PropertySuite integration for real estate agent: Far North Coastal
Far North Coastal Real Estate
Case Study
Industry: Real Estate
Region: Northland
Focus Area: Doubtless Bay Area of Northland, from the Karikari Peninsula in the north to Taupo Bay in the south.
Client since: 2024
Project Duration: 3 months
Far North Coastal Real Estate is a boutique real estate company with an experienced, collaborative team that has embraced the significant changes in the industry brought about by technology. By incorporating PropertySuite integration for real estate agents, they leverage cutting-edge technology to enhance property data management. This allows them to provide clients with a high level of service, ensuring that the process of sale or purchase is as stress-free as possible.
The Challenge
Far North Coastal, a leading real estate agency, relied on PropertySuite as a third-party platform to manage their back-end property data on a monthly subscription basis. The team worked to implement a seamless PropertySuite integration for real estate agent workflows, ensuring live property listings from PropertySuite integrated effectively into their website website. The team developed a custom-built API to provide real-time updates, optimise performance, and offer an easy-to-use experience for both the agency and its clients.
1. API Integration
Building a reliable API to pull live property data from PropertySuite, ensuring real-time updates and data consistency across the website.
2. Performance & User Experience
Optimizing the site to handle large property data sets without compromising load times, while providing a smooth, intuitive user experience.
3. Client Autonomy
Developing a user-friendly CMS that allowed Far North Coastal to independently manage and update their website content without affecting the API integration.
The Solution
Building the website around dynamic data fields to display the data we pulled PropertySuite data using a custom-built middleware to handle data sent through API calls. This integration ensures live, real-time property data sync and optimises performance. Furthermore, we implemented caching and image compression for fast loading across all devices.
We also built the site using a user-friendly CMS, enabling Far North Coastal to easily manage content independently while maintaining seamless API integration.
Key Features
User-Specific Content
The website delivers personalized content tailored to individual users' preferences and browsing behaviors, enhancing engagement and relevance.
Live Data
Real-time property listings and updates are displayed on the site through an integrated API with PropertySuite, ensuring the information is always accurate.
Smart Filters
Advanced filtering options allow users to refine their property search based on specific criteria, providing a more efficient and customized browsing experience.
Automated Content Placement
Content is dynamically organized and placed on the site through automated systems, ensuring consistent updates and an optimized user experience.
The Results
- Substantial monthly saving by eliminating subscription costs to PropertySuite, thereby reducing ongoing expenses.
- Full Ownership of the website and its data, we offer complete control over content updates and customization.
- Greater flexibility and scalability with live data integration through a custom API, this supports future growth and enhanced user engagement
Building Lasting Partnerships
Customer Testimonial
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Solution components
Custom Middleware
The custom-built middleware acts as a bridge between PropertySuite and the website, efficiently handling the transfer of data via API, collecting files, and pulling information directly from the database.
Data Translator
It acts as a data translator, converting information from PropertySuite’s format into a structure that is optimized for the website’s design and functionality. As a results, the middleware not only handles API calls but also takes care of tasks like data validation, ensuring that only accurate and relevant information makes it to the front end.
Moreover, the middleware can handle large volumes of data from PropertySuite, such as property listings, images, and other assets, while managing it in a way that ensures fast loading times and minimal strain on server resources. The solution is also highly scalable, allowing for easy updates or integration with additional data sources in the future.
Data Centralisation
By centralising and managing the data flow, the middleware also helps streamline the maintenance of the website, as updates to data integration processes can be made in one place without affecting the rest of the site’s functionality. Therefore this ensures reliability and future-proofing for ongoing use.
Real-Time Live Data
The real-time live data integration ensures that property listings and updates are instantly reflected on the website, displaying in the appropriate sections based on user-specific preferences.
In this way, the site provides a dynamic, up-to-date experience for visitors.
As data flows from the middleware to the site, it is dynamically organized and presented in a personalized manner, allowing users to view the most relevant content according to their search criteria and browsing history. Consequently, this ensures an up-to-date, engaging experience for every visitor, with content tailored to their needs in real time.
Smart Filtering
The custom filtering system is tailored based on all available property data, allowing users to refine their searches according to their unique journey—whether they’re looking for houses for sale or considering selling their own. As a result, users can find exactly what they need, improving their overall experience.
Custom fields
Filters are dynamically adjusted to include a range of custom fields that define the order of listings, ensuring the most relevant properties are always prioritized. Moreover, the design incorporates dropdown menus for a smooth, intuitive browsing experience. When users are ready to engage, a click-to-contact agent popup appears, streamlining communication. Additionally, archive pages utilize these custom filters, offering users a well-organized and visually appealing way to explore listings.
Property Listing Templates
The property listing templates are designed with a focus on user experience and ease of navigation. Specifically, each listing features a custom gallery that showcases property images in a visually appealing way. Moreover, the sticky header provides a dynamic experience as users scroll, changing to display key property information, including a click-to-contact agent button. This feature allows users to quickly get in touch, enhancing the overall user experience.
In addition, when users submit an enquiry, the system automatically populates the enquiry form with relevant property details, streamlining the process and ensuring a smooth, efficient interaction for both buyers and sellers.
Our Process
UNDERSTAND >
DEFINE >
IDEATE >
PROTOTYPE >
TEST >
DELIVER
1. Understand & Define the Problem
Before designing the website solution for Far North Coastal Real Estate, we made sure to fully understand their needs and objectives. We engaged in detailed discussions with the stakeholders to clarify their goals, including the need for a more flexible and user-friendly platform, reduced reliance on PropertySuite, and the ability to manage and update the site independently. This helped define the core requirements, including live property data integration and custom features for user engagement.
2. Ideate & Prototype
We created wireframes and design prototypes to give stakeholders a visual preview of the new website’s look and functionality. This allowed the team at Far North Coastal Real Estate to provide feedback on the user interface, navigation, and key features, such as the custom filtering system and property listing templates. Their feedback helped refine the design to ensure the website would meet their expectations for both aesthetics and usability.
3. Test
Once the website was developed, we conducted extensive testing to fine-tune the system’s performance. Stakeholders were involved in user testing, where they simulated real-world interactions with the site, testing the functionality of live data integration, smart filters, and the contact agent popup. This hands-on approach allowed us to identify any usability issues and address them before launch, ensuring the website would operate smoothly from day one.
4. Train & Deliver
Ahead of launch, training sessions were held for the Far North Coastal Real Estate team to ensure they could manage and update the website efficiently. The training covered key features like content management, the live data API, and how to use the filtering tools effectively. Clear communication was also established with clients, informing them of new functionalities, improved browsing experiences, and the streamlined process for inquiring about properties. This thorough preparation ensured a smooth transition and empowered the team to independently manage their site moving forward.
Technical Specifications
Platform & Framework
The website was built on WordPress, providing a flexible and scalable content management system for easy updates and management.
Custom API Integration
A custom API integration was developed to connect the website with PropertySuite, ensuring that property data is synchronized in real-time. This enables live updates of property listings, ensuring users always have access to the most current information.
Performance Optimization
- Caching mechanisms were implemented to improve website loading speeds by reducing server load and ensuring faster response times.
- Image compression was utilized to reduce the size of images without compromising quality, enhancing the website’s speed and ensuring quick loading across all devices.
- Intensive Custom SEO the site, listing, posts and pages are built with search engine performance at the front of mind.
Content Management System (CMS)
A user-friendly CMS was implemented, enabling the Far North Coastal team to manage and update content effortlessly. The CMS was tailored to their specific needs, providing full control over content while maintaining seamless functionality with the integrated API.
Mobile Optimization
- Special attention was given to ensure the website performs well across all devices, including mobile, with responsive design and fast load times on both desktop and mobile platforms
Software
CMS
The website leverages WordPress as its core platform, which is an open-source, highly customizable CMS used by millions of websites worldwide. It powers the site with its user-friendly interface, enabling easy content creation, editing, and management, while providing a flexible backend for handling complex integrations.
API integration with PropertySuite
Serves as the backbone for delivering live property data, allowing the website to pull real-time listings directly from the PropertySuite system.
Server
Linux Litespeed Server
30GB SSD storage
500GB monthly bandwidth
Auckland data centre
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