Unlike many of his peers, Artur Ciesielski was decidedly unhappy with his web presence. ‘Settling’ was not part of his vocabulary.
Unlike many of his peers, Artur was not proud of how cheap his website was.
Unlike many of his peers, Artur was not complacent about his Web presence. He longed from something more substantial than his frills-laden template.
Unlike most of his peers, Artur decided to do something about it.
Fore
While we typically work with large brokers and technology companies, I could not resist helping Artur out. He was serious. He meant business.
This is what I saw when I received Artur’s first email. Issues with his site jumped at me immediately.
- His brand colors (black and orange) looked out of place against the blue and white Realty Executives palette.
- A riot of branding components (Realty Executives, CCIM, Phoenix Market Trends and Artur and Joanna) created confusion.
- Home search was buried.
- I could not search the blog.
- The layout made it difficult for me to know where to go or what to do first on the site.
- The stock images in the header drew my attention yet served no purpose other to inform me that Arizona has cacti and golf courses.
- There was no welcome text, no positioning text, no value proposition.
What followed was the creation of a wireframe, which is a visual representation – something like a blueprint – that defines the structure of a website.
The process requires us to account for every component of the site – tools, content, navigation, copy – and weave it into something that is first and foremost usable, but also compelling. For larger projects this process can take weeks.
Artur’s project only called for a home page and a few internal pages.
Once the wireframe was complete, we met with Artur and made adjustments based on his needs and our recommendations. We then handed the wireframes to our designer.
Aft
Here is the final home page comp:
We shipped this design to Artur in early March, our job completed.
I received an email from Artur yesterday informing me that Phoenixmarkettrends is now live with a few changes made by his webmaster.
Like many of his peers, Artur finds himself in a marketplace filled with short sales, foreclosures and fear. He has to rethink his game plan constantly.
Like many of his peers, Artur is well aware of his income to expense ratio. His appetite to invest in his business must be balanced by wise choices and hard scarifies. Clearly, there was more Artur could have done to his site. He’s not done yet.
Like many of his peers, Artur wants more business. He wants more traffic. He wants to convert more leads. He wants to grab more market share. And position himself ahead of his competitors, who also want those things but for whatever reason appear unwilling or unable to take do what it takes to make that happen.
Personally, I was inspired by Artur. He’s among many we know who continue to reach for their faucet of creativity and vision and, as a result, are not only surviving this market — they are killing it.
- Davison
Twitter: 1000wattmarc
Sign up for the 1000watt Spotlight e-newsletter
and keep up with the ideas, apps and people that are changing real estate.
20 Tools to Bring your Real Estate Business to the Cloud
A mist of difference
Freaking...
Wow Marc! That’s quite the transformation… 1000 watt does it again!
Big change. Nice new site. Websites are becoming more than just a “web presence”, they are starting to become the end all location and source for client information.
If I were to get a call, a survey call, like after buying a car, I would say, “extremely satisfied.”
The satisfaction is the design, the process but more so it’s the results. I measure results by business generated and PhoenixMarketTrends has been generating good business: qualified and ready potential clients who actually call, more so then e-mail.
With the new design and layout I expect even more calls because people won’t get lost on the site.
So far the feed back has been good. We’ll see how click-troughs and visits to particular pages and travel patterns change as a result of the new layout.
Great redesign! Call me.
A fantastic read….very literate and informative. Many thanks….where is your RSS button ?
@mortgage. RSS located top right of blog at 1000wattblog.com
love the websites theme
I generally keep away from surveillance equipment that have too much setup
I really like three column blogs with this layout. The navigation is clean and easy on the eye.
Nice post. I need to check this out.
(Belated) congratulations on your very nice site makeover. I really like your “Urban Bike” series. Great idea. I’m curious to know if it has been effective in connecting you with buyers and sellers who like that lifestyle? Best of luck!
Great post – would love to see this be a regular feature a site makeover.
I noticed that a TOPIC CLOUD showed up in the tabs. It seems like this would be a good aspect of SEO. Do you know if it is? Do people use a topic cloud?
Thanks for your comments on that. -Jamie