BUILD Q1 2018 Bridger Steel Issue

Build Q1 2018 26 i Colm, can you tell us about the new website project and why you felt you needed a new portal. Propertynews.com first uploaded a property in September 2000. We have had several iterations of the portal since then, with the latest being launched in 2011. Around 18 months ago, we initiated an extensive research project to ascertain what sort of portal we needed; whether we needed a complete re-write or an update, and then at a granular level, what front-end features we should have. We analysed the research and concluded that we could either update the site or take this opportunity to completely re-write and really raise the bar, setting a new standard amongst our peers. And when I say peers, I do mean worldwide property portals. We believe that we have achieved this, and our new portal will certainly raise a few eyebrows and ruffle a few feathers in the property portal industry. What were the design goals of Propertynews.com? In short, our main aim was speed. Speed of delivery of properties to users in both load times and searches, and speed of uploading and amending of properties in real-time. We have completely re-built our portal to be fully-responsive across device, and with our innovative caching, users can navigate, search and view high-res property imagery at a lightning-fast speed. From our research project, we determined that our users and indeed potential users have less and less tolerance for buffering and demand accurate, media-heavy information instantly. Users on the new Proper- tynews.com will consume much more information in a much shorter time. We have designed the website from a mobile-first methodology, which will one day become the industry-norm. 80% of our current traffic comes from a mobile device, so we determined that we must build primarily with mobile in mind. Lots of website projects make the mistake of building and designing for desktop and then shoehorning the content and features into mobile as an afterthought. We were determined not to make that mistake. The design of the site centred on the latest CRO (Conversion-Rate-Op- timisation) principles. The raison d’etre of Propertynews.com is to assist home-movers finding a new home and helping Estate Agents sell and lease properties. Therefore, the design focused on keeping users en- gaged and ultimately calling or emailing agents. Can you tell us about the new features? Our search functionality is a real USP for us. Users can search areas, streets, postcodes, individual properties and keywords. No other portal that we researched can handle this diversity of search functionality. Users see a search box and expect it to function like Google. On our portal searching for “Swimming pool in Belfast” will deliver properties that have just that. We have many new innovative ways to keeps users engaged with our site, and we are particularly pleased with our smart-email system, track- ing the home-buying/moving journey and pushing relevant and helpful content at the right times. My Important Places is a first in the property portal industry. Users can mark locations that are important to them, such as workplace, childmind- ers, schools, etc and we auto-calculate the distance to them from every property. We know that these places impact on the buying decision and will certainly help users. Draw On Map is another feature we feel that has not only given us competitor parity, but it is a feature that we have significantly improved on. Users can search traditionally by area, street, property or keyword, or they can alternatively draw the area or areas they want to live in. Our intuitive map allows for the entire search process to take place on our map, even on mobile. This is a significant design and usability achieve- ment and something we are immensely proud of. Overall, we are all genuinely really proud and excited of what we, and our digital partners, GCD, have achieved. I must mention GCD and everything they have helped us achieve. Simon Gough, the Project Man- ager at GCD did state that “The project has been exciting and the drive for innovation from Propertynews has helped us push the boundaries and deliver unique features that we are sure the users and agents will love”. Thank you for that Colm. We can tell you are excited about the new site. Do you have any future plans for the site? Yes, certainly. We know that we need to continually innovate and have many exciting plans in the pipeline. Also, we have a fully-scoped devel- opment and product roadmap running into 2019. Lastly, we aim to contin- ue to develop our online offering and these are exciting times ahead for Propertynews.com Thank you for your time Colm. We will be sure to keep an eye on the new Propertynews.com and congratulations again for winning the Prop- erty Portal of the Year 2017 award. Helping You Get There The new Propertynews.com website has won the Property Portal of the Year 2017 award. To coincide with the award win we interviewed the Digital Project Manager, Colm Sharkey, to find out more about the new Propertynews.com portal and the project itself. H