redesigned
Giving an old company new life
Benson & Mangold Real Estate is a well-established real estate brokerage based in Talbot County, Md. For more than 50 years, the company has operated under the same broker. For most of that time, the company has also worked with stale and inconsistent branding. The company site was a piecemeal mess. Listing brochures had no flow.
Benson & Mangold has a great reputation. I stepped in to help the company turn its image into something concrete. They needed an easy-to-use and easily maintainable website. They also needed attractive printed publications to leave at each of more than 500 listings.
Skills
WordPress, HTML, IDX integration, SEO
Publisher template design, logotype design
Date Completed
08/15/2012 (first web redesign)
10/01/2013 (print brand redesign)
08/01/2014 (second web redesign)
Client
Benson & Mangold Real Estate
%
Website Redesign
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Corporate Rebranding
Day Turnaround
Amazing Result
More than a fresh coat of paint
During the summer of 2014, I redesigned my own redesign of the Benson & Mangold website. The original site, which I reworked in 2012, was built using simple HTML pages and difficult to edit. I replaced with a site built on the WordPress platform. I reworked the company logo, the agent bio pages and installed a brand new IDX system that allowed for the automation of our listings and all others within MRIS.
This past summer, the company decided to retool once more, knowing that web design had evolved significantly in the two years prior. It’s now responsive (adapts depending on the screen through which the visitor is viewing the site) and much more dynamic in the information it presents to clients. One of the biggest enhancements is the mobile search that allows visitors on mobile phones and tablets (about 40 percent of our clients) to view listings on the go. They receive alerts about nearby homes for sale and open houses.
The company branding also got an upgrade. It’s cleaner. And while it has flat elements (popular in design right now), the deep colors and photographs convey the rich tradition Benson & Mangold is known for.
These makeovers have since brought tens of thousands of visitors to the once-clunky company site and kept them on the site for an average of several minutes each — a feat on the internet. Guests create accounts, save listings for later and reach out to our agents directly. It’s one-stop shopping for people searching for homes in Maryland. The simple construction on the always updated WordPress platform will make any future updates — like the one performed this summer — simple.
The return on investment
Mobile Refresh
The site is responsive, adapting the any screen you use to browse the web: laptops, desktops, mobile phones and tablets. The site’s IDX search (pictured) works especially well on even the smallest of screens.
Rebuilt From the Inside Out
I took the site from an old-fashioned, every-page-coded-individually operation to the WordPress platform. The use of stylesheets has made updating the site incredibly easy. The latest iteration of the site is also super mobile friendly.
Overall Site Visitors Increased
Website traffic since the installation of Google Analytics software has increased by around 60 percent. This statistic does not reflect what web traffic was like before I began working on the site. So the real change is even greater.
More of my work
A good problem to have: “You can do anything”
June 13, 2013