Case study · Real estate
Luxury Seattle Real Estate
IDX Listing Search for a Real Estate Site
A Seattle agent who specializes in luxury homes had a half-finished WordPress site and a listing search on IDX Broker that looked nothing like it. We wrapped the search pages in the site's design, turned the menu into saved searches with their own titles and meta descriptions, connected the home page quick search and launched the site in March 2017.
Overview
Luxury Seattle Real Estate was the website of a Seattle agent who specializes in high-end homes. Buyers could search every luxury listing in Seattle and the surrounding cities, and sellers could request a home valuation.
The site had been started on a purchased real estate WordPress theme and sat behind a coming soon page. The agent brought us in at the end of 2016 to finish it and get it live. We launched it in March 2017.
The Challenge
The site was about halfway built, on a theme we had not chosen, and much of what mattered happened somewhere else. Listing search runs on IDX Broker, a separate hosted service that pulls listings from the Northwest Multiple Listing Service. Out of the box those search pages had plain white styling that looked nothing like the site's black, skyline-heavy design.
The agent wanted the jump from his site to the listing search to be invisible, searches set up for the neighborhoods and property types his buyers ask about, and search pages that could rank on their own.
What We Built
One look across two platforms
We mapped the WordPress theme to IDX Broker as a global wrapper, so every search, results and property page carries the site's header, navigation and footer. We then restyled the IDX pages in white text on black, which the purchased theme did not provide, and moved the search service from IDX Broker's default address to a subdomain of the agent's own domain.
Searches built around how buyers shop
The main menu became a set of saved searches: by property type (condominiums, townhomes, single family, waterfront, water view and equestrian estates), by price band and by neighborhood. Each one has its own page title, meta description and keywords.
A quick search on the home page
We connected the home page search form to IDX Broker, matched its city list to the listing data, defaulted it to Seattle with a one million dollar minimum, and added links to advanced search and search by MLS number. On the results pages, the save, new and modify search links became buttons and the listing text got larger.
Finishing the site
We reworked the agent's bio section, added meta descriptions to the WordPress pages, updated WordPress and its plugins, fixed alignment problems in the search forms across browsers, and fixed a mobile Safari bug that left the menu stuck open.
Results
- The site launched in March 2017, about three months after we took it on.
- Visitors move between the WordPress site and the IDX Broker listing search without a change in design.
- Every menu link is a saved search with its own title and meta description.