Recently our design team took a critical look at the design of real estate web sites with a focus on the user combined with a retake on what’s relevant for smaller, independent agencies. After a few hours of brain storming, we came up with some great ideas and whipped up some website wireframes.
Internally, we found the results pleasing – we came up with a new style of real estate website that has not been created before. Not only that, within 2 days of our new idea we had 2 independent agencies eager to embrace this new approach and lead the pack as innovators.
Exciting stuff, and we can’t wait to build them!
We work in an industry where we find many simply look at the features supplied on competitor websites and seek to keep up. While there are many great real estate sites out there, this is a timely reminder to remind yourself that your business and your market is likely to be unique in many ways and your website needs to be planned carefully to reflect that. What’s the point in copying realestate.com, when you service 4 suburbs and a much smaller portfolio?
One area where we’ve come up with something drastically different is in the way properties are presented combined with a new style of search controls. We won’t reveal everything quite yet… however if you think that many small agencies have fewer than say 40 properties in their portfolio at a time, and their market is often fairly specific – it’s not hard to deduce that you do not need a search facility so powerful and detailed when you’ve only got a few pages to scroll through all of them.
In taking this approach, we’ve found new ways to layout and design the sites – and the simplicity of it all is going to result in some stunning new designs. We’re betting they’re going to be very effective for independent real estate agencies… and that their competitors are going to immitate to keep up! Stay tuned…