Royal LePage Real Estate Services announced the launch of its redesigned website Tuesday, which now includes listings for nearly 100,000 properties – more than doubling its online listings.
The redesign came about as a result of changes in the real estate industry, namely the new Data Distribution Facility (DFF) which now allows brokers to share property listings, said Carolyn Cheng SVP, Strategic Business Services at Royal LePage.
According to Cheng, another reason for the re-vamp was to better reflect emerging trends in the way Canadians shop for property, she said.
“About 90% of consumers begin their search online. It was important to give them a page where they could see listings from all brands, including Royal LePage.”
The site uses the Google Cloud platform to enhance its user-friendly capabilities and now includes Google Maps and Street View and Google Places, enabling consumers to search for property near schools, parks and local landmarks.
Most property listings now have a Walkscore ranking as well, in addition to neighbourhood descriptions, an overview of local amenities and other property listings available in related areas.
The new website has also been designed to be responsive to mobile phones, laptops and tablets.
The old version of the site received 4.2 million unique pageviews last month, said Cheng. That will serve as a benchmark to measure the success of the new design.
Toronto-based Plastic Mobile did the redesign, a project that took about six months to complete.
Royal LePage is promoting the redesign on Facebook, Twitter, and through its YouTube channel. Kaiser Lachance Communications is handling the PR.
