Corcoran: Responsive Web

THE CHALLENGE

Corcoran, a renowned East Coast real estate brokerage, engaged Big Spaceship to design a new responsive and mobile-first website. The new site needed a robust search functionality, and a toolset of collaboration features to connect agents with prospective buyers and sellers. The client desired a renewed focus on the Corcoran brand, representing all markets (the previous site was too NYC-centric) and focusing on lead generation, engagement, stickiness, social integration and collaboration.

Our Measurable KPIs:
Lead generation conversion
User engagement
Time on site
Return users
Account creation
Agent satisfaction (informally or via survey)

STAKEHOLDER INTERVIEWS

One of the biggest challenges with this project was that there were quite a few different types of stakeholders. While Corcoran's main revenue driver was selling homes, they also needed to appease their real estate brokers (who ulimately were the key to actually connecting with prospective buyers and closing sales). So the experience of their site had to appeal to both end users (buyers and sellers) and agents. 

My team conducted extensive stakeholder interviews over the course of 9 days. We interviewed members of the Corcoran Leadership, Marketing, Analytics, and Tech teams to uncover their motivations and desires for the new site. We interviewed Corcoran agents from their 3 markets (NYC, The Hamptons, and Florida) to learn about their day-to-day selling process. And we interviewed buyers and sellers of homes in the NYC area to uncover pain points. Link to Google Doc.

SERVICE BLUEPRINTS

Out of the interviews with user groups (Corcoran marketing team, Corcoran real estate agents, buyers, and sellers), we created service blueprint documents to map the respective journeys of our user types, and how Corcoran.com plays a role in the process. We included Key Questions (pain points) of our end users, and Opportunity Areas for the Corcoran brand.

LISTINGS SEARCH

From the perspective of our end users (prospective buyers, renters, and sellers) the search feature on Corcoran.com was the most important feature. This was the tool that lead users to listings they might be interested in. And eventually connected them with a Corcoran Agent. Aggregator sites like StreetEasy and Zillow are familar and easy to use—we needed to get Corcoran.com up to standard.

We took inspiration from industry leaders in similar and adjacent categories: Airbnb, Compass, Google Flights.

COLLABORATION TOOL

From the perspective of our agent users and the Corcoran Marketing team, the collaboration portal was a high priority. Corcoran Agents wanted an easy way to communicate with their clients, throughout the complicated buying/selling process. The current communication process was a messy combination of email, text, phone calls, physical paperwork, and in-person contact. 

Buying, selling and renting are all highly emotional activities. And just as Corcoran agents treat their clients as individuals in person, we wanted to create a tool for them to do the same online.

We also wanted to create an collaboration experience for our end users who were house hunting with a partner or family member. 

Let's talk:  abbymills.co@gmail.com