Posted by Wendy Forsythe

Last week was a very exciting week for us as we rapidly move towards our launch in July. What made last week more exciting than most? Our consumer website and brand intranet came one step closer to coming to life!

Our  website developers (Genex) presented us with early creative and we signed off on the final site wireframes. Unless you are a web design geek, wireframes on their own are not really that exciting. Especially, for most of us who are visual thinkers. Web page layouts represented by boxes and placeholders does leave a lot to the imagine. But combine that with the creative design and it is like watching the flowers bloom and listening to the birds sing. Everything just starts to feel great! Yes, springtime has finally arrived in New Jersey as you can tell by that last reference.

From day one of designing our web portals we have lived by one guiding principle– the website has to focus on the visitor and what they want and expect when they take their valuable time to visit our sites (whether that is the consumer site or the intranet site).

On the consumer site side of things, we know from NAR research that site visitors are primarily looking for listings and neighborhood information. So, a lot of focus has gone into how we deliver a compelling experience for the user in these two areas.

We also believe that the site visitor wants to have a customized experience that respects their needs and wants. They want to access information quickly and easily. The old marketing adage “it’s all about me” applies.

Website development is a fascinating exercise. We are fortunate to be working with experts on the creative, design and technical fronts. Moving forward we are getting anxious to share all this hard work with the world. I’ve also been documenting all the lessons learned and suggestions to share with our agents and brokers to help them improve and develop their own web presence.

In the meantime, we will keep you posted!!