5 minutes
time to read
Webflow
Photoshop
Figma
tools
Web Design
Copywriting
UX/UI Design
role
09/20 to 02/21
duration
Origin
company
Servicing the demands of Canada’s largest city, Toronto’s real estate market brims with opportunity.
Well — that's if you can afford more than
one home.
For this group, an astute property purchase, homed by quality, rent paying tenants, will likely lead to profits down the road.
There is — however, a catch.
Multiple Home Owners (MHOs)—or from the tenant perspective, landlords — are responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of their properties.
And for many MHOs — in being out of town or simply out of time, this is a burden best handled by someone else.
Origin — a group of Toronto based entrepreneurs operating a professional cleaning business — looked to pivot and expand into the growing property management space.
In achieving this, they first looked to build their presence online. My job, was to help them do this.
I organized the expected work into four phases: Context, Content, Design, and Develop.
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To establish context, I needed to learn more about:
If it were a person, how would it spend it's time? Where does it see itself a year from now? Who are its competitors?
What would a successful site be? How would it help achieve business goals? How should visitors describe it?
Who is the site for? What are their goals? What challenges do they face? Why should they care?
I met with my client to talk through each question; taking careful note of every acronym and novel concept for future reference.
Still, this was just one perspective. "Others" had a stake —so what did they think?
Eager to answer, I looked public; reviewing competitor sites, customer reviews, and industry forums in order to complete a competitive analysis and empathy map.
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As its digital storefront, the site would help build credibility, educate visitors on offerings, and encourage prospective clients to reach out for more information.
With several, established companies offering similar services within the market, authoritative messaging will likely prove ineffective.
Still, with most embracing a style of corporate and conservative, Origin could differentiate through its positioning.
That is, it could double down on its shortcomings. Framing small as personal. Freshness as eagerness.
When working with property managers, minimal transparency, unmet expectations, and a lack of communication are cause for frustration; regardless of profits.
With the insights from phase one, it was time to draft the site’s copy.
Well, that's after we agreed on what it'd say.
Before writing, we had to define the site's topics, note how they'd relate to each other, and illustrate how they'd map to the site’s pages.
Further, mindful to its pivotal role in communicating position, we had to outline the messages and attributes our copy would convey.
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emphasize customer results
emphasize customer needs
emphasize customer pains
My client started us off with the first draft.
Then, I began to (re)write; meeting regularly with my client to collaborate; referencing Zinsser’s On Writing Well for mentorship.
And with time, the occasional disagreement on word choice, and several revisions —we felt our copy embodied Origin's brand, and could enable a good user experience.
As a first step, I presented to my client several sites which — in their use of colour, type, and imagery — reflected Origin's brand, and, when compared to competitor sites, stood out.
Noting likes and dislikes, I honed in on visual preferences; establishing “welcomed” constraints to guide design decisions.
Then, it was time to experiment.
I began adding hi-fidelity elements to wireframes; increasing their presence with each iteration; vetting them through a cycle of tweak, feedback and repeat.
And — 56 Figma frames later, I arrived at a design we were excited to move forward with.
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Ready for development, I transitioned from Figma to Webflow. Here, my frame would shift from static to dynamic; replacing questions of "what will it look like?" with "how will it move?"
To find answers, I looked to Origin's inspiration sites. Browsing through, I asked — "to my clicks, swipes, hovers and scrolls — how does it respond? How does it feel? And would this feel right for Origin?"
Eventually, after hours (and by hours I mean weeks) of setting CSS styles, tweaking interactions, and testing responsiveness on any and every screen I could access —the site was ready to launch.
Reflecting on our goals; to create a differentiated, digital storefront that tastefully introduced Origin to MHOs — in my (admittedly biased) opinion, they were met.
And — trading conversions, clickstreams, and bounce rates for something a little more personal, I'll share this exchange between a site user (grey bubbles, we'll call him Zac) and my client (blue bubbles) as proof:
Usually I'd end here. End with a high. That's good writing. That's good storytelling.
This study, however, began with the growth of Toronto MHOs, and —considering other trends irrelevant — carried on.
But — amidst calls of an affordability crisis —are they?
Some, would say that as homes are seen less as places to stay, and more as places to gain, middle income households are priced out the ownership market.
And others, that the rental market, where marginalized people find themselves overrepresented, becomes less, and less, affordable.
So I wonder. If this was more than a four-page website. If the stakes were bigger — the effects more impactful — would it have mattered?
Should it have?
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