If you’re a veteran swapper then you’ll remember that a few years ago we made some changes to the site to deal with an important issue that you’d brought to our attention: ‘timewasters’! We want to remind you of the useful features in the site to stop this behaviour and for those of you who are new to HomeSwapper, to give you a breakdown of what’s in the system to encourage good use.
What did we do first?
We asked you, of course! And you gave us some great suggestions for changes that could be made to the site. Our team then explored all the options, looking for solutions that would be fair to everyone.
The ‘timewasting’ issue that seemed most important to our users was when swappers didn’t respond to their messages, so it was this one that we decided to tackle first.
This first change meant that if any swapper hadn’t replied to all of their messages in the last 3 months, then they would be blocked from contacting other swappers. You can read a full description of this update here.
So, what were the results? To put it simply, they were great! Within only 6 months of this change being put in place, 83% of swappers were replying to their messages.
The badges system
After this successful update, we went back and asked your opinion again – this time about the badges system.
Again, we got some great responses and our badges were updated to offer only the ones that really matter – those that are useful to other swappers and maximise the chances of you finding a swap. To read more on how we updated your badges, just click here.
Tackling inactive accounts
Another issue that seemed very important to our swappers was filtering out the accounts of people who weren’t logging in regularly.
Your suggestions really helped here as well and our team put in an update that greyed out the adverts of swappers who hadn’t logged in for over 10 weeks. This meant that you could see at-a-glance that these swappers were not active users and move past them when searching. We had some great feedback from you all on this one!
“I’ve found it extremely useful after I realised why they were greyed out.”
“It’s brilliant! Makes it so much easier!”
“Great idea!”
“Thanks for the update. I’m sure it will save myself and thousands of others from wasting time contacting swappers that are most probably window shopping or already moved.”
Any user that hasn’t logged in for over 6 months is also automatically archived, so you won’t see them at all when you’re searching for your swap.
Taking a proactive approach
Finally, you can filter out any users yourself that aren’t as active as you’d like them to be. We’ve added icons on swappers’ adverts so you can see the last time that they logged in, as well as their reply percentage. You can also filter your matches and search results by ‘last logged in’ date and if they’re ‘serious about swapping’. All of this means that you can make sure that you’re only contacting active swappers!
The HomeSwapper Customer Support team are always on hand to give advice and tips on how to get the most from HomeSwapper. They deal with Swappers every day and have a unique insight and view on the thousands of successful swaps that take place on HomeSwapper.
