With the rising popularity of real estate mobile apps, users expect an effortless mobile app experience with intuitive navigation, exceptional user interface, clear information hierarchy, etc. that help them achieve their goals. Creating a real estate app design with effective designing techniques and best practices is ideal for the improved usability and accessibility of commercial real estate mobile apps, leading to business success. However, to achieve this, creating a seamless user journey map is key to delivering a positive user experience that boosts user engagement and enhances satisfaction. This blog post delves into the exploration of what a user journey is in commercial real estate apps, what are its best practices, and the impact of the seamless UI/UX design on real estate businesses.
Understanding User Journey in Real Estate App Design
A well-crafted user journey in real estate app design is the path a user takes from initial exploration to the final stage in achieving their goal, such as finding and purchasing a property, signing up for a service, or seeking property information or details. It typically includes stages like browsing property listings, refining search criteria, viewing property details, contacting real estate agents, scheduling property visits, and completing transactions. Each step should seamlessly integrate into the real estate app's design, offering intuitive navigation, informative content, and clear calls to action.
Here are the four steps to creating a successful user journey for your commercial real estate app:
- Define User Personas: Identify your target audience based on demographic, behavioral, and psychographic data. Understand their needs, goals, and pain points, and guide your real estate app designer to create tailored user journeys that resonate with their specific needs and expectations.
- Map the User's Journey: Mapping the user's journey involves identifying key touchpoints and interactions your users have with your real estate app. You need to illustrate the steps users take from the initial to the final stage to accomplish their goals by highlighting pain points, potential drop-off points, and opportunities for improvement throughout the user experience.
- Prioritize Clarity and Simplicity: Clarity and simplicity are essential principles in real estate UI/UX design. Focus on creating a simple and understandable real estate app design interface by minimizing complexity and eliminating unnecessary elements. This increases usability, reduces cognitive load, and improves overall user satisfaction.
- Consistency Across Platforms: Consistency is the key to success in real estate app design as users interact with the product through various devices and platforms, such as mobile, web, and social media. Therefore, delivering a cohesive experience and brand message is essential regardless of the platform your user chooses to interact with your service.
What are the Real Estate App Design Best Practices?
Following the best practices for your commercial real estate mobile app helps you deliver an intuitive user experience by facilitating a simple, accessible, yet appealing user interface. Implementing the below listed real estate app design best practices can propel your property business forward, with a multitude of satisfied users and customers vouching for an exceptional user experience they experienced with your commercial real estate app.
Clear Information Hierarchy
One of the essential UI/UX real estate app design practices is to prioritize a clear information hierarchy by structuring content logically. You need to begin by prominently placing essential features such as sign-up/ login, property listings, and search functions throughout the design hierarchy. Use visual cues like size, color, and typography to differentiate between different categories and prioritize vital information like property details, listing, pricing, and location. Moreover, you can employ intuitive navigation to guide users to navigate seamlessly through different sections of your commercial real estate app, ensuring easy access to critical information without overwhelming users with unnecessary details. Consistency in layout and labeling helps in familiarity while decluttering unnecessary elements maintains focus on key features and helps your user get their desired information effortlessly.
Intuitive App Navigation
Intuitive app navigation refers to a design that enables users to effortlessly move and navigate through your commercial real estate app to search for information and take necessary actions quickly without any confusion or frustration. In your commercial real estate app design, you’ll need to create intuitive navigation that involves organizing content logically, with clear pathways to essential features like property listings, advanced search filters, booking, site visit requests, etc. You must implement familiar UI patterns such as tab bars, menu icons, and breadcrumb trails for easy exploration. Additionally, you can also integrate gestures like swiping between property images, scrolling, flinging, and double-tapping for detailed information on properties listed within your real estate app. On top of that, prioritize user flow to ensure each step feels natural and predictable for seamless user interaction and enhanced overall experience.
Simplified Search Functionality
A commercial real estate app that doesn’t offer simplified search functionality can frustrate users as there is a lot of searching involved in finding the desired property. Therefore, you must focus on streamlining the process of searching properties by minimizing complexity and maximizing efficiency. It involves intuitive input methods such as text-based search with predictive suggestions, advanced filters for narrowing down results based on criteria like location, price, furnishing status, property features, amenities, and map-based interfaces for spatial exploration. Developing clear and concise user interfaces with prominently displayed search bars and easily accessible filter options enhances the usability of your real estate app. Furthermore, with the integration of advanced search features like push notifications and chatbots within your commercial real estate app, you can enhance your user experience and boost engagement. Overall, with this functionality, you can empower your users to find their desired properties effortlessly.
Streamlined Onboarding
The first impression while onboarding new users to your commercial real estate app matters the most. Offer all necessary onboarding details and instructions in a step-by-step manner through interactive tutorials or tooltip guides to help new users get familiar with your app and its features. Once users become familiar with your real estate app, service, and features, they can use your app efficiently, promoting a sense of trust in your business. You can implement progressive profiling techniques within your real estate app to gradually collect essential user data while providing value at each stage of onboarding. The integration of social login options and pre-filled forms simplifies account creation in the onboarding process.
Clear Call-to-Actions (CTAs)
The purpose of the real estate app is to facilitate users to take necessary action. Whether it be property inquiries, scheduling meetings, viewing properties, contacting agents, booking plots, or making online payments, all functionality needs clear call-to-action (CTA) buttons. You need to create concise and action-oriented CTAs by effectively utilizing contrasting colors and intuitive icons to attract users. Utilize whitespace effectively to make CTAs stand out amidst other content within your real estate app design. Additionally, ensure consistency in design and placement across your real estate app for a cohesive user experience. With a clear and attractive CTA, users will be able to effortlessly take desired actions and engage with your app, leading to increased conversion rate and revenue growth for your real estate business.
Personalization
Personalization is an effective strategy, as a Forbes study indicates, 86% of consumers say their loyalty to a brand increases that offers personalized experiences. In your real estate app design, you can offer personalized property recommendations tailored to your user preferences. Utilizing data such as user search history, saved properties, preferences, and interactions, helps you customize recommendations and content presentation. This can include personalized property suggestions, notifications for new listings that match your user criteria, and dynamic content based on location or demographic information. By offering relevant and targeted property recommendations, you can boost user engagement and satisfaction.
Feedback and Validation
Feedback and validation mechanisms are crucial to gauge user input regarding their experience with your app. You can incorporate a feedback or rating feature within your real estate app design to allow users to express their opinions, report issues, and suggest improvements. On the other hand, the implementation of validation features, such as real-time error checking and confirmation prompts will help your users to make informed decisions and prevent costly mistakes. Incorporating user feedback and validation into the iterative design processes of your real estate app ensures continuous improvement and alignment with user needs and preferences. Prioritizing feedback and validation mechanisms within your real estate app cultivates trust, enhances usability, and ultimately drives user satisfaction and successful interactions within the platform.
Gamification and Rewards
Engaging and motivating users through effective gamification and rewards within the real estate app is an effective strategy. Implement gamification elements such as badges, levels, or progress bars to incentivize user interactions and encourage the exploration of features like property searches or agent connections. Likewise, reward users with different benefits, such as loyalty points, discount cards, coupons, or other exclusive perks for active participation and successful transactions. Moreover, by leveraging game-like mechanics, you can make the user experience more enjoyable and immersive. This also fosters loyalty and leaves an overwhelmingly positive impact on increased user retention and engagement.
Interactive Maps and Location Services
Integrating interactive maps and location services in a real estate app helps you enrich your user experience by providing them with valuable context to assist them in effective decision-making. With this feature, users can visually explore property listings in their desired locations, gain insights into their neighborhood's amenities, and find transportation options within their preferred property. Interactive maps, on the other hand, allow for intuitive navigation and exploration that enables users to filter and refine search results based on specific geographical preferences. Moreover, real-time location services offer personalized recommendations and notifications for nearby properties or open houses, making the app more relevant and convenient.
A/B Testing
A/B testing helps you compare two versions of your real estate app interface or features to determine which performs better in achieving predefined goals. By randomly presenting users with different variants and analyzing their behavior and preferences, you can identify improvements required within your real estate app that could lead to a more engaging and user-friendly app experience. For example, you can utilize A/B testing to optimize the layout of property listings, the wording of call-to-action buttons, or the placement of navigation elements. With continuous A/B testing, you can iterate and refine your real estate app design based on real user data, ultimately enhancing usability, increasing user satisfaction, and driving better overall performance of the real estate app.
Reduced Cognitive Load
A bad user experience can be a result of the cognitive load that your user may experience while interacting with the interface of your commercial real estate app to get something done. Luckily, by reducing cognitive load in your real estate app design, you can improve the overall usability and accessibility of the app. To reduce the cognitive load, you need to present the information in a clear and organized manner to help your users quickly comprehend property details and perform their desired function effortlessly without feeling overwhelmed. Streamlining navigation and minimizing distractions ensure users can focus on essential tasks, such as property searches and comparisons, without unnecessary cognitive effort. Additionally, by employing intuitive design patterns and familiar UI elements, you reduce the need for your users to learn complex interactions that make your real estate app design more user-friendly.
Conclusion
The evolution of commercial real estate mobile apps with the latest technology and development trends has streamlined the whole property search process but what makes the user come back to your app is the simple and intuitive user interface design. With the implementation of the best UI/UX practices within your real estate app design, you can boost app downloads, increase revenue, improve user retention rate, and create a strong brand identity. Additionally, a user-centric UI design in a real estate app with a clear user journey mapped out with effective design elements helps you enhance user engagement and satisfaction.
