With a growing collective of apartments that features more than 26 communities, Shea Apartments wanted to find a way to emulate the community-feel between these apartments and within each neighborhood in a digital way. The atmosphere and environment in Shea Apartments’ neighborhoods delivers more than a place to simply sleep at night, and the Shea team wanted to provide their online users—those already living in these communities and those considering moving into one—a snapshot of the experience that makes these properties truly unique.
THE HOPE: Help renters find their perfect apartment & community
By bringing the communities together under one digital neighborhood and improving the online experience, the team at Shea Apartments hoped to not only improve each user’s rental experience through a seamless process, but also make sure the unique personality of each community was able to shine. If they could accomplish this, the Shea Apartments team believed they could improve their ability to help each potential renter find their perfect apartment in the perfect neighborhood.
THE CHALLENGE: Create a seamless online experience for renters
Because the Shea Apartments team was committed to providing that seamless experience from the first website visit, to renting the apartment, to picking up the keys, and to the first grocery shopping trip, one of the biggest challenges they could foresee was the integration of Rent Cafe (the Shea Apartments renting portal), and sheaapartments.com, which offered easy navigation between important neighborhood information, such as shopping and community events, and vital rental information such as lost keys, scheduled maintenance, and emergency contacts.
After a meticulous audit of the current website user experience and desired experience outlined in collaboration with the Shea Apartments team, Red Door was able to solve for the integration concerns, and implement a website redesign strategy that not only checked all the boxes for the Shea Apartments team, but also created an industry-leading digital experience.
THE PLAN: 3 Website Redesign Goals & Objectives
As we started the project, we worked with the Shea Apartments team to outline their desired goals and define the objectives that would help us not only meet but exceed those benchmarks.
1. Elevate the User Experience: Create an enhanced digital experience in order to advance sales and marketing efforts, improve asset performance, meet anticipated performance requirements, and ensure Shea Apartments remains competitive in the market.
2. Increase Lead Generation: From lease-up options to customer acquisitions in the form of online leases, form fills, use of directions and phone calls, our ultimate goal was to increase leads following this website redesign.
3. Optimize for Target Audiences: Set Shea Apartments up for success by creating a mobile-centric website that enhances ease-of-use for target audiences.
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THE PATH: Website Redesign Strategy & Tactics
After outlining the goals and expectations with the Shea Apartments team, we conducted comprehensive website audits to understand what was currently working (and what was not) on the existing website. During the audit phase, we uncovered content opportunities and defined the path forward with strategic user experience recommendations and essential adjustments to the website’s information architecture.
From there, we defined the custom approach that would satisfy Shea Apartments needs and align with their current processes and infrastructure. Then we rolled up our sleeves and got to work.
Our path to success during the Shea Apartments website redesign:
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Define the functional requirements, system specifications, and content model diagram to inform the design process.
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Create design concepts, produce design comps, and outline analytics solution design for technical development.
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Bring the design to life and measure against requirements to create a website ready for final testing and launch.
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Reduce the number of issues at launch by executing pre-launch checks, in addition to conducting thorough testing and defect resolution, both internally at Red Door and within the Shea Apartments team.
THE FINISH LINE: Shea Apartments Client Testimonial
We successfully created an elevated online user experience that is highly relevant to Shea Apartments’ target audience, and that effectively generates more online engagement. And most importantly, thanks not only to the finished product and its performance, but also because of how the work was executed, we have a few more fans on the Shea Apartments team:
“We set out to create an industry-leading website and we knocked that goal out of the park. Internally, we are thrilled with the website and we’ve had great feedback from the extended teams,”
- Mike Olson, Director, Digital Marketing, Shea Apartments
THE RESULTS: Shea Apartments Post-Redesign Performance
In the first eight weeks after the launch of the newly redesigned site, Shea Apartments has seen significant improvements in website performance, including:
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10% growth in organic traffic
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33,000 floor plan detail views
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250 full-funnel online rental applications
And we’re just getting started…
NEXT STEPS: Could this be your website redesign case study?
If you’ve been considering a website redesign (and if you haven’t, you probably should) or you’re curious about Red Door, our experience with website redesigns, and the results we’ve been able to generate, contact us today.
Still not convinced you should be thinking about a website redesign? Or maybe you’re in need of similar results from different creative marketing solutions? Learn more about what we do.