One major issue that consumers repeatedly reported when using the Checkatrade website to find tradespeople was that they often did not receive a response when reaching out to trades. Initial user research with trades revealed that this was because the trades that appeared at the top of the search results were often too busy to carry out the work or even respond. This lack of response from trades reduced consumer confidence in Checkatrade's ability to help them find a suitable tradesperson.
To address this issue, we created a solution that enabled tradespeople to publish their availability and allowed consumers to filter search results based on availability. We also recognised that consumer satisfaction increased when the time to starting work was reduced. As a result, we added a "Available Now" hero section at the top of the search results to highlight trades that were immediately available. This also provided an opportunity to those trades that were new to the site or just starting out in business as those that had better availability would be promoted.
The initial wireframes for ‘trade availability’ search results
The initial wireframes for ‘trade availability’ search results
The final designs for the ‘trade availability’ search results on mobile.
Mobile experience prototype for ‘trade availability’ search results
Mobile experience prototype for ‘trade availability’ search results