Guiding Users Through The Home Buyer and Home Seller Journey

Project Overview

Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices (BHHS) Georgia Properties is a real estate brokerage that offers various services to home buyers and home sellers throughout many regions in georgia. The company website serves as a digital product allowing users to browse homes for sale in Georgia as well as connect users with the brokerages' real estate agents to assist in their home buying and home selling journies.

In late 2023, BHHS Georgia Properties asked me to assist them with the redesign and development of their new corporate website.

What's The Product?

The Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices (BHHS) Georgia Properties website is a digital product that serves two primary functions - find homes for sale and connect users with real estate agents. The company leverages their online traffic to cross-sell various services aimed to assist home buyers and sellers and ultimately make their real estate transaction as seamless as possible.

Who's The User?

The BHHS Georgia Properties site provides value for users who are looking to buy their next home, or sell their existing home.

Their are two primary ports of entry for users to enter the BHHS Georgia Properties site - via direct or organic via search engines.

What's The Problem?

At its core, the BHHS Georgia Properties website serves as a tool to find homes for sale, find homes for rent, and connect users with the brokerages' real estate agents. Previous leadership placed a huge emphasis on celebrating how great the company is and heavily pushing their luxury service offerings. While I empathized with their decision-making, I had to remind them that in doing so, they forgot to tailor the site experience to their key target users: home buyers and home sellers.

What's The Goal?

The BHHS Georgia Properties site needs to provide a seamless experience when it comes to searching for available homes for sale for prospective home buyers. It needs to also allow users to connect with local real estate agents for those who want to sell their home. By accomplishing the two points above, the product will be able to better deliver quality leads and minimize negative traffic performance.

The Process

Using the User-Centered Design framework, I first began by analyzing who the company's target users were and if/how the current site was providing value to the user. As mentioned earlier, the primary target users were home buyers who wanted to browse for available homes for sale in their preferred areas and home sellers who want to connect with a real estate agent.

While analyzing the existing site, I notated a number of usability issues that would heavily impact their target users' site experience:

• Search bar for home buyers is not 100% front and center to search for properties
• Quick search links for home buyers were lost below the current search bar
• Top-level Navigation items did not resonate effectively with both home buyers and home sellers
• Core company services are not clear on the home page
• There's no clear journey/path for target users to take

The Pain Points

For Home Buyers:

• Users spent too much time in the navigation trying to find what they were looking for
• When exploring services, too many options to choose from and irrelevant options shown
• Search bar on the home page was not clear/visible
• Lack of content focused on buyers' journey
• With the dedicated Buyer Services page, users are not presented up front with the value proposition and how BHHS Georgia Properties can help

For Home Sellers:

• Unclear what suite of services the brokerage offers
• With the existing Seller Services page, users are not presented up front with the value proposition and how BHHS Georgia Properties can help
• Home sellers want to get a general idea of what their home is worth. This tool, provided by the corporate website, was missed by users (even though it's present on the home page)

The Sitemap

Prior to beginning any wireframes and mockup designs, I first needed to focus on making improvements to the sitemap architecture. With the existing navigation feeling cluttered and taking too much time away from users to find what they're looking for, I simplified the navigation to focus on buyers and sellers and provide services and resources up front and center.

The User Flows

I mapped out user flows in order to demonstrate to senior leadership how users will use the new updated site. The following user flows highlights how home buyers and home sellers will access the new site and the journey they will take to convert to potential leads:

Home Buyer Accesses The Site Directly

Home Seller Accesses The Site Directly

Hi-Fi User Flow

The Wireframes

Home Page

The Hi-Fi Comps