JW Brokerage

JW Brokerage was looking to come up with a new site design to engage users and garner interest in the company.

I began the project with a competitive analysis of similar websites. I looked at how other realty websites handled the user and what assumptions may have been made.

One of the main focuses was browsing vs. search. I decided that a well thought out navigation needed to be set up to provide the user with a powerful way to access the site, but then also provide the option of search for those who are so inclined.

A new area that we added is the featured properties area. This is a section of the homepage where the company can choose to highlight a specific property for sale or for rent and it is the main focus of the homepage. 

Progression of the primary navigation from first draft to final, left to right.

We also added a featured For Sale and For Rent section of the site. This area will push the most recent additions and properties the company wants to sell the most to the top of the site. 

The original proposed search wireframe.

The search area that was developed took some time to sit down and figure out. We wanted something a little more in depth than just a plain search box. We did some user research and found that most people when looking for a home or apartment already have certain characteristics in mind. Whether that is the number of bedrooms, a price range or a certain neighborhood. People usually know part of what they are looking for and would like to see what they can get within those parameters. We wanted to offer users the ability to filter through the available listings to view only the relevant ones. 

The finished search system for both sales and rentals.

Once it was time to start thinking about the visual design of the site, I had my sketchbook ready, I had a few ideas of how I wanted to display some of this information. One of the areas I struggled with was the navigation. I really wanted to focus on directing the user right to what they were looking for. I wanted to limit the number of main navigation items to Sales and Rentals. I went through a lot of revisions of this navigation and finally was able to find one to fit the clients as well as the users needs.

The idea was to create a design that was both simple and straightforward. We wanted to keep the users on the website but still offer the best available apartment in the neighborhood even if it was through another broker. On the individual property pages, we display other available properties that fit the user's search criteria.

We bumped up the number of pictures for each property from one to four. We also increased the size and resolution of the images to give the user a better idea of what they are looking at. We included a map of the property location in the sidebar as well as broker information and related properties.