9
Jun
Getting website design wrong will harm your business.
It only takes a small design flaw for an internet user to be
wary of online estate agents. Therefore your virtual corporate
image has to give the visitor complete trust in your website
otherwise a good Google rank will be useless. The following simple
rules will greatly decrease any chance of the internet user
"clicking off" because of your website design. There are only 7
things to consider. These are: Spacing, colour, background, pixels,
typography, organisation and being unique.
Spacing - Websites designed with space look
great. The logo should be enlarged to create space and allow the
user to acknowledge what estate agent they're visiting. An
excellent example of designing spacing is the Dart & Partners
website below. The logo is large and prominent and still gives the
impression of professionalism.
Another important aspect of spacing is using a grid as a
foundation for your property website. Without a grid, the elements
that make up your website won't be aligned and it will look
extremely unprofessional. Below I've drawn the gridlines next to an
estate agent website. Notice the organisation of elements on the
page.
The design of the grid is not overly complicated or simplified.
Remember that we've been taught from a young age to read from the
top left to bottom right and giving people this natural flow will
make them feel more at ease. Compare the difference to this overly
complicated website design below. There's too much information and
the eye struggles to find an easy place to rest.
Colour -The best way is to build you colour
schemes around the estate agent logo. The logo would have been
created with the brand in mind so having a colour scheme to
compliment this is vital. An excellent example of designing colour
into your website is the Penyards website. Penyards is a high-end
estate agent that deals with country estates or properties that are
unique or full of character. Therefore they will not want a website
design that is wacky but one that compliments the brand image.
The first thing is to look at is the logo to get an idea of what
the website design should be.
The logo conjures up an image of a traditional estate in the
'country'. From this you can gauge the colour scheme. It's going to
be black, white and grey. Keeping to this colour scheme would make
a very dark and boring website. It would keep within the theme but
it wouldn't be very appealing to the eye. So let's have a look at
what was the final website design...
This is what greets you when you visit the website. As you can
see, they have kept to the black, white and grey layout that is in
keeping with the logo. This would all be very boring or overly
gothic if it wasn't for the green buttons and the vivid picture.
These two things really make the website stand out without being
over the top or wacky. This is a good example of how an estate
agent website can keep its restraint without having a boring colour
scheme or a boring subject. The other way that estate agent
websites tend to go is swinging the other way and being too wacky.
This obviously can damage the brand and the customer's trust.
The green here is even used as a 'call to action'. The buttons
on the right are just begging to be pressed and the first one is
'search for property' and is exactly what our websites are designed
for. Therefore colour can not only set the tone of a website but it
can also draw attention and call people to action.
As we all know, this naturally occurs. I think we all know what
the call to action here is:
Pixels - Changing pixels is a great way to add
depth to your online estate agent website. The great thing about
slightly changing the edges is that it adds depth to your website
and creates a subtle 3D effect without being obvious. Fading is one
of the effects that can be used. It can soften the edges having a
smoother effect on the object. Usually text is not faded so it is
clearer to read. Below is an example of the usage of pixels. Zoomed
out the website looks like this:
But when you magnify the selected area you can see that both the
text and the box outline is pixelated (in which individual pixels
are apparent to the naked eye) but in different ways. The text is
squarer so that when you zoom out, it is completely clear. The box
has a dark outline giving a smoother feel.
Typography - Typography is the art and
technique of printing with movable type. The text has to be clear,
the right font, size, and characteristic (bold, italic etc). This
has to suit the mood otherwise it will look out of place. Below is
an example of good typography and bad typography. The tagline is
'Good typography is invisible / Bad typography is everywhere'.
Below is another example of good and bad typography from an
estate agent. The typography below the logo is very professional.
It gives a corporate image of 'we're serious' and 'you can
trust-us' and then they ruin it with the main text and heading. It
looks cheesy and unprofessional. The logo at top of the document
has been cut off so estate agent is not discredited.
It isn't possible to have every font you wanted. Computers can
only recognise a font that it has in its memory. Therefore websites
tend to use web-safe fonts. Web-safe fonts are fonts that are most
likely to be on everyone's PC and are therefore the most likely to
be recognised. This guarantees that websites can be viewed by
everyone.
Organisation - The first thing here is to
decide what you want your website to achieve. For estate agents,
you want to achieve two things and anything else is just a bonus.
The first is that you want the user to search and view your
properties online. The second is that you want them to desire a
property enough to contact an agent a viewing. So therefore your
website has to be impressive enough that the user stays and then
have a desire to view the properties. After that, the customer
needs to view as much information as they require before feeling
compelled to see it in real life. Stunning pictures, floor plan,
enhanced mapping, summary and a description is a must for an estate
agent website. Large and good quality pictures sell. Pictures that
are small and fuzzy not give the user the full impression of the
property.
Looking at two brochures below, which house below would you buy
and which do you think is more expensive?
Next is an online brochure by a randomly selected estate agent.
The picture doesn't enlarge any further but changes when you move
the mouse over the picture below, it changes the top picture.
You may be surprised but the second is actually more expensive
than the first. Adding aesthetic value to each property will entice
the user.
Try using the AIDA model. It is the acronym of Attention,
Interest, Desire and Action. This model is used in marketing when
trying to sell a product or service so that the consumer will buy
it and it can be applied to estate agent websites.
- Attention - does your website have something that will keep the
viewers attention or will they move onto another estate agent once
they have seen your homepage? This can be creative imagery or
something recognisable like a logo.
- Interest - does your website design keep their interest? This
includes description of the product/service? Do you have exclusive
features that no one else has?
- Desire - convincing the user that they need/desire your product
or service. E.G. Testimonials from satisfied customers.
- Action - Do they take the desired action? This can include
something like a special offer or a property that is too
irresistible to ignore.
Being unique - Unique website design will
attract people to your website in their hordes. A good example of
this is the enhanced mapping that can give the user the ability to
use the latest in viewer technology to search for their
website.
All the properties are listed Google maps for the user to click
on. It not only has that, but the legend on the right shows local
places of interest. This is easy to use and interesting new way to
view properties in the local area. Users will keep coming back and
even spread this fantastic function by word of mouth! Doing
something no one else does in terms of design can be tricky.
Usually there's a reason why no one's done it before but use the
old trial and error method and you could get unexpected results. A
great example of this is Google's home page. Who ever thought that
having simplistic search engine would be so popular?
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