

The intent to design this slide is providing a paid option for real estate developers to promote their properties.

Linking with popular real estate regions (of course, for SEO)

We’ve developed the LUN Real estate website considering atomic design system as the main. It allowed us to build the independent wrapper for each property we promoted.

LUN Leasing

LUN
Daily rent

This is a service of searching apartments for leasing. It works the same way as the daily rent search.

Search engine for renting the apartment like on Airbnb, but instead of the internal system of adding the listing items, the feed with all the apartment in selected area, collected from web ads.

LUN Leasing is divided on two sections. The first one is leasing in which people are most interested, the second one is buying the used property.

The intent of this slide is in showing links to other LUN projects.

This is the LUN homepage. It appears when the user enters lun.ua website. On this slide we’re showing the company’s slogan. Then the search appears.

As the LUN Real Estate project is the most profitable one, we are linking these blocks to paid properties from another projects.

The mobile version had to show the search on first screen. This requirement makes it usable at least.

- Popular directions
The intent to design this block is linking with page that contains featured points of interest and search results by this city.

LUN Neighbors

LUN
Neighbors

LUN Neighbors was founded for several reasons. Firstly, the Ukrainian Facebook and VK segment is full of calls for help to find the apartment by the desired cost and value, with a limited list of needs and importance. In 90% of cases people scrolling through these calls.

LUN.Neighbors was founded for several reasons. Firstly, the Ukrainian Facebook and VK segment is full of calls for help to find the apartment by the desired cost and value, with a limited list of needs and importance. In 90% of cases people scrolling through these calls.

This project appeared for creating catchy ads with a generated infographic about the person who wants to rent an apartment by known demands.

01

LUN.Neighbors is my project in LUN. 5 people and I developed this project under art directorship of Denis Sudilkovsky.

02

Project audience — students and people with low income, active social networks users.

80 000+

In about a half of the year of existence, the service generated over 80 000 infographics.

Introductory slide that shows value proposition.

Still introduction. Now we’re showing the amount of users that have used Neighbors. Also, CTA’s located on this slide.

Interest. We are explaining how it works.

Action. All the CTA’s to register.

We developed the instruction to help people understand how to create an infographic.

Then the visitor has to fill all the required fields.

Social step. To make this infographic promoted, the user should post it in his social profile.

Here’s how it looks – these ads are real

Discoveries & Insights

Discoveries
& Insigts

01

The best explanation of the development process is “Imagine that your mom using your site”. It’s the kind of empathy I used to develop the LUN website.

02

The bigger the amount of the links on the website is, the better Google and Yandex rankings are.

03

The map helps users understand the context of search results, but it shouldn’t act as a centric point. People read text better.

04

Price is the most important point. All other parameters go after the price.

05

People stick to the subway stations, and they are less interested in a specific district.

06

There are a lot of scammers disguised as realtors. First, they try to entice prepayments and then they disappear.

07

In Ukraine, realtors are evil, who deceive and withdraw double price of the apartment. The non-intermediary filter used to be popular.

08

To produce trust for a real estate developer, you need to be honest by 100% and fill the page properly, giving maximum information and proofs of its honest.

09

Ukrainians aged 40+ are hard to perceive the user interface. If you want to create a successful website for all the ages, you need to explain each part that may confuse your user.

LUN became the default search for all the visitors and the phrase “Google it” transformed into “Search on LUN”

Press

Forbes

Pravda

Vlasti

Finance.Bigmir

AIN

Glavnoe

Korrespondent

Nashkiev

Businessviews

EST

Interfax

Korrespondent

Nashkiev

Businessviews

EST

Interfax

TV ads

TV Ads