How often do you update your Web site? Retail ber-broker Faith Hope Consolo changes her Web site, www.faith-consolo.com, with the seasons.
Consolo’s Web site, which she updates quarterly, in mid-June displayed a spring theme with brown and powder pink as its dominant colors.
That will soon change as Consolo, chairman of the retail leasing and sales division at Prudential Douglas Elliman, switches the site to purple and silver. “I think purple is a strong color. I think it’s a feminine color. We will be using purple and silver much like a royal jeweler,” Consolo explains.
In an effort to gain a competitive edge, many real estate brokers are looking for the latest thing in Web design. For many, aesthetic considerations like color — from hipper-than-thou black to money green — are key. Others focus on high-quality photography, animation or different applications for users, like being able to access the site from a mobile phone.
Halstead Property, which relaunched its Web site in April as the culmination of a year-long rebranding campaign, now sports sage green and charcoal gray instead of its historical red.
“We found out that we absolutely did not own red, there were other companies that used red,” says Diane Ramirez, president of Halstead. “We think green is a contemporary color, a growth color, it is a money color that is also not trendy or Old World.”
The Corcoran Group, which launched a new look in February, chose black as the prominent color for its new image, mixing it with a multi-colored palette.
“On our Web site, the black certainly does connote a more elegant feeling, and when you contrast the black with the property photographs, the properties really do pop against the background,” says Matthew Shadbolt, Corcoran’s director of Internet marketing.
Richard Agerbeek, owner and creative director of Sweden Unlimited in Soho, which designs Web sites, believes different colors may convey different images to visitors of a particular site.
“We like using a lot of white for e-commerce and fashion — colors really pop off of the white,” Agerbeek says. “A lot of use of black really helps give an air of luxury.”
Agerbeek has designed sites for a list of clients that includes Oprah’s designer of choice, Nate Berkus, potter/designer Jonathan Adler, and the Soho Grand and Tribeca Grand hotels.
Photo finishes
Agerbeek believes that high-quality photography is the key to achieving a site that seems luxurious. He encourages all of his clients to invest in the skills of a professional.
“Good design is very intuitive and involves well-thought-out navigation,” Agerbeek says. “It’s clean, simple and smart.”
For a recent project launching Arris Lofts in Long Island City for the Sunshine Group, his company built and developed a site that was designed by Zeff Design.
Graphic designer Tar Beaty, who designs Web sites for both companies and individuals, believes it is important for Web sites not to be “over designed.”
Beaty uses Web design elements such as Adobe’s Flash product (used by Web designers to create animation on Web sites) conservatively.
“A lot of people are doing so much Flash that you can’t find the content,” says Beaty. “You can use Flash very conservatively and still have all of the properties of Flash such as announcements, dissolves in and out, and the glowing of logos.”
“I combine old-school techniques and new technology with all my designs,” says Beaty. “This often involves sitting down with a triangle, pencils and magic markers while also using my laptop. I often show the client color sketches right on my computer.”
Elliman’s Consolo is so concerned with color that she frequently updates her headshots in order to coordinate with her Web site colors of the moment
“Whatever color I do on the site,” she says, “I carry through to all of my advertising. I use this as a branding technique.”
Finicky on fashion
With her list of stylish Madison Avenue clients, Consolo also pays attention to fashion in updating the site.
“I do a lot of luxury retail and a lot of fashion,” she says, “so I really change my Web site with the fashion. We think of ourselves as a brand like a Hermes.”
When looking for a new identity and image for its Web site, Corcoran also chose a fashion influence.
“A big part of the new look is adding a fashion element to real estate. More and more of the choices you make in real estate are about lifestyle,” says Christina Lowris, executive vice president of marketing and advertising at Corcoran. “How you look often reflects how you live, and we wanted to bring that sort of hipness to the category.”
Adding bells and whistles
User applications that range from bells and whistles to truly useful features that help buyers are also being added by brokerages to their Web sites. In developing its new Web site, Halstead introduced a room planner feature.
“You have the actual dimension of the property, so you don’t have to guess where your bed goes,” says Jim Cahill, the firm’s executive vice president and chief technology officer. “This is something the consumer can save, print, go back to.”
Similarly, the new Corcoran site involves a feature called “Arrange-a-Room” in which potential buyers can use furniture templates to see how their furnishings could be arranged within the actual floor plan of a particular property.
In addition, notes Lowris, “We added new applications, including being able to search properties by subway line and school district, and also to get directions to any listing via subway.”
Halstead, in addition to features, made its site entirely available through mobile access for ease of use.
The graphic design firm quiaroscuro, which does Web work for the real estate firm Windsor Companies based in Clifton Park, N.Y., specializes in very interactive sites.
Isaac Lee, the creative director at quiaroscuro, said his company consists of three principals, each with a different background — computer animation, graphic design and advertising.
“We are doing more like a three-dimensional look incorporating a map that includes dots indicating various properties,” said Lee. “It is very interactive, instead of just reading information.”
What Web site designs cost
Basic Web sites created by design company Sweden Unlimited begin at around $5,000. But on average, says owner and creative director Richard Agerbeek, sites designed by his company cost about $20,000, depending on the number of design rounds requested and the complexity of the site.
“We have worked a lot in creating hybrid Flash/HTML sites that involve multiple pages and are very successful,” he says.
Graphic designer Tar Beaty, meanwhile, says the average corporate Web site he deals with costs around $10,000, which includes “bells, whistles and multiple pages.”
As an alternative to using a professional Web designer, companies such as Microsoft offer software products to help users implement their own designs, such as Microsoft Visual Web Developer Express, Microsoft FrontPage and Microsoft Office Live. Some of these programs are even free.