Homepage Optimization

Turning a failing homepage direction into a successful launch through strategic UX decisions and user validation.

Progress Residential • 2025

Overview
Role

UX/UI Design

Team

1 product manager, 1 UX designer, 1 copywriter

Tools

Figma, Maze

Challenge

A redesigned homepage was introduced as part of an A/B test aimed at improving trust, simplifying home discovery, and increasing funnel conversion. However, early test results showed the original homepage was outperforming the new experience.

Solution

Identify friction points in the redesigned homepage to help the new experience outperform the original in a re-launch.

Control
Treatment
Project Background

Shortly after joining Progress Residential, I inherited a homepage redesign experiment that had already launched prior to my arrival. The redesign was intended to simplify search, build trust, and improve conversion, but early A/B test results showed the original homepage was consistently outperforming the new experience.

Rather than retiring the new experience entirely, Product wanted to understand why it underperformed and determine whether it was worth iterating on. As the new designer on the team, I was tasked with evaluating friction points in the redesign and identifying quick, high-impact improvements that could give the homepage a second chance.

Original Hypothesis:

We anticipated that users in the treatment group would demonstrate higher conversion rates than the ‘control’ group, driven by a simplified search experience, the addition of market carousels, enhanced business credibility, and a refreshed modern UX design.

Results:

Contrary to our hypothesis, the ‘control’ group consistently outperformed the treatment group in conversion rates. The results have reached statistical significance, indicating that the current redesign does not improve performance relative to the original experience. We need to iterate on the experiment and re-launch with a new approach. 

Chapter I

Research

Why may ‘control’ be outperforming the new version?

After reviewing the failed experiment, Product outlined several hypotheses for why the redesign may have underperformed. These assumptions helped shape where I focused my research and validation efforts:

  • Language Relevance: The terms “rent” and “rental” are underutilized in the treatment, potentially reducing alignment with user intent to lease. 

  • Hero Imagery: Visuals may trigger less effective emotional responses, impacting engagement. Unconscious emotions trigger different behaviors. 

  • Search Priority on Mobile: The control version prioritizes search functionality, resulting in higher user interaction. On mobile treatment, the search is not as prevalent. 

  • Component Positioning: Layout may not guide users effectively through the “find a home” journey. Treatment emphasizes content heavily vs. functionality. 

  • Mobile Optimization: Dense copy and oversized imagery reduce usability and visibility on smaller screens.

  • Accessibility: Coral text on white background fails AAA compliance, potentially impacting readability.


Page Performance

During this phase, engineering flagged a major performance issue tied to page load speed. The homepage hero image was significantly slowing load times because the asset alone was 12.6 MB. This was especially concerning on mobile, where the majority of our traffic was coming from.

Engineering recommended converting the image from PNG to WebP format and reducing the file size to under 200 KB.


Scroll Depth

While reviewing FullStory heatmaps, I noticed mobile users (who represented the majority of our traffic) weren’t scrolling very far down the homepage. This immediately raised questions around content prioritization and screen real estate.

With limited scroll depth on mobile, shortening the affordable housing banner became an opportunity to help users reach key conversion CTAs sooner.

Product also noted that the treatment experience showed slightly lower average scroll depth than the control, potentially because users were engaging with top features more (maybe a good thing?).

Prioritizing search visibility on mobile

I noticed in the original redesign that the search bar was pushed below the hero image which draws attention away from it — exactly what we don't want when over 80% of users are navigating the website on their mobile device. I planned to reposition the search higher within the hero experience to keep the primary action front and center.

Validating the homepage through Maze testing

Since search was the most important action on the homepage, and often a user’s first impression of the brand, I wanted additional validation before recommending another relaunch. I used Maze to quickly gather qualitative feedback on the redesigned mobile homepage and to better understand how users were interacting with the updated search experience.

Maze Results


The test included 54 participants and focused on three areas:

  1. 10-second impression test

Users were shown the homepage for 10 seconds and asked what they believed the website was used for.

58% correctly identified the website as a home rental platform, while 31% assumed it was for apartment rentals — revealing an opportunity to better clarify Progress Residential’s offering through messaging and imagery.

  1. A/B preference test

Users compared the original homepage against the redesign and selected which search experience they preferred.

69% preferred the redesigned homepage, describing it as cleaner, easier to read, and more focused on search. Users who preferred the original experience appreciated its filtering options and more direct “Find My Home” CTA.

  1. Prototype task

Users were asked to search for available homes in Dallas, TX.

96% successfully completed the task using the search bar, reinforcing that users naturally gravitated toward the primary action we wanted them to take.

Key Takeaway

While the original homepage performed better in the live experiment, Maze testing revealed that users overwhelmingly preferred the redesigned search experience.

Chapter II

Riff

Design Updates

After identifying friction points through performance data, FullStory analysis, and Maze testing, I translated those insights into a series of design updates aimed at improving clarity, reducing friction, and strengthening the homepage’s primary conversion path.

I made the following updates to the original redesign:

  • Reintroduced clearer rental language in collaboration with a copywriter

  • Shortened carousel cards and the affordable housing banner to help users reach key actions faster

  • Optimized hero imagery to improve load performance

  • Refined messaging and visuals to better align with user expectations

  • Prioritized high-conversion homepage elements higher in the experience

  • Updated coral text to teal to meet accessibility standards

These updates helped create a more focused experience while preserving the strengths users had already responded positively to in Maze testing.

Chapter III

Refine

Rethinking the rollout strategy

Following organizational changes, I unexpectedly became the primary UX owner of this project. With limited historical context across teams, I stepped in to drive stakeholder approvals, align with Brand, and advocate for prioritizing the experiment in an upcoming development sprint.

While reviewing the original A/B test, I identified a larger issue: too many variables had changed at once.

Because nearly every section of the homepage had been redesigned simultaneously, it became difficult to understand what was actually impacting performance. If results underperformed again, we still wouldn’t know whether the issue stemmed from search, messaging, imagery, page performance, or lower-priority content further down the page.

To reduce risk and create a more measurable experiment, I proposed a more focused rollout strategy: launch only the first half of the homepage rather than releasing the full redesign at once.

This approach allowed us to prioritize the highest-impact areas, particularly content above and near the fold, while isolating key variables.

What's now the same between control and treatment:

  • Share the same lower-page content beginning at “What Our Residents Are Saying”

  • Use the same hero image

  • Use the same headline above the search bar

  • Maintain the same affordable housing banner and placement


What's now different between control and treatment:

  • Testing two different search bar designs

  • Testing two different hero image heights

  • Control keeps "Why Rent a Home with Progress Residential?" section and treatment brings in the "Rental Homes by Region" carousel instead

    • Since so many people are clicking the "Quality Rental Homes" card, I advocated to make that clickable and link out to homes for rent. That way we could see what's getting more attention: the static card or the carousel?


This could help us to learn:

  • Which search experience is performing better?

  • Are users engaging more with the static card or carousel experience?

  • Does banner placement influence engagement on mobile?

The phased rollout strategy was approved by Brand, key stakeholders, and executives, with plans to introduce lower-page content in future iterations after stronger validation.

Chapter IV

Reflect

A/B Test Results

Unlike the original redesign, which significantly underperformed against the control, the revised experiment performed much more closely to the original experience while increasing engagement with home browsing.

By narrowing variables and prioritizing higher-impact elements first, the team gained clearer insight into how specific homepage changes impacted performance without risking another major drop in conversions.

Although not every metric improved, the revised experience performed strongly enough for stakeholders to declare the new homepage the winning experience and move forward with it.


Key Takeaway:

Testing fewer variables at once created a clearer path to iteration and helped turn an underperforming redesign into a launchable experience.

What I Learned

  1. Metrics only tell part of the story. While we had conversion data, understanding why users were behaving a certain way proved much harder. Without behavioral insights, it felt like too many assumptions were being made. Combining quantitative metrics with qualitative research through Maze helped validate user behavior and gave the team more confidence in future decisions.

  2. Clear communication is just as important as design execution. After organizational changes, I unexpectedly found myself driving conversations that extended beyond design — aligning stakeholders, documenting decisions, and advocating for why this experiment deserved another launch. It reinforced how important over-communication can be, especially when multiple teams are involved. Keeping a clear paper trail and documenting what was agreed upon helped prevent misalignment and kept the project moving forward.

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2026

Elizabeth Ardelt