Before embarking on any project, we believe it's crucial to have a thorough understanding of the requirements. This ensures that both the client and our team have a clear target to work towards. Unfortunately, this step is often overlooked, which can result in a lack of clarity and direction, making it difficult to bring the project to a successful completion.

After conducting thorough research, we realized that in order to make the real estate application a success, it was crucial to prioritize information architecture. Buying a house is a complicated process involving multiple checks and various parties, each responsible for different aspects of the transaction, all of which must come together seamlessly to complete the process.

Where to start?

Before we started designing or building anything we did market research. Looking at business who do the same thing, this was hard because nobody at this point has ever builded a application where the process of buying a home was fully done online. So we focussed on businesses who offer properties for sale online. There where plenty off business out there who did this. We look at the different aspects of their platforms in order to figure out what worked and what we could improve.

This resulted in the creation of wireframes for some of the pages we knew we needed. We deliberately avoided starting with the user flow at this stage because we wanted to focus only on the parts of the platform that we were certain of. This included the property page, homepage, login page, and so on.

Colors and style

Once we had a good understanding of the page layouts, we set those aside temporarily and shifted our focus to defining the brand identity. We started with the wireframes first because it prompted us to ask questions that helped us define a high-level strategy. This would come in handy when defining the brand identity later on.

Together with the client, we started with the color palette. We wanted colors that were not only visible but also unique, in line with the fact that Realtyless is a one-of-a-kind brand. We needed the visuals to reflect that uniqueness.

Creating a User-flow

After defining the brand identity, we moved on to the user flow, which proved to be the most challenging aspect of the project due to the larger-than-normal scale of data involved. Our goal was to strike a balance between providing enough data to inform users without overwhelming them. We recognized that the home buying process is inherently complex, and we worked to simplify it as much as possible while still allowing users to feel in control of the process. We ultimately developed an intuitive and easy-to-follow user flow that guided users through each step of the home buying journey.

Choosing the right technology

Taking the time to carefully research and select the right tools and technologies is a crucial step in any project. It ensures that the development process is efficient and cost-effective, and that the final product is high-quality and meets the client's needs.

When choosing the right technology, it's important to consider factors such as scalability, flexibility, and control over complex aspects of the platform. In the case of our project, we carefully evaluated various options before deciding to use the Laravel framework. We were impressed with its flexibility and the level of control it afforded us over the complex aspects of the platform.

One key requirement that made the Laravel framework stand out was its scalability. We knew that the platform would need to handle large amounts of data, and we needed a technology that could handle this without sacrificing performance. Laravel's scalability made it an excellent choice, as it could easily handle any future growth or expansion of the platform.

By selecting the right technology from the start, we were able to avoid costly mistakes and ensure that the development process went smoothly. It also allowed us to deliver a high-quality product that met the needs of our client and their users.

The result

After a year of intense development, Realtyless v1 was finally ready to be launched. To ensure a successful launch, we created a comprehensive marketing campaign that helped us create awareness of the application. The results were outstanding as we received numerous sign-ups within the first month of going live.

Despite having launched, our work was far from done. We were determined to continue building out the application and perfecting it to meet the evolving needs of our clients. To achieve this, we put in place a client feedback process, which enabled us to gather valuable insights on how users were interacting with the platform. We then used this feedback to refine and enhance the different aspects of the application, making it even more user-friendly and effective.