Kaweb started life in the advertising business many years ago… it was then that we developed skills in corporate branding – both in terms of creation and implementation.

Now, working with estate agents to create web design solutions, we are sometimes asked to look at complete estate agency branding for a company… usually for those starting out or rebranding.

A few years ago, I imagine that estate agents used to define their new branding upon a few factors:

• What their new logo would look like on the sale board;
• Colours liked (ensuring those used did not clash with other agents in the local area);
• What their branding would look like on their stationery and in the press.

Not sure these are listed in priority (the above is my take on it) – but you get the gist of it.

With the explosion of the internet – things have changed somewhat haven’t they?

The typical startup estate agent that comes to us will have a pretty good idea of what they’re after – certainly the first two points above play a huge part in it. What has changed though is the concern of how their branding will play out on the internet – not just on their site – but also how it’s represented on the all important Rightmove as well as they’re own site and beyond (Facebook, Twitter etc.). The following describes the order in which we at Kaweb would tackle a rebrand for an estate agent (the examples used are for that of a good client of ours, Nicholas Humphreys – who are a multi disciplined agent, based in Loughborough – who we undertook a total rebrand for – with a need to maintain their red/yellow colourway).

The Logo
Colours, typeface, company ethos – all important , but how they’re combined means the difference between a memorable logo – or one that doesn’t quite hit the mark. Being a hugely subjective creative process, the client has the ultimate say.

Before and after examples of signboard work.

The All Important Signboard
It’s the chief component in getting an agent’s name out in the area they plan to operate – it advertises their name and puts them on the map. Of course, more recently the website address is up their with the telephone number as regards what should be shown on the signboard itself.

Estate Agent Stationery
At the centre of stationery requirements is the sales particulars sheet. This is honed so as to show off the property and often a template is supplied to the agent by us so that it can be incorporated into their third part software provider (the likes of Vebra, CFP Winman etc.).

Branch Fascias
Adapting to suit what is usually a horizontal format, this element is key in establishing an agent within their local area.

Branch fascia rebranding - before...

...and after.

Press Advertising

Agents are still taking up plenty of newsprint still (although this media has seen prices drop over recent years) – and being more of a vendor getter, it’s slipped somewhat on the order of priorities, but nevertheless is still an important part of an agent’s marketing arsenal. We develop skins to reflect the agent’s branding and supply the artwork and assets to the publication. This ensures that all fonts, colours, logos etc. match that of the main corporate branding.

Estate Agent Website and Social Media
We also show clients what the logo/branding would look like as part of their website header – and for those agents who are going to be part of social media sites – it’s also important to see how it looks within that environment also.

If you’re a startup or simply an agent that requires some rebranding work – why not get in touch?

I was recently asked by one of our Birmingham clients who were enquiring about an iPhone App ‘…and will it work on an iPad too?’, ‘well, yes it will, but only as it does on the iPhone, it will remain the same size, and can be enlarged – but pixelates a little’ I say.

Of course, this begs the question… ‘well, how much would it cost to do it properly for the iPad’... ummm, well, done properly I say …‘a fair bit more’.

Not what our clients want to hear, I then go on to say that given that we’ve just built a new website for them, W3C compliant, best practice SEO coding conventions deployed, browser tested to the hilt (yep, on Safari too, the default browser on Apple devices) – and it will run beautifully on an iPad (in landscape mode)… I then flip the question back to the client and suggest… ‘do you really need it?’

That’s where the iPad is a tricky sell in terms of selling iPad native Apps I suppose… it’s still big enough for a website to be browsed using traditional (is that even a word now in this context – the mobile landscape has changed so much!)  browsing technques, whereas it’s widely expected, that given the screen size, the iPhone needs to be more ‘finger-savvy’ (although, of course, many of our sites still run nicely – even on a screen that small).

So, as far as we’re concerned, if you’re an estate agent with a good website – you don’t necessarily need a separately developed iPad version of your App.

The service enables customers to send a payment, using a credit or debit card, to the agent for any of their services. It might be for a rental payment, a deposit or an application fee – either way, it provides another method of payment for the customer and means less time spent by the agent processing payments through other more labour intensive methods.

Upon successful submission of any payment the user receives a confirmation email detailing the transaction and the agent is also notified as soon as payement is made.

The agent can then make use of an online admin control panel which allows for:

• Administration of payments made via the site;
• Processing of additional transactions against previously used credit/debit cards;
• Processing of refunds;
• Processing ‘manual’ transactions (ie. submit payments via the control panel interface), replacing the need for ePDQ card based devices.

This payment tool represents another move towards bringing as much functionality to the user so as to make life easy for all parties. If you’re an estate agent who wants the same – please get in touch.

The all new site for Nicholas Humphreys incorporates this functionality into the site so that users can ‘fly’ over a set of search results. This is one of four view options the user has the option to use – the others being List View, Gallery View and Map View.

Google Earth is a relatively new piece of functionality for us but it’s not the only first for the site. We’ve also deployed a secure payment page that allows customers to pay any rental or fee payments online using their credit or debit card.

However, due to there being no need for a commercial license, and the superior amount of support available (including the excellent Mike Williams tutorials), we at Kaweb plumped for Google Maps for our new service, mappr.

The service will be primarily used to plot estate agents’ properties on a map, allowing potential homebuyers to see what real estate is available in a given area. The aims of the project were:

• Automatic geocoding from postcode data in order to plot the markers
• Summarise property info in a panel rather than the default info bubble
• Real-time updating on map movement or criteria change

Automatic Geocoding

Geocoding is simply the process of turning an address into a set of latitude-longtude co-ordinates. In the case of property, we intended to essentially convert the postcode into co-ordinates, to be stored in the database. However, due to the Royal Mail’s copyright, this requires payment. There are attempts at an open database, though this remains incomplete.

Google do offer a free geocoding service via their Maps API but the UK results are somewhat variable, over a mile off in some instances. The solution was somewhat surprising – simply use another of Google’s APIs – the AJAX Search API, in Local Search mode. Using the REST interface, we were able to retrieve accurate JSON-encoded data that was simply parsed and stored. Example PHP code:

Display summary panel on click

Rather than use the native information bubble GInfoWindow, which we felt was rather uninspiring, we wanted to display a semi-transparent panel overlaid on the map. The key to this was to inject the HTML into the map’s holding div once the map content had been loaded. For example, using the markup below as the document’s starting HTML would mean anything within the “map” div (i.e. mappr_panel) gets overlaid when the map is rendered.

Instead, we used our Javascript framework of choice, jQuery, in conjunction with a marker click listener.

NOTE: jQuery’s remove() function was then used when we wanted to hide this panel.

Real-time updating on map change or criteria change

We needed the map to reload properties (incidentally we used an AJAX approach) and redraw following either a map movement (e.g. zoom, pan), or a change in search criteria.

The first was a simple case of :

The second however, required the function to be triggered following a form change. Again, jQuery was used. By simply including class="onchange" on form elements that may change, we could harness jQuery’s selector syntax to actually apply the onchange event.

The finished product can be seen by performing a map search at http://www.chartex.co.uk.

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This forward-thinking estate agent wanted a more intuitive online solution. We came up with something that rewrites the rules on how an estate agent website offers content to the user.

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Formerly known as Jones & Company, Chartex needed new branding as well as a whole new site which included online property management and mapping.

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