Great Lakes Property MGT

The Challenge

This project was completed for a local Detroit property manager that wanted to refresh their website and brand identity. The original site was outdated in its design and did not have consistent brand identity throughout the site. The clients wanted a more modernized website layout, while retaining all of the information that was currently on the site.  My goal with this project was to deliver a functional design that would allow users to easily identify the services that Great Lakes Property Management Group offers, provide an information architecture that is simple for users to follow, and present information in a way where it is not overwhelming to users visiting the site for the first time. 

Design Strategy: 

• Competitive analysis
• Branding guide
• Wireframes
• UI Design

Role: 

UX Designer, UI Designer, UX Researcher

Tools: 

Figma, Marvel, Illustrator

Duration: 

3 weeks

Competitors: 

Three property Managers were analyzed to gain a better understand of the industry standard for information displayed, and design strategies used. 

1. CH. Property Management
2. AG. Management Company
3. DTN Management

Findings:

All three of the property management companies had a hierarchy of information for their websites. All three websites catered to tenants, while only two of them catered to landlords as well. The two that also catered to landlords provided information for services they offered for landlords and tenants. Information architecture was clean, but deep for each of the competitors. Great Lakes Property Management wanted to minimize menu options to try and keep everything nice and concise. 

Key Takeaways

• Home page should provide information about services offered by Great Lakes Property Management
• Menus should be updated to industry standard terms. 
• Website is catered for Landlords, not tenants. 

A Complete Rebrand

Originally, the clients did not have a specific brand guideline for their content. One of the major needs for the clients was to have a brand that they can incorporate throughout the website.  Building out a brand guide made the process of designing a UI system much easier. 

This brand guide was made to set a standard for their website, and allow users to connect the styles presented on the website, to Great Lakes Property Management. The brand guide included:  

• Fonts
• Font styles
• Colors
• Button styles
• Hover styles

UI Design

Process:

With the wireframes completed, now it was time to move on to the UI design. The aim with the design was to use plenty of white space to allow each of the elements on the page room to breathe. The space that was used, would be for essential information like services, contact, and properties available. The UI design incorporated all of the branding guides that were conjured during that process, ensuring a seamless and integrated design flow. 

Main Visual Styles: 

• Home page with services and intro text.
• Single page layout with continuous scroll. 
• Buttons to gain more information about services. 
• Proper headings and information structure for easy reading. 

Services

Process:

The services section of the website was kept nice and simple with three separate cards for each of the services provided. The text inside of the cards would be used to explain what is offered with the service, and the users could hit the "learn more" button that would take them to a more in depth breakdown of the services if they wanted more info. 

Properties

Process:

The properties section of the website had to provide important information about homes that were currently for rent. This part of the website was paired with a map to show the locations of these properties. On the right side of the map were all of the properties that were available for rent and a gallery of images that users can click through for each of the properties. Lastly, a little finishing touch that was added to the properties section was a client reviews sliding gallery. This was to build some rapport with future clients, by showing satisfied customers that Great Lakes Property Management has worked with in the past. 

Next steps

Next up in the process of building out the complete site would be to conduct user testing of the current designs to gain feedback on what needs to be improved or altered.  Once usability testing is complete, the designs will be updated to reflect the results of the usability test and the development phase of the project will begin.