France4U Rebranding &
real estate Web Platform UI/UX Design

Project Scope

Timining

Industry

About

The project was developed for a leading real estate digital platform in France. The company brings together more than a dozen agents from different regions. Users can filter the properties by region, price, property type, and other important metrics.  France4u has been in the real estate industry for 20 years but there was never room for evaluating user experience and design research. The original platform was developed intuitively and usability hasn’t been thought of originally.

Competitive Analysis

My research applied to products in online real estate marketplaces with a main focus on middle prices properties. However France4U platform lists luxury housing as well, and the new UX and UI had to appeal to both target audiences. I analysed the top ranking real estate agency websites specifically in France. It let me plan new design changes and branding updates that were needed for France4U to stand out.

France4u Competition

Opportunities
Opportunity 1
Individual property selections

Each customer request can be individually adapted to their needs, and preferences when buying real estate. So it is important to get as much information from the user to create a better tailored offer for them.

Opportunity 2
Improved Home Buying Experience

Buying housing online can be confusing and I had an opportunity to improve user experience and make sure that user can understand right away advantages of a certain house listing, and most important details of each.

Challenges
challenge 1
Bad Usability

The feedback that we received from users of the older platform was that it was hard to find needed listings because all pages looked too overcrowded, with no hierarchy and page structure. In particular, detailed single housing pages had so much information that it was hard to easily understand it and make a purchase decision.

challenge 2
Limited freedom due to technology used to develop France4U

The platform’s base coding language was selected already and the goal was to implement a new design without breaking original technologies it was build on. The design had to be made from several blocks that can be mixed and matched by their team. In-house team of France4u is able to modify the pages themselves and create new ones thanks to such custom solution.

challenge 3
Product needs to appeal to large target audience

Another challenge was to make sure that UX and visual design can be attractive to non tech savvy users. The main real estate buyers are in suburban and countryside areas of the regions. The platform has high focus on such regions.

Old Platform design and UX
Process

Site map

Wireframing

Visual design

Design Style inspiration and research

Rebranding Results

France4u Brand Guide

For the rebrand it was important to represent France business values and to stay true to who they are. I referenced original company logo in the new branding, but gave it a more modern feel. Both branding and platform design were developed in minimalist style. This style highlights premium housing that France4u showcases and the quality services the company provides for their customers.

Website Design System

Landing Page

Landing Page Mobile

Single Property Page. View more/less Details Toggle

Side menu Filtering UI

Content Regions Pages

Conclusion

The main goal for platform redesign and UX update was to make it functional, easy to use and modify, while still keeping trendy UI. I focused on updating the user experience and making it easier to browse houses listings, as well as articles with information about different regions in France.

 

A solid design system was developed and implemented in all business areas, ranging from marketing, branding to UI/UX. This major design update can be used in the long run by France4u and their internal team & agents. 

As a result France4U received more traffic and the sales increased a lot compared to the before state of the platform.