Data makes the difference for Rightmove’s customer experience
Background
Rightmove is the UK’s largest property portal and its mission is to empower decisions around property. This is via a sophisticated, yet simple property search platform that provides the largest, most accurate and comprehensive property listings. This delivers the best experience possible to those searching for a new home.
Challenges
As the largest property marketplace in the UK, Rightmove brings together property data from estate and lettings agents, as well as new homes developers into a single place. One of the biggest challenges therefore is the huge variety of sources from which Rightmove receives data which means its quality can vary to huge degrees. In parallel Rightmove wanted to find a way to merge valuable data on school location, ratings and makeup into search results.
Solution
Historically Rightmove had used Experian’s address cleansing software solution which matched addresses from the data it was receiving to verified reference data sources such as Royal Mail PAF, cleansing them where required. Having considered other options, a recommendation was made to retain Experian’s address cleansing tool and upgrade to a new version which includes AddressBase® Premium. It gives a more granular and up to date view of all addresses and non-addressable locations through their lifecycle. Experian also worked closely with the Rightmove team to scope and blend a series of bespoke data elements and the Edubase file to create a comprehensive and regularly updated source of schools data.
Results
Quicker, more efficient matching of data against AddressBase® Premium is saving time and improving the quality of the data. A second major benefit of working in partnership with Experian has been the opportunity to explore new ways to use data, products and services to improve Rightmove’s offering to customers and fuel innovation. In particular, adding reliable schools data into the mix now gives customers the level of detail they’ve come to expect from Rightmove and keeps them coming back for more.
“ As a result of our partnership, Experian were well versed in exactly what data we needed. We were able to lean on their data assets and expertise to craft a more comprehensive market offering that makes our customers’ experience more complete.”
— Michelle Carr, Team Lead – Data Platforms, Rightmove