REA Group has gone live with a design uplift to the new homes section of their website.
With half of property seekers on realestate.com.au considering off-the-plan property, REA’s Joseph Lyons said the section of the site (https://www.realestate.com.au/new-land-estates/) plays a critical role in meeting the needs of consumers across Australia, and also offshore investors.
Mr Lyons, REA Group Executive General Manager – Developer & Commercial, said the aim was to create a single destination for new homes in Australia.
“We know the audience that comes onto REA and we wanted to bring a whole experience together on mobile and web,” Mr Lyons said.
“We’ve introduced a new map experience that allows people to search for all projects and we have introduced premium advertising for customers like property developers that integrates seamlessly into the website experience.”
This design uplift ensures there is a consistent experience across all of the parts of the site, and the new responsive native ad formats allow agents to extend the impact of their campaign to more high-value buyers on realestate.com.au.
The new map experience on the mobile ‘new homes’ site allows people who are looking for off-the-plan properties to toggle between map and list view.
The design work kicked off in February.
“The mobile experience was released in June and now we have a fully responsive web experience.
“It is well known that having a mobile experience is critical. People are typically looking for property on the go, or to and from work, so a cohesive experience in mobile is just as important. We have over half of our traffic coming from mobile,” Mr Lyons said.
The new design offers plenty of value for the customer.
“The customer can search by state or key regions which might be useful for those who might not be looking for a new project but looking to build a new home. People can find builders in each state and designs at different price points that those builders have.
“There’s a complete experience on home designs and we have thousands of home designs. So the design isn’t just focusing on apartments and projects but builders and home designs as well.”
Given that statistically new home builds are decreasing, Mr Lyons said there is there still room for this technology given housing affordability issues.
“Particularly with affordability being an issue in the eastern seaboard, we see new construction with land estates and new homes builds to still have demand,” he said.
In the coming months, consumers can expect more features to be added, including improving the land and house experience, providing tips and guides, plus content to help inform consumers on their journey to new home building.
