"A New Standard Of Living"
“M&V did everything they said they would do and did it on time! They over promised the project and our expectations where exceeded. The whole process was very easy!
– Darren Longbottom, director at GRJ, LLC
– Darren Longbottom, director at GRJ, LLC
Learning about key concerns and frustrations through user testing enabled us to put together a successful strategy for Gramercy East’s redesign. The professional and elegant designs compliment the robust custom CMS platform that allows the marketing team to keep the website fresh and up to date with relevant content.
Increase in rental requests.
Active tenants.
Increase in website traffic.
Create an apartment complex website where tenants can pay their rental and request help with issues they may face.
Integrate a third party property management system into the new website.
Gramercy East is a newly renovated aparment complex located in Horn Lake, Mississippi.
Their renovated apartments include, washer/dryers, new appliances, high hat recessed lighting, new countertops and cabinets, wide plank flooring, and new bathroom vanities.
With over 150 apartments to rent, the client needed an integration to their property management system into a new website. The software they use is Appfolio, which allows tenants to pay directly from the website and request any help with their home.
During the discovery phase we performed a site audit, utilized questionnaires, dug deep to do a competitive analysis, developed personas, and crafted a list of suggested improvements based off of the results.
We found that despite their size and reputation as the old site design was described as boring, bland, and uninspiring by the users and was a very poor reflection of what Gramercy East represented.
Their old, clunky site that utilized flash graphics, rendering it useless on Apple devices. Not only that, but their website was not responsive and thus scared off any mobile traffic that landing on it. While they did have a separate mobile site, it was not user-friendly and had many of the same design problems as the desktop site.
During the UX strategy phase, we used our learnings to design the site architecture and create wireframes. Our wireframes served as “blueprints” for the site layout and allowed us to quickly test ideas to make sure we were optimizing the user experience.
In order to address the goals outlined for the redesign, we paid particular attention to the user touchpoints on the pay page, property listing page, and availability services section. We laid the foundation during the UX Strategy phase to make these pages easy to use to find the information the website visitor was looking for by incorporating advanced search and filter features, and laying out content to tell a cohesive story.
Conveniently located steps from the main street, the complex is minutes from Southaven, Shelby Farms and downtown Memphis.
Before long, it was time to jump into design. Using Gramercy East’s brand guidelines, we designed the look and the feel of the website to be consistent with the rest of the client’s marketing materials. Before getting too deep in the design, we set up a 5-second test to make sure the first impression of the designs resonated with target website visitors.
Once the designs were finalized, we started the development integration. There were several complexities that we had to tackle during the programming phase as we needed to integrate a third-party software (Appfolio) into the website. We developed the site using the latest responsive technology so that visitors would have a great experience across all devices – whether they’re viewing it on a desktop, laptop, tablet, or mobile phone.
After thoroughly testing everything and making sure the correct employees and properties were being pulled onto the site, we prepped for launch, and set the environment on our servers.
Time invested in conducting research, doing user testing, and creating a solid UX strategy paid off with Gramercy East’s website redesign. The newly launched site allowed visitors to find what they were looking for, whether that was a property to buy or lease, an employee to contact, or information about value-adding services.
