Etuovi.com helps home buyers make sustainable choices

Corporate responsibility is an important and constantly developing part of Alma’s business. Alma helps individuals make responsible and sustainable choices in major life decisions concerning for example housing, means of transport and working life.

Responsibility is reflected in the business operations in various means in Alma’s units. Solutions can be small service development elements or bigger ideas that create new business at best. This article presents a case of product development with customer insight from Alma’s housing services.

Service concept development

In November 2021, two workshops were held to explore sustainability trends and models and identify business concepts that Alma’s digital platforms could grasp. In particular, one of the concepts developed in the workshop has been put to good use on Etuovi.com and Vuokraovi.com services. The aim of the concept is to enable individuals to make sustainable housing decisions easily and quickly, and to offer the housing professionals a platform to market their own services promoting sustainable choices.

“The home buyer is interested in issues such as energy efficiency, condominium recycling services, sharing facilities or electric car charging options, as well as how to find environmentally friendly and wallet-friendly homes, as someone already suggested in their customer feedback,” says Marjaana Lehtimäki, who develops the digital customer experience in Alma’s housing services. Big sustainable choices in housing can be made both in search of a new home and by improving the existing home.

In Etuovi.com one can already search for houses based on the ecology and sustainable solutions, such as heating mode, building materials and energy rating of the apartment, as well as on renovations and future renovations. At the beginning of this year, Etuovi.com published My Locations feature where the user can assess the need for movement on a map which shows the location of the apartment or house for sale. This helps the signed-in user to perceive the location of the possible new apartment relative to their own important locations, such as work, school, or hobbies. The user can assess the need for daily movement by foot, bike, car or public transport and make sustainable choices regarding the new residence.

“To date, with small things, we have improved Etuovi.com service and also raised awareness of sustainable choices by publishing Etuovi.com’s Ideas & Tips articles (in Finnish) on the subject. Commercial content partnerships enable our business customers to share their own sustainable solutions, and this type of content has been produced more and more” says Marjaana.

Based on customer insight

To support the product development, housing services regularly conduct various customer surveys. In November—December 2022, as part of Etuovi.com’s Markkinapulssi survey, questions were asked about the importance of environmental friendliness in housing related to the thesis of Anni Ketola, who works with the KIVI real estate ERP-system.

“Through the questions, the goal was to find out how interested the users of Etuovi.com are in the environmental friendliness of housing, and how important home buyers consider the environmental friendliness when comparing items and making final purchasing decisions,” Anni says. The knowledge gained will be utilized in the housing service service development and Etuovi.com marketing communications.

Read more about the results of the questionnaire in Finnish.

More about Alma’s sustainability work in the latest Corporate Responsibility Report.

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