RE/MAX Western Canada: Case Study

• Creative Templates
• Rich Media
• Content Management Systems
• Web Site Construction
• Search Engine Optimization
• Project Strategy, Setup & Management
• Usability & Navigation

• www.remax-western.ca

Executive Summary

Real estate market leader RE/MAX owes much of its success to its sterling reputation for customer service excellence and to the high visibility of its brand. Nevertheless, its Western Canadian arm was not able to derive optimum "pull" from its outdated, lackluster site. Despite consistently high rates of traffic, lead generation was unacceptably low, and the Web site attracted too few potential recruits.

Acro Media undertook a comprehensive analysis of RE/MAX of Western Canada's existing site with the aim of improving engagement and usability, creating clear paths to conversion, and further improving the site's visibility in the organic search results of the major engines. After enriching and reorganizing content, they integrated a popular property search mechanism and implemented it alongside other dynamic, highly functional features and tools. The Drupal content management system—upon which the new site is based—allows RE/MAX administrators complete control over site content of diverse types, enabling them to grow their online resources and derive excellent value from their important investment.

   

Setting: Nowhere to Go but Up

Famously represented by their soaring, tri-colored hot air balloons, RE/MAX is the most highly recognized real estate brand in the world. Since its establishment in 1973, RE/MAX has spread across six continents—including more than 63 countries and eight territories—growing each month for over 32 consecutive years. Still owned and directed by its progressive founders, RE/MAX was one of the first real estate companies to market its services on the World Wide Web.

Unsurprisingly, RE/MAX sells one-third of all homes in Canada, making them the number one real estate firm in the country. Operating within the largest of the country’s three major regions, RE/MAX of Western Canada represents the four provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia, and the Northwest and Yukon territories.

Challenge: Renovate...or Depreciate

Based on market share and transaction volume, RE/MAX has long enjoyed the distinction as market leader in Western Canada. Nevertheless, the RE/MAX of Western Canada Web site—potentially a high volume source of sales leads and an important touch point with their realtors—begged for a major overhaul.

In general, the Web site was outdated in appearance and text heavy. For RE/MAX, updating imagery and content (including time-sensitive industry- and market-related news) was costly, time-consuming and required specialized coding skills.

Although the site enjoyed a significant volume of traffic, decent organic search engine performance and respectable PageRank from its birth in 2005, it could not convert its visitors at a rate anywhere close to expectation. The property search interface—arguably the site’s most important feature—was frustrating to use and suffered high rates of abandonment. Likewise, outside realtors—whom RE/MAX targeted for potential recruitment—were neither contacting RE/MAX nor submitting résumés in hoped-for numbers.

Solution: Online Real Estate with a Million-Dollar View

RE/MAX of Western Canada approached Acro Media for a Web site redesign to best serve three, distinct audiences: home buyers/sellers, affiliated agents, and those interested in joining the RE/MAX ranks.

Acro Media undertook the overhaul with an audit of the existing site—to uncover deficiencies and online opportunities both. Concurrently, marketing research focused on augmenting the site’s ability to consistently achieve high rankings in the organic search results of the major search engines. Acro Media’s SEO efforts included researching the online competition, analyzing typical search behaviors of RE/MAX’s diverse target audiences, and generating keywords with which to enrich existing content.

The overarching goal for the new Web site was to enhance the search experience through improved site architecture and navigation. An orthodox information architecture process detailed interactive elements, textual content and calls to action (messaging persuading users to act in accordance with your site goals)—and dictated their location: site-wide, on the homepage, or elsewhere. The IA determined how best to channel each type of visitor through the site and towards conversion to RE/MAX’s goals.

A powerful onsite search further ensures clear and quick access to information. But perhaps more importantly—given the site’s vital role of generating sales leads—is the immediate access to listed properties from the homepage. Acro Media’s custom solution seamlessly integrated the popular MLS (Multiple Listing Service) search, immediately available via a homepage search by city, or through an attractive, interactive map of Western Canadian provinces and territories.

Equally important was a site migration plan, ensuring a smooth transition of content to the new site from the old, with no negative impact upon the client’s PageRank and search engine performance.

Acro Media pragmatically addressed usability issues. Site resolution was increased to the 1024x768 standard to accommodate modern computer monitors, and to best display graphical elements including the interactive, dynamic slide show presentation Font size was increased—for optimal display, and in consideration of the boomer-aged audience.

Enabling RE/MAX to easily maintain the freshness and accuracy of their content is the open source Drupal content management platform—overall winner of Packt Publishing’s Open Source CMS Award in 2007 and 2008. The Drupal CMS lets site administrators create, add and edit a near-limitless volume of content—including text, video and images—and immediately publish it to their site.

For RE/MAX administrators’ easy control of site resources and functions, Acro Media created a unique dashboard of intuitive management tools. For example, a familiar WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) interface lets them handily edit and publish textual content—including rich text and formatting. Without needing any specialized skills, RE/MAX can also manage a wide variety of other content: images and messaging within interactive Flash presentations, videos, current news articles, printer friendly documents, and illustrative, rich media PDFs.

Sales agents—RE/MAX or other—enjoy their own dedicated resource area. Affiliation benefits support recruitment efforts, while downloadable marketing materials and events listings for training and conventions keep the current RE/MAX sales force well informed. Customized event management allows RE/MAX to instantaneously post and update event information, while their agents can register/cancel their registration, and securely remit payment via Acro Media’s integrated ecommerce solution.

Benefits: Reborn to Perform

With a new—and strongly branded—professional look and feel, remax-western.ca is a marketing powerhouse, ably serving all three of its distinct target audiences: buyers and sellers, RE/MAX agents and potential recruits. Carefully executed information architecture ensures that users from each group can progress smoothly through the site toward well-planned conversions based on RE/MAX’s business goals. The usefulness of onsite tools and fresh content encourage their audiences’ repeated return, serving RE/MAX as a sales and recruitment tool 24/7/365. 

On the Web, freshness means a lot—but it can come at a high cost. The new site improves upon the best of pre-existing content—saving the client considerable sums for original content creation. Ensuring the relevancy and timeliness of content will never challenge RE/MAX administrators—their Drupal CMS affords them a huge degree of control over their many varieties of online content, with no special skills nor substantial investments in time and resources required.

The site’s Drupal platform provides RE/MAX superb value. As open source software, Drupal requires neither license fees nor vendor lock-in—so RE/MAX’s investment pays for superior design and customization rather than monthly fees. Its source code is freely available to RE/MAX to use and modify, and a devoted community of developers (including Acro Media) continually extends its versatility and impressive range of functionality.

Every Web site has a natural lifespan. After its many years of service, RE/MAX of Western Canada’s had reached its end. The redesigned site offers vastly superior looks and feel, a dramatically improved search experience and impressive findability in the search engines. Most importantly, the site drives engagement and conversion—all to be expected of an organization whose core competencies are superior customer service and stellar sales.