A Locator Map for 32,000 Realtors
Website redesign integrating Vue.js and RAMCO to deliver a powerful solution
Background
If you’ve ever bought, sold, or leased real estate, you’ve worked with a member of Virginia REALTORS® (formerly the Virginia Association of Realtors). Representing over 32,000 REALTORS®, the Virginia REALTORS® association is a member organization that advocates for homeownership and represents the interests of Virginia property owners. As the state’s largest industry association (and lobbying force), Virginia Realtors partnered with COLAB in 2016 to redesign their Drupal 7 site, a campaign microsite and a blog into one single new WordPress site. The main goals of this redesign were to encourage member advocacy, increase access to educational resources for both members and non-members and increase event registration.
The Challenge
Before we could jump in and starting building websites, we needed to understand how the site in its existing form was helping or hurting its many users. The main site had been in place for about five years, with most of the changes and additions being content. This site had so much content that it was hard for both Virginia REALTORS and COLAB to distinguish the important content and the content no longer needed.
The Solution
Throughout our Strategy process, we partnered with the team to define their target audiences, the first being members: competitive, hardworking, and on-the-go professionals. These users require easy to navigate content and an optimized mobile experience. The new site gives members fast access to a number of articles, webinars, videos, publications as well as governance and educational resources. It also creates an online legal hotline to offer guidance and insights on the constantly changing regulatory rules.
The second audience includes people who are in need of real estate services. While this audience is a smaller portion of the site’s user-base, they are still extremely important to Virginia REALTORS. For them, the Find a REALTOR map had to be prominent, easy to find and most importantly easy to use.
The map uses Vue.js to power the search features this technology combs through a vast library of RAMCO (a Microsoft Dynamics CRM designed for REALTOR membership groups) records quickly and seamlessly.
The Result
The entire team was thrilled with the new design and how their new brand came to life. Virginiarealtors.org elevates the digital presence to be on par with their offline reputation.