A hassle-free website builder for real estate agents | Massive Pixel Creation

Placester has been changing the real estate industry since 2011, but, after a decade of service agents and brokers, the company decided it was time to give their product a makeover. For years, they’d been using classic site editor, a product that enabled advanced website building for non-tech users. However, as the years went by, the technology behind it had become outdated.

Placester needed a tool that would be comprehensive and advanced, while still offering their customers the kind of fast, friendly, coding-free environment that modern users have come to expect. But rebuilding their platform from scratch presented unique challenges: Placester has a large active customer base of brokers and agents that rely on it to represent their brands online. They wanted to go fast without missing a beat in supporting the existing customer base — and they wanted to do it affordably.

The company looked to MPC to achieve that vision.

Placester understood that instead of little upgrades and polishes here and there, the platform needed a complete overhaul. They decided to partner with MPC, and work with a team of UX/UI designers to boost their competitiveness and reduce the churn rate by introducing an intuitive visual editor with loads of different options and features.

After discussing Placester’s benchmarks, visions, and goals, it became clear that upgrading Inc-App to accommodate new themes wouldn’t be enough. The company had envisioned their product to involve minimal visible code, while giving a deep customization of a website’s elements and live, visual editing. It had to be advanced, but above all, user-friendly, intuitive, and easy to grasp.

To solve that problem, the product design team came up with bundles of presets, taking most of the decision process on themselves. This way, the agent can swiftly change the total look of their website, making fewer decisions along the way and taking a quick glimpse at the outcome. Styles and layouts act as a starting point for further customization of any elements — or none if that’s what the user prefers. Ready-made color palettes were introduced to further reduce decision fatigue, while an advanced custom coloring tool allowed easy editing of various elements.

The UI was designed with the vision of a busy agent in mind. MPC designers crafted an interface that would be similar to well-known products and based on user’s habits. To meet these goals, a toolbar provides quick access to the editor’s most important functions, and WordPress-like blocks facilitate easy content creation. For maximum convenience, the team introduced an auto-save feature and pre-saved settings, as well as intuitive navigation that groups similar settings and options with quick links.

But the work didn’t stop at the user interface. The MPC design team also modernized the pre-built website themes that Placester offers to its customers — and designed around 20 brand-new themes for users to choose from. The MPC team knew that it was critical to Placester users to keep their website content intact, even if they changed between different themes and designs. It required a lot of attention to detail to make sure each module would be available in every design, but it was worth it for the benefit to the user.

MPC also added labels and intuitive previews to the visual editor, making the editing process easy as a pie. Thanks to this solution, the learning curve has decreased, as beginner-level users can build and edit their websites piece by piece rather than scrolling through the navigation sidebar.