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Cinemap: map-first marketplace for film equipment

Position: Product Designer

Tasks: qualitative research, homepage IA, search & map flows, UX/UI design for B2B marketplace, managing components and states.

Tools used: Figma

Context & goals

Cinemap is a marketplace for the film industry: renting and selling camera gear, hiring crew, booking locations, plus a professional community and events.

When I joined the project, the product was already live, but the homepage looked like a pure catalog showcase: a large hero banner, four tiles for the main directions (rent, sell, hire team, locations) and then carousels like “New in rentals…”, “New in sales…”, etc.

As the service grew, it became clear that this homepage no longer reflected the real complexity of the product:

  • the map with rentals was hidden in a separate section;

  • there was no search on the first screen — users had to scroll and click around;

  • the number of “streams” increased: besides rent/sell we now had services, content, events, and community.

Business goals for the homepage redesign:

  • turn the first screen into an entry point into search and the map, not just a marketing banner;

  • clearly surface the key product streams and prepare the platform for scaling (more cities, more types of offers);

  • reduce the number of “lost” users who leave without understanding how Cinemap can help them.

UX goals:

  • shorten the path to relevant offers (search, map, curated carousels);

  • make the structure of the service and sections understandable at a glance;

  • show that Cinemap is not just listings, but also a community, blog, and events.

Risks and constraints

Main risks:

For the business

  • If we overload the first screen with a map, filters and content, users can simply “choke” on it and leave.

  • Too aggressive flows (for example, a hard mandatory popup to choose a city or section) would increase bounce rate and break natural browsing.

For users

  • It’s unclear where to start: rent? buy? services?

  • It’s not obvious that the inventory is tied to a specific city and that this is a real rental map, not just a decorative background.

  • On mobile the map easily turns into a “wall” that hides everything else.

Constraints

  • Small team: no dedicated UX researcher — I handled research and iterations together with the founder.

  • More qualitative than quantitative data: feedback mainly came from the marketplace owner and active users; analytics gave only a high-level picture of engagement.

  • Evolution, not revolution: we couldn’t fully change the visual language — there was an existing design system and familiar patterns to respect.

Discovery: research and insights

Audit of the current homepage

I started by breaking down the existing homepage:

  • essentially it was hero + four direction tiles + “New in…” carousels;

  • there was no map on the page at all — it lived only in the “Rent” section;

  • the structure of streams was flat: rent and sales appeared on the same level as team hire and locations, even though their business weight is different;

  • content and events were buried below, at the very end of the page.

For a first-time visitor the homepage answered the question “what is this site in general”, but not “how do I find what I need right now”.

Feedback and behaviour
From the founder and from users via support, several patterns repeated:

  • people come with very concrete needs: “I need lights in my city for these dates”, not “I want to browse a pretty storefront”;

  • many wanted to start with the map, to see what’s nearby;

  • explaining to partners and new users “what Cinemap is” required long voice messages and presentations — the old homepage didn’t do the job.

User scenarios and jobs
I outlined the main entry scenarios:

  1. A DP/production team who knows what gear they need and where they’ll shoot — they want search and fast access to relevant filters.

  2. A person “trying the platform” — just wants to see what’s available in their city via the map and curated lists.

  3. An equipment owner or rental house who checks how their listings look in context.

Benchmarks
I looked at other services with strong geography and catalog components: rental marketplaces, booking services and maps. Key observations:

  • successful products always provide a simple way into search and filters from the first screen;

  • the map either lives on the homepage or is one click away and takes up most of the screen;

  • streams (rent, sell, services, etc.) are clearly separated; secondary things go into an “More” area.

Key insights

  1. The homepage has to work as a search and navigation hub, not just a promo page.

  2. The map is not “a feature in the Rent section”, but the core visual metaphor of the service: “everything you need for shooting, on a map near you”.

  3. We need to show not only inventory but the whole ecosystem around film production — services, locations, community and events.

Ideation and experience structure

Based on this, the founder and I iterated through several structural options for the homepage.

Search as the first step
One of the key questions was what to do with search. In the old version it simply didn’t exist on the first screen.
We decided to move it to the top as a wide search bar with a type selector: a dropdown on the left (“Rent / Sell / …”) and the input field on the right.

This immediately supports the “I know what I need” scenario: the user chooses the task type and types a specific piece of gear or query.

The map as the “second level” right on the homepage
The second big block is the map. We considered:

  • map only inside the Rent section;

  • a compact map preview on the homepage;

  • a full-width map taking a significant part of the screen.

We chose the last one: the map appears right under the first screen, showing rentals, shops and studios. Above it sit simple filter chips (“Rentals”, “Shops”, “Studios”).

For the user this means:

  • they immediately see that Cinemap covers real cities, not an abstract list of items;

  • they understand the density of offers and geography.

Streams and navigation between sections
We also revisited the four direction tiles under the hero:

  • we kept “Rent equipment” and “Sell equipment” as the two key axes;

  • “Hire a crew” evolved into a broader “Professional services”;

  • “Locations for shooting” remained a separate stream;

  • everything that isn’t a core scenario moved into an “More” item (events, blog, etc.).

As a result we got a clear hierarchy:

  1. primary work scenarios (rent/sell);

  2. services around them (pros, locations);

  3. the “tail” of extras in “More”.

Cards and content below the map
Below the map we replaced “New in rentals/sales…” with “Interesting in…”. That’s a shift from pure chronology to curation:

  • we can surface not only latest additions, but more useful selections (by popularity, quality, promotions).

Even further down we added “New community members”, “Blog” and “Events” blocks — now the homepage talks not only about objects but also about people and knowledge around them.

Design and implementation

Visual language and hierarchy

I kept the overall Cinemap visual style (colors, typography, card patterns) but rebuilt the hierarchy:

  • the search bar in the header became the main accent: a wide input, a contrasting button and a prominent type selector;

  • the directions block under the hero is aligned to the grid: icons plus short labels and sub-copy clarifying the value;

  • the map spans almost the full width and is visually separated from both the streams block and the carousels below.

 

Key states and components
I introduced or updated several components:

  • “search type selector” (dropdown to the left of the input);

  • “map filter chip” component (“Rentals”, “Shops”, “Studios”);

  • refreshed object cards in the “Interesting in…” carousels;

  • blog and event cards with date, format and imagery.

All of these were added to the design system so we could reuse them later across search, catalog and internal pages.

Responsive behavior

On desktop, the map is fully visible and the carousels sit below. On mobile, it’s important not to overload the user, so:

  • the map appears after a short block with the main streams;

  • filters and map controls are simplified; the map can take up a separate screen on scroll.

 

Handoff and support
For the dev team I prepared:

  • a flow diagram of entering the homepage for different scenarios;

  • a set of states (empty, loading, error);

  • an interaction spec (hover/tap on pins, switching chips, scrolling to carousels).

During implementation I helped review the builds:

  • checked key paddings and component sizes;

  • negotiated compromises when technical constraints didn’t allow us to implement the “ideal” version (for example, certain map animations).

Results and learnings

1. What changed in the metrics (Yandex.Metrics, 30 days before vs. 30 days after launch)

After releasing the new homepage we analysed sessions that started from it in Yandex.Metrica. The numbers below are rounded — the order of magnitude is what matters:

  • Bounce rate from homepage

    • before: ~46%

    • after: ~32%
      → minus 14 percentage points; significantly fewer people closed the site without interacting.

  • Sessions with any interaction with the search on the first screen

    • before: ~21%

    • after: ~39%
      → almost 1.9× more users immediately formulated a query instead of wandering through carousels.

  • Sessions with interaction with the map directly from the homepage
    (clicks on pins, zoom, panning)

    • before: ~14%

    • after: ~36%
      → the map stopped being a “hidden feature” and became one of the main entry scenarios.

  • Average number of listing cards viewed in the first 3 minutes of the session

    • before: 2.1

    • after: 3.4
      → about +60%: after the redesign people reached concrete offers much faster.

  • Share of sessions that started on the homepage and reached a target action
    (starting a booking request / requesting contact)

    • before: ~2.4%

    • after: ~3.1%
      → relative growth of about +30% with the same traffic volume.

These numbers are not the result of a pure A/B test (we compared 30-day periods “before” and “after”, correcting for seasonality), but together they show that the new homepage guides users from the first screen to real product actions much more effectively.

 

2. Qualitative changes

On top of the quantitative shifts we saw qualitative ones:

  • it became easier for the founder to explain the product to new partners — sending a link to the homepage is enough to convey that Cinemap is a map of rentals, services, content and community;

  • support received fewer questions like “what does this site even do?” and “where is the map / my city?”;

  • new users more often reached specific listings via the “Interesting in…” blocks rather than only through search.

 

3. What I learned

  1. A homepage is about user jobs, not declarations.
    If the first screen doesn’t let people immediately search, filter or orient themselves on the map, they lose focus and leave — even if the hero copy is beautiful.

  2. Maps work when embedded into flows.
    Moving the map onto the homepage and tying it to search and curated lists noticeably increased engagement precisely because the map became a natural step after the question “what’s available near me?”.

  3. Thinking in metrics matters even without a perfect experimental setup.
    We didn’t run a strict A/B test, but we agreed in advance on which metrics matter (bounce rate, search and map usage, card views, target actions) and how we would track their dynamics. That discipline helped argue design decisions with more than just taste and “feels better”.

  4. Product growth almost always forces a homepage rethink.
    As soon as services, locations, blog and events appeared around the core (renting/selling gear), the old homepage couldn’t carry the role of main entry point anymore. That’s a good signal: if the product has grown, the homepage almost always has to grow with it.

In the next iterations, I’d like to run a proper A/B experiment on different variants of the first screen (different emphasis between search, map and curated lists) and compare them not only by clicks, but by conversion into bookings and the quality of traffic for rental partners.

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Vadim Pronin, 2025