This is how we redesigned Colombia Move: more clarity for searching, posting, and finding

Over the last few weeks, we have been redesigning Colombia Move from the ground up. It wasn't just a visual touch-up; these were foundational decisions about how a marketplace should function, being half for expatriates landing in the country and half for local Colombians who want to sell, rent, hire, or find work without paying commissions.

In this post, I tell you what changed, why we changed it, and how it feels now to post or search for an ad. If you are one of the first to use it, your feedback is gold—at the end, I ask you to tell me what works and what doesn't yet.

The big decision we made: every ad must clearly answer two questions, without ambiguity. What it is (a house, a job, a service) and which side you are on (offering it or looking for it). That simple principle ended up changing almost everything else.

The problem we saw

A buyer would enter the marketplace, search for "Lenovo Thinkpad," and see an ad that said "Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon." They would click thinking it was for sale. It wasn't: it was someone looking for one. The ad had no visual indication to distinguish it from the rest.

That case led us to a broader review. The same problem existed in jobs: "Web developer wanted" could mean "my company is hiring" or "I am a developer looking for work." In services, the same thing happened: "personal chef" could be a professional offering their services or a client who needed one. And in housing, it was worse—categories like "house for sale" or "apartment for rent" mixed the intention into the name, forcing users to memorize combinations that didn't need to exist.

The solution wasn't adding patch labels. It was rethinking the model.

An ad answers two questions

Every ad on Colombia Move now explicitly declares two things: the type (job, service, sale, or rent) and the side (you offer it or you are looking for it). They are two independent axes that do not overlap. A developer looking for work is posted as Job + Looking for Work. A chef offering their services is Service + Offering. A buyer looking for a laptop is Sale + Looking to Buy. An apartment available for rent is Rent + I am the Owner.

Visually, everything that is "someone is looking" now appears with the same hot pink palette. Always. Without exceptions. If you see an ad in pink, you know in a second that the person doesn't have what you are looking for—they want it. If you don't see pink, the person has it available.

That visual rule (pink = is looking) eliminates the confusion from the Lenovo case and the developer case at the root. You don't have to read the title carefully. You don't have to click to find out. The color tells you from a meter away on any result card.

Housing thinks differently

For most categories, two questions are enough. But housing has a particularity: it is not just "I sell or I buy"—it is also "I rent or I am looking for a rental." Four real intentions that don't fit into a binary switch.

That is why, when you post an ad in a housing category (house, apartment, room, office, finca, temporary rental), Colombia Move shows you a four-card selector with the four clear and concrete options:

• 🏷️ For Sale — my property is for sale

• 🔍 Want to buy — I'm looking for a property to buy

• 🔑 For Rent — I am the owner, looking for a tenant

• 🔍 Looking for rent — I want to rent a property

One click, done. You don't have to select the type first and then the side in two separate steps. The four cards show you the four possible combinations and you choose the one that describes your intention. Then you fill out the rest of the form normally.

And before you ask: yes, fincas fit into all four options. There are people who sell them, people who buy them, owners who rent them out for weekends, and travelers looking to rent one for the holidays. Before, we had them restricted to just sales—bad design. Now all housing categories accept all four intents. You decide which one applies.

Filters that understand context

On every category page and section, there is now a three or four-button filter that allows you to slice the list by intention with one tap. For example:

If you enter /seccion/empleos you see: All · 💼 Hiring · 🧑‍💼 Looking for work. An employer filters for available candidates; a candidate filters for companies hiring. The same URL, two audiences, one tap of difference.

If you enter /seccion/vivienda you see: All · 🏷️ For Sale · 🔑 For Rent · 🔍 Looking. That "Looking" button includes both buyers and tenants—because sometimes an owner wants to contact both.

And for more specific categories like house o apartment, the same filter appears inline — without having to leave the page, without loading anything else. You click, the list updates, and your scroll position remains exactly where you were.

Cleaner categories (goodbye to weird slugs)

A technical detail that feels big: we removed weird URLs like "house-sale" and "apartment-rent." Before, we had four separate categories for houses (sale + rent) and apartments (sale + rent). Now they are just two: house and apartment. The direction (selling or renting) no longer lives in the category name—it lives in the filter.

If you come in with an old link from two weeks ago, don't worry—it automatically redirects to the new URL with the correct filter already applied. No bookmark was broken, no Google search, no link shared via WhatsApp. They just became cleaner.

Context on every page

Another small thing that ended up being important: when you are browsing a specific category (let's say /categoria/tecnologia), you will never again have to ask yourself "what section does this belong to, jobs or services?". We added a subtle line above the title that tells you: 💼 Jobs › Technology. Click on the section and you go to the full list of jobs; ignore the line and you continue seeing only Technology. Simple, informative, without taking up space.

The sister categories ("other categories in Jobs") that used to pile up above the list in six visible chips are now collapsed into a dropdown. One click expands them if you want them; by default, they take up no vertical space. The mobile view is especially grateful for this change.

Mobile first, not mobile later

We completely rebuilt the design of the ad cards on mobile. The previous problem: on a 360px screen, the thumbnail + title + price were squeezed into a single row, and the title was cut off after three or four words. An ad that said "Furnished apartment in Poblado near the metro" only showed "Furnished apartment..." and you had to click to understand anything.

Now on mobile, cards have two rows: the first row with a thumbnail + full title (up to two lines) + category and city; the second row with the price, date, and statistics. The title has room to breathe, takes up the width it needs, and the eye reads from top to bottom without fighting the layout. On desktop, the previous layout was still working well, so we left that one as is.

Frictionless Bilingualism

If your native language is Spanish, Colombia Move is in Spanish. If you prefer English, one click on the language switcher and everything is translated — including filter labels, section titles, buttons, and ad badges. Without reloading the page, without losing your scroll position, and without breaking a half-filled form.

Furthermore, the titles and descriptions of each ad are automatically translated between Spanish and English when the user's language doesn't match. This means a Colombian seller posts in Spanish and a U.S. buyer reads in English — both see their own language, and the seller never had to write two versions.

How to use it yourself

If you are new here, three places to start:

1. Post something. Anything — a job, a service you offer, an item you want to sell, a property for rent, or even something you are looking for. It takes two minutes. There is no commission, we don't ask for a credit card.

2. Explore a section that interests you. Use the new intent filters to narrow it down. Take note of the pink color on the cards — it lets you know at a glance what the side of the ad is.

3. Ask a question in the community. If you are thinking about moving to Colombia and have questions you can't find in a blog, the community is where locals and experienced expats can answer you.

Tell us what works and what doesn't

This redesign isn't finished — it's just beginning. There are things we are still polishing this week based on what real people do when they visit. If you use Colombia Move and find something confusing, something that could be clearer, or something that took more clicks than it should have, tell me. Direct user feedback in these first few weeks is infinitely more valuable than any metric I could look at on my own.

You can write to me via the contact form or comment on this post directly. And if you find it useful, share it with someone who is looking to move to Colombia, or with a Colombian who wants to post something for free — those first users are what make the marketplace make sense.

Frequently Asked Questions

❓ Is it free to post ads?

Yes. Posting on Colombia Move is and will always be free — jobs, services, housing, vehicles, electronics, and everything else. There are optional paid choices to feature an ad or promote it, but basic posting costs nothing, and we never ask for a credit card.

❓ What happened to the "Seeking" category?

We removed it as a separate type. It used to be a fifth separate category (besides Jobs, Services, Sales, Renting). The problem: it mixed people looking to buy a laptop with people looking for a job with people looking for a chef — audiences that have nothing to do with each other. Now each ad has a "side" (offering or seeking) within its own type, so seekers are found within their specific vertical and not in a catch-all box.

❓ Why the pink color?

Because it is visually opposite to green (selling) and indigo (renting). When you are checking 30 ads in a feed, the pink screams "attention, this one is different!" — the person isn't offering, they are seeking. A buyer scanning results cannot confuse a pink ad with a selling one. And it is the same rule for all categories: pink = someone is seeking, no matter if it is a job, service, purchase, or rental.

❓ Do my old ads still work?

Yes, all of them. If you had an ad posted before the redesign, it stays exactly as it was, with its original URL. We just automatically adapted it to the new model — an ad that was previously "Seeking" type now has the correct type (Sales, for example) with the "seeking" side, without you having to do anything. And if you want to edit it, the edit form already knows the new model.

❓ How do I change the language?

In the top right corner, next to the post button, there is a language selector (ES/EN). One click and everything changes — including filters, buttons, ad badges, and section titles — without reloading the page or losing your progress if you were filling out a form.

One more thing

If you made it this far and are thinking about moving to Colombia — or you already live here and need something — give the marketplace a try. It isn't perfect yet, but it is designed with care by someone who lives in Medellín and uses the marketplace as a user first and a developer second. Your feedback now, in these first few months, is what finishes shaping it.

Share it with someone. Post something. Break the form by trying to do something weird and tell me what happened. Thanks for reading this far.