Commanding 95% of Aberdeen's property market
ASPC was founded as the first Solicitors’ Property Centre in 1969. It represents 64 solicitors firms in Aberdeenshire and commands about 95% of the local market, despite growing competition from UK leaders like Rightmove and Zoopla.
The ASPC’s outdated website was clunky and hard to use, however. The user journey was complex and limited in functionality, while the back-end system was hard work for solicitors and their staff. They appointed Equator to solve the problem.
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“A website that’s best-in-class in the UK property market.”
An entirely new platform
Our job was to build an entirely new online platform with public-facing components including website, mobile apps and media sequencers, all created from scratch. We also had to rebuild the back-office system for the solicitors and ASPC staff who upload and update property details.
Built from the ground up
The whole project took 14 months, with in-depth research and analysis preceding design and build. The result is a website that’s best-in-class in the UK property sector.
The new site is intuitive, fast and streamlined, with infinite scrolling on search returns and other clever features like sliders and hover states to improve usability. There’s a clever map tool, a user-friendly personalised account area, and access to bespoke content like house price reports and mortgage calculators.
While the new site is packed with features and tools, it’s remarkably clean in design and easy to use. There’s a super-simple search page that allows the user to home right in on type of property, price and location, to buy or rent, in a couple of clicks. Sellers get an explanatory video and links to connect with suitable solicitors.
As an additional part of the project, we re-skinned the ASPC’s existing iPhone app. To do this we had to replicate web service calls so that customers with different versions wouldn’t be affected when the new system went live.
“An entirely new online platform that works as well for staff as it does for customers.”
Behind the scenes
The bespoke back-office system we created gives ASPC staff, solicitors and surveyors different permission levels to access, upload and amend data. It also handles processing of invoices, with automatic transfer to print via secure FTP. ASPC staff have access to a full suite of 25 customer reports, with a restricted range of reports available to other stakeholders.
A key piece of Equator’s work was data migration from the old system to the new, and we created a unique console to manage the task. We moved data on a quarter of a million properties and more than half a million images, as well as 10,000 invoices and thousands more documents.
On average the ASPC site now gets:
Numbers:
250,000 unique visitors per month
1m visits per month
9m page views per month
A radical transformation and a remarkable result
ASPC is a well-loved institution in its home territory, yet was facing increasing competition from new, more digitally savvy UK-wide businesses when we began working with them. We transformed the UX for customers while radically overhauling back-office functions for staff, making life easier for buyers, sellers, renters and property professionals. Talk to us about how we could transform your business, too.