DJ Alexander

DJ Alexander is one the largest letting agencies in Scotland. They rent over 5000 properties in Edinburgh & Glasgow. They currently hold around 25% of all Edinburgh’s agency rentals. DJ Alexander are a long term client of The Weather Digital. DJ Alexander’s website was due a refresh, which would reflect their market leader status.

Analysis

In 2013, we started by analysing the existing website analytic’s and identifying key areas for improvement. I studied local and national competitor websites. Also reviewing British and International property portals, along with ‘related’ sectors such as the travel booking portals and websites.

A fast growing proportion of DJ Alexander’s audience was moving towards mobile devices. It was essential that any new website would be multi-platform.

Most property websites at the time, required the user to enter a location to begin the search. This approach can cause frustration, as most users are not ‘experts’ on where one neighbourhood starts and another ends. We found users would either do multiple searches in different nearby areas or ignore the location field entirely – this was not a good user experience.

Prototyping

I developed a prototype of a map-based search – which would allow visitors to see all properties placed on a map with filters to narrow the search, offering a far superior user experience. The prototyping process helped inform the final design of the new website.

Development

As the lead developer, I was responsible for the implementation of the website, which included updating the content management system, developing the search using Google Maps, data migration of existing content (Property data & blog articles), email alerts system and testing.

We built the website on top of The Weather CMS (in-house built bespoke CMS) using PHP, MYSQL, JavaScript/JQuery, Google Maps – It was deployed and hosted on Amazon’s AWS Infrastructure in 2014.

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