Project background —

Goldschmidt & Howland Estate Agents are the leading professional Sales and Lettings Agency in the North, North West and West London areas. Specialising in property for sale, property for rent, property developments, property management and a range of property services. The objective of the new website was predominantly to give the company more control and to make routine updates easier, while also taking the opportunity to address pitfalls in the user experience and improve the overall user journey.

 

 

Scoping and planning —

In order to understand the pain points of the current site, we worked closely with the relevant team members to gain an insight into how the website would be used, third party plugin requirements, the current web maintenance processes and additional features that could be benefitial for the new website. This information was collected along with a full audit of the site including a review of the SEO performance and analytics reports. This information was then used to define the new strategy. 

Before creating the design, we outlined the user flow to ensure there were no deadends within the journey and to encourage clicks to pages that were most useful to the user at each stage of their search. This also included a number of considerations for the users' familiarity with the brand, providing links to information about the company's history and background at logical intervals within the journey to reinforce the companys strong reputation.

 

Design —

The design was to be heavily reminiscent of the existing website styling and I worked alongside the branding agency to ensure that the guildeines were adhered to throughout. When creating the new site there were often digital elements introduced that were new to the guidelines, so a strong collaborative approach was important in order to acheive the best design that was fit for purpose within the experience. I also found that my knowledge of code and passion for design was invaluable when both receiving feedback and also making suggestions that would fulfil the desire for design detailing while meeting the requirements for code-based styling.

 

 

Build —

As lead developer on the website, I programmed the foundation for the front-end and then worked closely with the necessary developers and teams to ensure the APIs were integrated correctly to connect with the company's CRM system. The site was built on a Linux server, using a PHP based CMS system with styling written in Less format for optimal load up speeds. The design also used the Bootstrap grid to manage the majority of the responsive resizing, as well as bespoke code for some of the added functionality and styling.

 

Testing and launch —

As with the usual process, the new site was tested initially by the internal team and then by the client teams to ensure any issues were resolved before launch. The SEO content and formatting were also re-tested and enhanced to ensure the the new site exceeded the already well-performing reults of the existing site.

 

Analyse and iterate —

Once the website was launched we monitored the performance in the following weeks, to ensure there were no issues and also that the client was happy with the final result.