There are a number of vital design elements that play a vital role in helping real estate sites succeed. The role of website design is crucial. In the specific case of real estate, there are some unique elements that become more important than normal. Thus, it falls upon the people running real estate sites to know crucial design elements for bringing success.
In every niche, a unique set of design elements can play a defining role in the overall success of the website. Whether it is typography or visual design, the role of some key design elements is always more than others. This variance is understandable as audience expectations for every niche. For instance, visual design is an important factor for websites where visual content is important. This includes websites such as eCommerce stores, design portfolio sites, and some social media platforms. Thus, it is important to focus on visual design for such websites.
The elements and principles of design never change. However, their importance varies depending on the niche of a website.
Read more: How to Get the Best Website Designer for a Project?
Importance of Web Design Elements for Real Estate Sites
Generally speaking, web design is a crucial segment for every kind of website. In the specific case of real estate websites, the importance of design is paramount.
Why do we say this?
The Audience
Who are the people who use real estate websites? It is safe to say that it’s generally young people who use online real estate platforms. Older people tend to look for homes through more traditional means. Thus, the audience real estate sites want to reach are young millennials.
When looking for a home, young people are likely to stay in real estate for a long time. However, if there are design issues that cause slow loading or off-putting content layout, the users are likely to go away and never come back.
Thus, real estate websites face a real threat of losing visitors and possible customers due to easily solvable design issues.
Importance of Information Layout
One unique aspect of real estate websites is the volume of information they have to convey. Generally, every user wants to know a lot of information about any given listing.
The job of a real estate website is to provide this information earnestly and in the best format possible.
However, bad design issues in areas like typography or asymmetrical balance can cause problems in information dissemination. In other words, visitors cannot access important information regarding a listing.
These issues are easily avoidable if design elements for real estate sites are taken care of. In such cases, typography and asymmetrical balance in design don’t cause issues and all information reaches the visitors.
Simplicity
The person using a real estate website wants to have a smooth user experience. It is unlikely for the person to expect incredible design elements on real estate sites. Generally, the aim is to find the necessary information and continue browsing for multiple options.
In other words, users don’t want to be ‘wowed’ by a real estate website. They are looking for simplicity above all else.
The elements and principles of design say as much. In either web or app design, the ultimate goal is to enhance user experience and make things easy for incoming visitors.
It is a widely known fact that design issues can complicate the experience of a user. In areas like symmetrical balance and leading typography, design issues can perpetrate serious UX problems.
The principles of design balance never change, but the nature of design issues always varies. Sometimes they come from symmetrical balance problems. Other times, they come from leading typography. In every case though, the user experience worsens and complicates life for visitors.
Thus, optimizing design elements for real estate sites must hold high priority.
Moving forward with the piece, we will list 7 elements of design which play a part in helping user experience of a website. While there are many more design elements that are helpful for real estate sites, we try to narrow down our focus on the core problems.
Seven Design Elements for Real Estates Sites
Are there only seven design elements for real estate sites?
No.
There are many 7 elements of design that play a role in helping grow real estate sites. From the basic principles of design balance to something as small as logo typography, everything plays a part.
Do all these design elements play an equally important part in the success of real estate sites?
No again.
Some factors are more important than others. This is just because some design elements become more important for real estate sites.
In the following points, we will cover seven core design elements important for building successful real estate sites. We won’t mention vague points like basic principles of graphics and layout. Instead, we will take a much more practical approach and discuss elements that have a direct impact on the success of a website.
Optimal Website Layout
We all know why people come to real estate websites. There is no need to know the basic principles of art and design for the same.
Above all, people come on real estate websites for information. In any given real estate listing, there is a lot of information users want to know. This can include rent, market price, and various other factors unique to the field of real estate.
More than anything, the job of a designer is to create a design layout where all this information is easily accessible.
Thus, one of the most important design elements for real estate sites is creating an optimal website layout. To do this, designers have to fall back on the basic principles of graphics and layout.
For example, stuffing too much information on the homepage is a bad idea. Generally, the home page must serve as a trailer to a visitor. In simple words, it must briefly inform visitors about the salient features and information of the real estate website.
This is essentially a part of the basic principles of design rhythm. Real estate websites that have a rhythmic design are best-place to convert visitors into customers.
Real Estate Information
An optimal website layout helps make the information accessible. However, good real estate websites also make sure the information comes in the best possible form.
For example, let’s a real estate listing contains all the necessary information an interested party may want to know. The only thing missing from the listing is a photograph of the property itself.
People interested in a property will naturally want to see some pictures of the same. It is not enough for the listing to simply describe the listing in text alone. A picture can help bring all the information into context.
Now let’s take the opposite situation. A listing doesn’t contain some important information, but it has a large set of images and a video as well. Despite missing some information, there is a good chance users will find such a listing interesting.
Users today generally engage more with visual content. Thus, it is the job of real estate websites to make visual content easily accessible. From offering a slideshow of all the property images to creating an option to watch a video, there are many design elements real estate websites can use here.
In conclusion, real estate websites must present important information in the right medium for maximum engagement. One doesn’t need to know the many principles of design rhythm for something as easy as this.
Optimized Search
The search option is a crucial part of real estate websites. Generally, this is the part of the website interested visitors will likely use the most. Thus, optimizing search within the website is clearly very important.
Optimizing search is less about adding design elements and more about understanding the audience. The solution to this does not lie in the principles of art and design or logo typography. Simple market research is enough to grasp the kind of metrics important for optimizing search on a real estate website.
This includes studying the features most popular with general visitors of real estate websites and those which don’t perform as well. Furthermore, designers must also find areas where audience needs are not being met.
All these things together help designers figure out all the essential elements of an optimized search function. Simple market and audience research helps designers identify defining search options. There is no need to study the complex elements of the design line or principles of design emphasis.
Naturally, other small aspects of search such as button design CSS and visual design principles are also important. However, the main focus is always on identifying search features. The rest of the road is easy.
Loading Time
Another essential design element is loading time. If users are to use a real estate website for extended periods, the website must constantly offer fast loading speed. Otherwise, there is a great chance users will go away from the website.
Optimizing loading time is another one of the many design elements which doesn’t require any complex knowledge of matters like principles of design emphasis or elements of a design line. Simply optimizing factors slowing down the speed of a website is enough.
Generally, real estate sites don’t count this as one of the essential design elements for enhancing user experience. This is because loading time is a largely technical factor. However, since it has a sizable impact on user experience, it is wise for designers to know how to optimize the loading speed of a website.
Creating Responsive Design Elements for Real Estate sites
People today view content on a range of different devices. Some use desktops while others use phones and tablets. In short, real estate websites can never really know the device their next customer normally uses.
This underlines the importance of having a responsive design.
It generally ensures that the layout of a website is optimal across different devices. This includes desktops, mobile, and tablets. There are many ways for designers to ensure that they create designs that are optimal for users across different platforms. All they need to do is keep in mind core visual design principles and remember principles of design examples to put their best foot forward.
SEO Optimality
One of the most crucial design elements is SEO optimality for modern real estate sites. Search engines are a major platform where users find real estate sites. The only way to enhance presence on search engines organically is following important SEO guidelines.
There are many SEO guidelines a real estate website has to follow in order to grow its presence on search engines. Not all guidelines are in the hands of designers. All they need to do is ensure their design falls within the general standards of SEO. Generally, this means creating designs that ensure smooth crawling and indexing of content.
CTA Design and Optimization
There are generally some hot spots on real estate websites that are especially important from a conversion perspective. Hot spots simply refer to areas or buttons on a screen. If users engage with these buttons or areas more, it generally means there are more conversions likely.
The buttons generally contain the CTA message drafted by the website to convert a prospect. It is important for designers to enhance these areas and buttons to attract users towards it. For instance, the subscribe button on YouTube is red because it attracts the attention of the user. Since the platform wants users to engage and subscribe, making the button red makes sense.
Making these important decision decisions is very important. Doing this requires knowledge of button design CSS and various other elements and principles of design.
In Conclusion – Design Elements for Real Estate Sites
In this piece, we brought our focus on seven crucial design elements for real estate sites that are important for their overall success. We discussed each design element in detail and explained exactly why designers must focus on them.
Besides design elements, we also brought light to the subject of design in real estate websites. Web design is an important subject for websites in every niche. However, real estate websites specifically depend on optimal designs to convert more people.
Read more: Which are the Top Web Design Languages Designers Use?
