Zoopla invests in AI to power the UK’s most data-informed search experience, boosting high-intent buyers for agents as a result

Leading property website Zoopla has announced two new features to increase the number of high-intent buyers on its site. ‘Homes for You’, its first feature powered by AI and a new personalised homepage, will provide a better search experience for buyers and sellers on the Zoopla website. 

This investment is part of Zoopla’s journey to become the UK’s trusted partner for home decisions. A key element of this is providing more personalisation to users, ensuring they can rely on Zoopla to serve them properties that suit their needs (without scrolling through thousands of listings), and ensuring they return to its website to take high-value actions during their search for a new home (like submitting a lead). 

‘Homes for You’ uses AI and a user’s browsing activity on Zoopla.co.uk to power listing recommendations for individual users. It uses recent activity on site such as property saves and views to surface the properties a Zoopla user is likely interested in. This is enriched by ‘smart tags’ which are additional property attributes including balcony, en-suite, period property and garden. These are extracted using Natural Language Processing (NLP) and image detection.

This is complemented by a new personalised homepage which is updated every time a user signs in to Zoopla.co.uk. The personalised homepage highlights homes to users which match their preferences as soon as they reach the site, enabling them to find properties that suit their needs faster. As a result, users could be suggested an ideal property just 0.1 miles outside their normal search area, or slightly below their minimum spend. 

Since launching the personalised homepage, there’s been a 13% increase in logged-in Zoopla users sending a lead from the homepage, demonstrating the value of this new feature for both consumers and agents.

These new features create more engaged, high-intent buyers for Zoopla agents and housebuilders and increase the quality of leads they receive from Zoopla as a result. Since roll-out, there’s been a 2.5X uplift in leads to agents and an increase in actions on the Zoopla site e.g. saving a listing or submitting a lead.

Rich Hayes, Chief Operating Officer at Zoopla comments: “The macroeconomic environment means there’s still uncertainty in the market for buyers and sellers. At Zoopla I believe we have a crucial role to play when it comes to boosting buyer confidence. These new product developments are all about supporting Zoopla users in making the next decision on their property journey, be it finding a suitable property for them, submitting a lead, or having an initial conversation with an agent.”