Digital Investment for Institutional Real Estate Investors
Challenge
With over 28 years of experience in institutional investing and over $8 billion in assets under management, American Realty Advisors is a major player when it comes to real estate investment. American Realty Advisors' clientele consists of high-level institutional investors who have a deep appreciation for quality and elegance, which is exactly what American Realty Advisors' new website projects to visitors as they arrive on the new site. American Realty Advisors is a leading expert in institutional real estate investing, however, their old website didn’t reflect their stature within the financial services industry. American Realty Advisors came to us with a clear understanding that their website was outdated and lacking the level of professionalism their clientele expects. One of their biggest issues was that their site was not responsive making the viewing experience on mobile or tablet unpleasant for visitors, so we knew from that outset that making a site that is attractive and easy to use regardless of viewing platform would be a priority for the site. With some overall goals outlined, we wanted to gain an understanding of American Realty Advisors website userbase. By learning about who is using the site and what they are using it for, we were able to design a strategy that targets visitors directly. For American Realty Advisor's visitors, most come to the site to get a feel for who American Realty Advisors is; their level of professionalism and corporate culture. Once they have vetted American Realty Advisors and want to learn more information about how they can invest, the next step for site visitors is to pick up the phone and call. This information wound up shaping a great deal of our strategy and design.
Solution
UX Strategy With our goals in place and a firm understanding of American Realty Advisors' clientele, we began wireframing the page designs. Knowing that visitors predominantly were exploring the American Realty Advisors website in order to vet American Realty Advisors as reputable fund managers, we decided to put some key statistics on the homepage through some well-placed design elements. By inundating visitors with American Realty Advisors' success from the outset, we immediately began removing any doubt visitors might have. Additionally, in order to position American Realty Advisors as thought leaders and further dissuade any visitor suspicion, we placed a carousel of recent insights toward the top of the page allowing visitors to not only see American Realty Advisors' key achievements but to understand their position on current events that might affect their investors. Additionally, since the next step for most site visitors, once they have vetted American Realty Advisors is to pick up the phone and call, we knew the importance of well-placed contact CTAs throughout the site. They can be seen on nearly every page so no matter what part of the decision-making process a visitor is in, they have easy access to contact American Realty Advisors. Build Once our wireframes were finalized we moved into the design phase of the project. American Realty Advisors had recently gone through a full rebranding process, updating their logo and honing in on core brand colors. Focusing on elegance, we stuck predominantly to shades of grey throughout the site while breaking up the darker tones with a healthy amount of whitespace to let the design breath. Additionally, we pulled a few shades of red from American Realty Advisors' new logo and used them to highlight CTAs and points of interest across the site. After the client approved the designs we moved into development and built the site on .NET. Through the CMS, pages were easily managed and editable by the client through various WYSIWYG editors on the backend. Additionally, the client was able to create new insights on the fly and upload associated PDFs for visitors to be able to choose to either read the insight on the web or have a well designed and printed PDF at their fingertips. Test & Launch The developed site went through a rigorous testing phase diligently trying to find potential weak points where the site might break. After fixing any bugs we handed the site over to the client for their review. American Realty Advisors had minimal critique and soon after we were ready to launch. American Realty Advisors decided to host through us on our Rackspace servers which made the site migration process from our development environment to the live server seamless. After analyzing the website traffic, we agreed on a midnight launch, ensuring the least amount of downtime for visitors, presenting them with a fresh new website in the morning.
Results
With American Realty Advisors' new website up and running, we are very proud of the strategic approach we applied in order to position American Realty Advisors as leaders within their field. From our well thought out wireframes, to our beautiful designs, and our well-developed site and robust custom CMS, the American Realty Advisors site has been well received by the client and site visitors alike.
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