Project Overview

realestate.com.au is Australia's No.1 destination for people looking to buy, rent and sell property with a popular m.site and apps that have recorded over 2 million downloads.

With consumer visits to realestate.com.au via mobile devices nearing 50% of total traffic, realestate.com.au this year set about enhancing the multi-screen experience for consumers and creating more consistent advertising products across all touch points.

Organisation

REA Group

Team

realestate.com.au is Australia's No.1 destination for people looking to buy, rent and sell property with a popular m.site and apps that have already recorded over 2 million downloads. With consumer visits to realestate.com.au via mobile devices nearing 50% of total traffic, realestate.com.au this year set about enhancing the multi-screen experience for consumers and creating more consistent advertising products across all touch points.

Project Brief

realestate.com.au recognised early that mobile would be an important consumer channel and developed a popular m.site as well as apps for iPhone, iPad and Android devices. However, early versions lacked integration across all platforms and this became a focus for realestate.com.au in 2013.

The brief for the project was to redesign our iPhone and iPad apps and m.site to:

o provide an integrated multi-screen experience for consumers
o improve the user experience of all touch points
o provide consistent customer product representation across all channels

Project Need

realestate.com.au is Australia's No.1 destination for people looking to buy, rent and sell property.

With mobile devices increasingly being used to access the internet and consumer visits to realestate.com.au via mobile devices nearing 50% of total traffic, realestate.com.au has taken a ‘mobile first’ approach to innovation. This means launching new products and enhancements for our mobile sites and apps first, then for our main website.

In line with this strategy, in 2013, realestate.com.au launched a project to enhance the multi-screen experience for consumers and create more consistent advertising products all touch points.

User Experience

Today, consumers can sign-in to realestate.com.au and access their account from any device or channel and their favourite properties they save will be synched across all their devices seamlessly.
The tiered advertising product representation that supports the business is now present on all devices, enhancing the consumer experience.

Other features include:
• Consumers can swipe through images from the list view without having to enter the detailed view of a property; this lets them 'peek' inside the property and saves time.
• Users have access to bank-endorsed mortgage calculation tools which are updated with current interest rates
• iOS users can use the realestate.com.au app to schedule and get directions to their Saturday morning open for inspection visits

Project Marketing

The new mobile experiences were supported by an existing above-the-line outdoor display campaign and an iOS smart banner execution for Apple devices. However, to a large extent, increased uptake has been organic, driven by the quality of the user experience and market adoption of mobile.

As a result, smartphone use of the realestate.com.au mobile site grew by around 60% and realestate.com.au app usage grew to over 2 million downloads in 2013.