Online Marketplace for Canadian Real Estate Agency
Online real estate marketplace connecting realtors, brokers, and property managers with their clients.
About the Client
The client is a Canadian real estate agency that has been in business since 2007. The main office is located in Ottawa, Ontario.
Project Background
The agency had a website with a catalog of rental and for-sale properties. The website was outdated and its capacity was not sufficient to meet all the new demands of the growing business. The client approached Itexus with a request to increase customer outreach through the website, improve the visitor experience and increase their engagement as well as to create more sales opportunities for agents.
Project Team
Engagement Model
Time & Materials
Tech stack
Architecture Overview
Ten months after the initial communication with the client, our team delivered a feature-rich and user-friendly marketplace.
Development Process (or Project Approach)
As mentioned above, we needed to improve user interaction with the site and optimize communication with platform users. We started with a discovery phase where we studied the best practices of online real estate marketplaces and held an ideation session where we generated and discussed ideas. As a result of the discovery phase, we came up with a list of features to implement and an idea of how the platform should look and function to shorten the sales journey and give users the best possible experience. We created a backup of the working version, deployed the test environment, and created specific fields in the backend that allowed us to create a custom registration process. We also enabled registration with social networks that significantly facilitated and speeded up the sign-up flow. In the user’s personal account, we displayed a list of premises of interest to the user, with filters for sales & rentals. On the property page, we implemented a subscription widget that shows the user’s subscription status regarding this particular property. The widget shows whether the user is subscribed for sales or rentals or both, or isn’t subscribed at all.
Functional Modules
Properties catalog
Each property in the catalog has its own page containing all the information about the property and the premises available for sale or rent in it:
- The agent assigned to the property
- Description – photos of the building, number of premises for sale or rent, average price per sqft, storey, neighborhood, location on the map, average days on the market, list of amenities (information about the availability of a pool/gym/parking, etc.)
- A graph showing the prices dynamics (USD per sqft)
In the premise pages, users can book a showing and contact the agent assigned to the property.
User personal account
Agent personal profile
Project Challenges
The most challenging part was adding new functionality into the existing design without breaking the logic of displaying elements so as not to lose the users.
Solution Main Features
Registration
Custom subscription and notifications
Search filter
Third-party Integrations
To supplement their listing of properties for rent or sale with relevant data, our client uses an API. But the issue with the API was that it had been falling after every update. Our engineers fixed the issue to ensure proper data extraction and delivery.
Results
We improved the registration flow, created personal accounts for users and agents, enabled registration with social networks, set up a custom subscription for data on properties of interest, fixed the API to update the property listing in a timely manner, and improved contact forms. As a result, the number of transactions made through the platform increased by 27%. The custom subscription function we created enabled our client to collect users’ data and make informed marketing, sales, customer service, and product development decisions. Our client’s next step would be the implementation of a CRM system to further enhance customer experience and satisfaction, increase customer retention and boost sales. Have a project? We’re ready to back it up with our tech expertise. Share your idea with us, and we’ll turn it into a powerful solution that your customers would love.
A cloud-based property management platform that enables companies to increase efficiency and generate more revenue, by reducing the time and manual labor required for property management business processes.
Share your idea with us, and we’ll turn it into a powerful solution that your customers would love.