Happyworm

Happyworm

design and applications for inspiring web solutions

Leonecasa

LeoneCasa.it is an estate agency site for Italian property. It allows Estate Agents and Private sellers alike to have a web presence and facilitates buyer/seller interaction and importantly lets users find properties with the minimum of fuss.

What we did

  • logo design and branding
  • task analysis and information architecture
  • web design and development

Technologies used

  • XHTML 1.0 strict, XSLT, CSS
  • jQuery, Java, MySQL
  • Google map API

The Challenge

The online estate agency market in Italy is very competitive and hence our brief was to create a site that differentiated itself from the competition in that it should be easy to use, quick to load, highly reactive and include a social-networking aspect.

To achieve the high usability of the site we consulted various types of potential users and employed a stress-free, minimalistic and unobtrusive design.

The speed of reactiveness of the site is achieved by using a combination of factors: exploitation of the latest techniques to reduce latency, widespread use of AJAX and crucially the loading all content into separate tabs of one single page. The benefit of the latter technique is that it allows users to switch between tabs and so content instantly - a technique that is being adopted by web pioneers such as Google and Facebook in there latest applications.

LeoneCasa includes it's own private property-oriented messaging system and allows users to create and tailor their own personal Estate Agency website complete with custom URL. Other features include quick registration, the ability to 'bookmark' properties and a unique 'natural language' search algorithm.

Screencasts

1.Why LeoneCasa is different to the current crop of property websites. See how loading content dynamically in the page can improve usability, responsivness and the efficiency of a website.

Leonecasa Screencast - Part 1

(4 min, 49 sec)


2. A look at what a registered user can expect, including how they can set up their profile and their own personal web page.

Leonecasa Screencast - Part 2

(4 min, 40 sec)


3. Here we see the quick and easy insertion of a property into the system, complete with keywords that are used internally and externally of the application. Also shown is the photo-uploading system that scales images before uploading.

Leonecasa Screencast - Part 3

(4 min, 53 sec)


4. Explores some of the interaction between users and the 'social' aspects of the site, including the threaded property-oriented message system. We also see how to save a property to check out later.

Leonecasa Screencast - Part 4

(4 min, 55 sec)


5. Some of the more advanced features are explained here. We look at the 'free-text' advanced search as well as how to alter and delete an inserted property.

Leonecasa Screencast - Part 5

(5 min, 00 sec)


6. How to ensure your onepage app is search engine friendly and accessible. Accessibilty and search engine optimization issues are explained.

Leonecasa Screencast - Part 6

(4 min, 42 sec)