Airbnb vs Xiaozhu in China: A Usability Case Study

Xiaozhu (short for XiaoZhuDuanZu 小猪短租) is China's version of Airbnb. When I asked people what they use to find places to stay when they travel, Airbnb and Xiaozhu came up as the main apps on their phones. Although Airbnb entered the Chinese market later than Xiaozhu (Airbnb entered in 2016 and Xiaozhu founded in 2012), Airbnb gained popularity earlier. People in this country have an insatiable appetite for international travel and are quick to adopt technology that makes their lives easier. I wanted to learn how people use Airbnb and how the experience differs with Xiaozhu.com, from the demand side. So, I picked a combination of unstructured interviews and usability testing to gather insights.

Goals:

1. Can people easily find a rental for a specific date range and location?

2. What are the pain points in the user experience on Airbnb vs Xiaozhu?

User Persona:

• Working professional between 25-35 years old.

• Enjoys travel and exploring different cultures.

• Wants to save money on accommodation without sacrificing the quality of their travel experience.

• Wants to experience the local culture when travelling, so they want to have a unique experience by using short term rental platforms rather than choosing a 'cookie-cutter' experience with hotel chains.

• Lives in big first-tier cities (for this case study, people who live in Beijing).

• Grew up in China, influenced by the West, e.g studied or worked abroad.

Tasks:

International booking:

1. You have plans to go to Bangkok during the national holiday from Oct 1-7, 2018 with 4 friends. Search for a place to stay in Bangkok.

Domestic booking:

2. You have plans to go to Shanghai to meet some friends for fun and want to book a place for yourself. Try to find a place you like and save it.

Findings

1. The main difference in usability is the filtering and sorting functionality between the two platforms. It is easier to sort and filter with Xiaozhu than with Airbnb.

You can see below that Xiaozhu's filtering system is prominent and extensive, making it clear that it's the first thing they want users to do. It's almost half the page above the fold. For Airbnb, they want people to focus on the listings, so filters is just a small section.

Both platforms use a horizontal bar but for Airbnb, the filters aren't obvious and are buried deep. This might cause people to forget to first indicate the date range. Such is the case for a user who forgot to indicate a date range, found a rental she liked, but when it came to booking, the rental wasn't available for the dates.

Airbnb also doesn't allow you to sort by cost. The user wanted to find the best quality rental for the lowest price. As it's not clear how Airbnb sorts the listings, the user just has to trust that Airbnb puts the best quality rentals first but feels that she might miss out on cheaper rentals.

In many Chinese apps, including Xiaozhu, there is easy access to common sorting patterns, such as the ability to sort by cost (low to high and vice versa), recommended, and ratings. In the image below, you can see that Xiaozhu offers three separate text links for those sorting patterns. By comparison, Airbnb's doesn't offer those sorting patterns.

Part of the difference might be that Chinese users want quick access to filters. In comparison, apps in the US like Airbnb often use an page overlay for filters.

If we take a look at their mobile apps, we see the same navigation pattern. See below for a comparison of Xiaozhu's mobile app (left) and Airbnb's mobile app (right).

Xiaozhu (left) vs Airbnb (right)

Right off the bat, you can see that Xiaozhu gives users a lot more options and control to filter. It has two levels of search; although the user already specified Shanghai, it allows you to type in a specific neighborhood or even the name of the host. Underneath the search bar are two rows of filters. The first row of filters allows you to indicate date of stay, specify location preference (neighborhoods, train stations, schools, etc), price range, home type, sorting by recommended/price/reviews, etc. The row below that is another set of filters to speed up the booking process, such as instant book, book now/pay later, etc. By comparison, Airbnb has just 3 links: date range, guest #, and filters. The last one, called 'Filters', has all of the categories that one would want to specify, such as home type, neighborhoods, etc.

2. Another example where Xiaozhu gives users quick access to information is having a sticky navigation bar at the top with anchor links that jump to different sections of the page.

Since Chinese users are used to seeing a lot of information at once, Xiaozhu provides a navigation bar so users don't have to scroll a lot. You can see below in the highlighted area, there are 5 text links to the right of the sharing and heart feature. There are actually more text links. To see more links, you scroll horizontally to see amenities, recommended listings, and more. By comparison, Airbnb has a cleaner and minimalistic design and a shorter page. To see more information, you need to access them from a second layer of navigation.

Xiaozhu (left) vs Airbnb (right)

3. Removing conditions set in the filter is easier in Xiaozhu.

If you clicked on a checked filter, it would immediately uncheck it and results are refreshed. For Airbnb, the user didn't immediately notice you had to click on confirm, as shown below. She wanted to change the filter from 5 people to 1 person, but didn't realize she needed to click on Confirm in order to refresh results. She proceeded to click on other filter conditions to see if she would be able to return to the search results, e.g as you can see below in the image with her cursor, she clicked on a different filter condition.

4. The search bar is less intuitive to use in Xiaozhu.

When you open both apps, you can see that in their search bars, there's placeholder text. A big difference with Xiaozhu's search bar is that it has a downward facing caret. When you tap on it, you are presented with a myriad of ways to specify a location.

Homepage:

Xiaozhu (left) vs Airbnb (right)

After tapping on search bar:

Xiaozhu (left) vs Airbnb (right)

After tapping on the search bar on Xiaozhu's homepage, one of the users couldn't find where to type in the city name (Shanghai).

• One reason is that there's a lot going on in the screen. Under the search bar, Xiaozhu has a grid view of icons with links to popular Chinese cities and below that is a list view of the cities in alphabetical order. By comparison, Airbnb shows the user a search bar with a blinking cursor so the user knows that they can just start typing.

• For the user to be able to type in Xiaozhu's search bar, she would have to tap on the search bar again. It takes two taps on the search bar before someone can start to type; for Airbnb, it's just one tap.

• Another reason that might have caused her to not see where to type is the font color of the placeholder text. For Xiaozhu, it's white font against a pink background with text that reads 'Enter city'. The font color doesn't look lighter than the background, making it appear to be a headline or text that's already been entered. Airbnb's placeholder text is greyed out, prompting the user to type something there.

5. Airbnb's save list feature is faster and easier to use.

Saving a rental that you like to a list in Xiaozhu takes extra steps, whereas on Airbnb the process is instant. For Airbnb, once you heart a listing, it will automatically create a category based on the location and save it. For Xiaozhu, it requires you to either create or specify an already set category every time you heart a listing. See below:

6. Xiaozhu's website breaks sometimes.

The website will often crash every time a new filter is added, causing the user to be extremely frustrated and unable to use the product. As you can see below, the user often got redirected to a page that says the user visited too many times and needs to click to confirm you are not a bot. Then you would need to enter a captcha code to fully confirm.

Other findings for Airbnb

• Before using Airbnb, some users will check where are the good areas to stay in. For example, they'll use Feizhu, which is a platform for booking flights and getting recommended travel information, or Zhihu, a Q&A site to find the areas that are close to popular sites. It would be a good idea for Airbnb to provide a category for homes that are close to the top visited landmarks. If Airbnb can provide a category for closest to the must-sees, in addition to Plus, Family or Work, it would meet the needs of people who are visiting a place for the first time for leisure. Being close to the landmarks is important for vacationers because they're willing to pay a higher price without needing to travel far.

• Another category would be for homes that are designed to reflect the local culture. I noticed a few of the users were scrolling through looking for places that have a unique local flare, instead of hotel-style rooms.

Other findings for Xiaozhu

• Xiaozhu has more rental listings for the domestic market, but lack international listings.

• Chinese users prefer to use mobile apps, which might explain why Xiaozhu devoted more time to their mobile app instead of the website. Their website was inaccessible at times.

Conclusion

Generally Airbnb has a cleaner and sleeker design compared to Xiaozhu, which has a lot of information on the screen, similar to most Chinese apps and site design. Airbnb's clean and minimalistic design isn't exactly what Chinese users are used to. Generally, they want quick access to information and have a high tolerance for information packed screens and less white space.

While it appears to be harder to 'find things' on Airbnb, Airbnb still seems to be the preferred option. There is foreign brand recognition/trust and a user experience that extends beyond usability, which has helped Airbnb succeed in this market in first-tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai. For example, since one user had good experiences staying with Airbnb, she feels confident choosing Airbnb first to find rentals vs Xiaozhu. Whether Airbnb has brand recognition and adoption in smaller cities is another research topic to explore.