Nextdoor Italia

Project Specs
Location: San Francisco & Amsterdam
Client: Nextdoor
Market: Italy

Product | Social media website for neighbours

Users | Italian residents aged 19+

My role | Italian UX writer, copywriter and localisation expert

Timeline | 10 months

The main features of the website and app include a community feed where neighbours can post activities and start discussions and a marketplace for selling or buying items. Users can also use the chat feature to send private messages and opt in to receive emergency alerts about theft or natural disasters.

To ensure a safe and authentic neighbourly experience, the platform is only accessible to verified residents. Users need to be invited by another neighbour through an invite code or have a verified home address to create an account.

My role at Nextdoor entailed translating all the existing source UX and marketing content from English into Italian (my first language) and creating new marketing and UX copy based specifically on the needs of Italian users. To inform our content and design decisions, I performed qualitative user research both on the ground in Milan and remotely from our office in Amsterdam.

Content Strategy

After 10 successful years in the US, Nextdoor was ready to launch in 5 new markets in Europe: Italy, Spain, France, the Netherlands and the UK.

My task was to understand the unique use cases of Italian users and create a marketing strategy based on our findings that would resonate most with them. 

To inform our content decisions within the platform and beyond, I created surveys and conducted remote and in-person interviews with people of various age groups and demographics across Italy to understand Italian neighbour culture.

We learned that security and community were much bigger topics in Italy than they were in the US. Unlike in the US, Italians tend to be more cautious about meeting strangers and interacting with their neighbours.

My unique challenge was creating content that would resonate with Italian neighbours who may be reluctant to engage with their community and inspire them to sign up to the platform.

Using these insights, I created promotional content such as Facebook ads, email campaigns, blog posts, and physical flyers (in Italian) that highlighted the benefits to Italian users based on their unique pain points and motivations.

UX & Localisation

In my role as the localisation expert, I worked in close collaboration with translators to ensure that the quality of translations of UX content was in line with the Nextdoor tone of voice and guidelines. This often involved me creating new UX copy in Italian based on our user research. For example, we saw that Italians used specific words to talk about security and their neighbourhood.

Getting the log in flow right was especially important. In order to sign up to Nextdoor, users need to verify their home address. At the time of launch, verification was done by means of a verification code that was sent to them via post. Once received, the user would enter the code and be able to access the platform.

Using as few words and screens as possible, we needed to highlight why verification was essential to ensuring a safe and authentic experience on the platform. Since the registration process wasn’t exactly user-friendly (involving both ‘old’ and new technology), it was crucial that our communication and instructions around how to register were clear and concise.

In order to inform our content and UX decision while localising the log in and verification flow, I conducted unmoderated and moderated tests remotely from Amsterdam via Usertesting.com and performed in-person interviews talking to people on the streets of Milan.