Estate Agent WEB DESIGN
Website Designed for Stevens and Carter, an Estate Agent in Hailsham.
Stevens and Carter hired me to refresh their estate agent’s website. They wanted to improve the overall appearance and modernise the functionality and layout. The website needed to represent their award-winning services and help place them in an appropriate position against their competitors online.
Steve at Eyetooth Design has been fantastic in coming up with an excellent website that has already generated much more activity than we were getting before. I couldn’t recommend him enough, definitely went the extra mile.John – Stevens and Carter
Content & Usability
Almost every website redesign starts with an overview of the existing content and site structure. It enables me to make suggestions for improvement and to begin planning the creation of site elements and layouts based on usability and visual queues to entice visitors to interact and engage with the content.
I worked closely with John and his team to make content suggestions and provide layout concepts to help visualise where everything should go. Their old website content was pretty sparse, so I gave John a fair amount of homework to bulk it out to provide more helpful information to their customers. Improving the content of a website helps in many ways. It keeps visitors engaged and encourages them to contact you, improving bounce rates and SEO. It’s a win-win situation but requires some work to get correct.
Branding & Layout Design
Stevens and carter already had some branding setup, which consisted of their logo and the three-striped box layout used on their signage. I felt that while this is a relatively strong concept, their existing online brand elements were in need of some improvement. For example, their old site used really dull solid colour buttons. I created new link buttons based on their branding while also making the hover functionality more interesting by animating how the lines move as anyone interacts with them.
The old site also used very flat and static layouts, so I added depth to them with the subtle use of shadows and overlaid areas to lift specific areas off the page and highlight important aspects.
Property Listing Integration
Part of the estate agent web design was to display their available properties for sale and rent on their site. It’s linked to a back-end system that automatically updates the property listings – adding new properties to the website and removing completed sales or lettings.
Responsive Design
I typically start a design based on the layout of a desktop computer screen, as this enables me to develop the visuals and style guides fully. Once we have nailed the overall visuals and design elements, I tailor the design to smaller screens. It involves editing the layouts to fit a much smaller width while ensuring the content is easily readable and flows well from section to section. Create custom font sizes and content spacing for each responsive breakpoint is also necessary. Desktops have a much larger viewing area allowing more breathing room for the visuals, while smaller mobile devices require closer spacing for easier reading.
Website Interactivity
I love creating movement on a website. Animation can elevate a site from dull static visuals to an entirely new experience. It must be subtle enough not to distract from the visual layout and content while still pulling the eye in to encourage the visitor to take the time to read and engage.
Most of the animation on this estate agent web design is triggered via scroll behaviours which move elements into view as customers read through the content. I also created 3D hover effects for icons, block-reveal headings and animated buttons.
