Redesigning 3 property developer websites

For the past few weeks I’ve been working on a project where we’re redesigning 3 property websites for a large property developer group in the UK. For all three websites LBi has been asked to redesign the user experience, create a new brand identity, build, test and then implement the websites on a common platform. So, as you can tell, quite a big undertaking. Anyway, It’s the first time I’ve worked on a project where we’ve had to redesign three websites within a group of brands.

So, how can you design a single user experience to fit three brands with different audiences (users), all with varying needs and goals? Well, that’s the tricky part of the project. With differing audiences and needs we’ve focused on one of the brands within the group using it as a good foundation for the other two brands. Then when we come to the redesign of the other two brands, we will base much of our thinking on the first brand that we focused on. We’ll adapt existing functionality to fit the brand voice and user goals of those brands. All three websites will have common templates and page types, but will be ‘skinned’ differently and could have extra/ new modules to fit their users’ needs. With the usual constraints in place this should work and should give the client what they wanted, which was essentially a white-label solution for their 3 websites.

Expert review slides up on the glass wall for inspiration

To start off with we carried out an expert review of the current group websites, as well as their competitors. We looked at key features such as Search/ browse, Campaigns and offers and individual property information. With these features we assessed each website and gave it a score using a traffic light system: red – pretty bad, amber – ok, I guess and green – good usability. This was a pretty comprehensive review and in the end it gave us a good understanding of what else is out there and what others are doing well compared to our clients’ websites.

After the expert review, we went on to creating user-types/ pen-portraits. These were designed solely so that we could create user journeys and then design interactions around them. Don’t worry, the pen-portraits were later validated by user research, which was great.

Generating ideas and concepts for the project

Last week we began concepting and generating ideas for the first brand. The Experience Architects (EA’s) worked closely with the Visual Designers on the team looking at key user journeys and sketching out those interactions.

So far, the project is going really well. Next week will be interesting as we’re looking at home pages and preparing to build our prototype.