Tour Itineraries
A centralized place for buyers to plan, track and manage multi-home tours with their agent, reducing failed tours and building stronger buyer–agent relationships.
My role
Lead design from ideation to launch
Team
1 other designer, a PM, 4 engineering teams, content, date science, marketing
Timeline
Impact
+7%
More buyers scheduled multiple tours on their first day, a sign the itinerary made planning several homes easier.
+2.6%
More completed tours, with more buyers actually showing up and meeting their agent.
+2.2%
More tour requests overall, without adding friction to the flow.
Problem
For buyers:
buyers had to request each tour one property at a time and work out the schedule themselves. And by the tour date, some homes had already gone off market, so tours failed.
For agents:
every no-show cost them time and chipped away at trust. Many buyers also booked just one home per day. When that home went off market, the tour was canceled, and the buyer and agent never met.
HMW Statement
How might we make planning several home tours feel as easy as requesting one, so buyers show up and keep touring with the same agent?
Constraints
Tour times weren't guaranteed.
Agents confirm each tour after the request, so the design had to be honest that a request isn't a booking. That's why each home shows "Requested" or "Confirmed," and bundled requests say the agent will find a time that works.
Scope and cost.
Automatically pulling in tours booked outside Zillow was part of the original vision, but it was too expensive to build for launch. We scoped the first release to tours requested on Zillow.
A new concept.
Buyers had never heard the term "itinerary" on Zillow, so the value had to be clear without explanation.
Key decisions
Part I: ease of scheduling
Part II: ease of managing
Impact
+7%
More buyers scheduled multiple tours on their first day, a sign the itinerary made planning several homes easier.
+2.6%
More completed tours, with more buyers actually showing up and meeting their agent.
+2.2%
More tour requests overall, without adding friction to the flow.
No trade-offs
No negative impact on any primary or secondary metric, including the buyer–agent relationship rate. That cleared it for 100% rollout.
Reflection
-
The shopping cart would have given buyers more control, but also more work. Keeping the familiar flow and letting the agent handle the timing taught me that the simplest experience often comes from deciding who is best placed to do the hard part.
-
After launch, more buyers planned several tours on their first day, but many still chose "Schedule for another day" even when an existing tour day was available. Bundling helps when it fits a buyer's plans, not by default. The next improvement is smarter day suggestions, so buyers see the best-fit day, not just the nearest one.
-
Bringing in tours booked outside Zillow was part of the original vision, but it was too expensive for launch. Starting with tours requested on Zillow let us ship, measure real results and earn the case for the bigger version. Next, I'd bring outside tours into the hub so it becomes the buyer's full touring calendar, and explore shared itineraries for co-shoppers, since buyers rarely tour alone.