Michael Saunders & Company, the leading brokerage on Florida’s gulf coast, released a mobile web app this week. We covered it greater detail in this week’s Spotlight email newsletter.
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We worked closely with Michael Saunders’ internal team and their developer Aumnia to architect and design a highly usable mobile interface for their real estate search platform.
It was a challenging process, but one that led to a satisfying result.
Going native
In early discussions around the experience, we debated vigorously the merits of building a native app.
On the upside: native apps (those explicitly written for specific devices) carry a certain cachet. And so far consumers have overwhelmingly embraced them. The big real estate portals – Realtor.com, Trulia and Zillow – have all built them to great success.
However, iOS developers don’t come cheap and timelines are extremely drawn out due to high demand. The recent explosion of Android handsets makes it necessary to build for that platform as well. Blackberries are still used by many, so that platform needs consideration as well.
Staring down the barrel of having to build three native apps was a frightening prospect.
We opted to go web.
The mobile web is delicate
Building a mobile website solves one problem. The app is instantly accessible on multiple devices, across multiple platforms. The experience stays consistent regardless of handset or carrier.
The flipside to this openness is that the experience becomes somewhat constrained. There are certain frameworks (jQuery mobile, for example) that exist to bring native-like interaction to a mobile website but even these shortcuts leave much on the table.
Ultimately, It’s an imperfect choice. But in this case, it was the right choice. And the experience, while not as finely wrought as what a native app can deliver, still effectively and elegantly addresses a pressing need. The Michael Saunders & Company experience has been extended and users can get from this app what we know they want: properties – all of them – with as little noise as possible.
It’s great to see forward looking brokers like Michael Saunders & Company embrace the challenges and tough choices around mobile and move forward regardless. Being paralyzed by indecision in the face of massive mobile revolution is far wrose. We hope many more will follow their leadership.
We would love to hear what you think of the app.
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Well said. Designing for the mobile web is challenging and something that a lot of brokerages (and other consumer-facing businesses) don’t really understand. I always like to say a mobile webapp take “confidence” to build… have to think about your core service and focus only on that. Many companies skip this critical planning process and simply take their entire website mobile. Big mistake. The analogies you use in your Spotlight newsletter were… well… spot on.
Working with both your team and the Michael Saunders team on this project was truly a pleasure.
Good post Joel. Definitely not an easy decision for a brokerage to go mobile web, apps or both. For now we have gone the mobile web route with spokes to drive over traffic to mobile web through programs like text marketing. I think ours is getting better, but as always needs to evolve. Traffic has double in last 6 months so that is a good sign.
What are your thoughts on iPad apps for brokers? For instance on a website like ours we are developing which has ipad screens in mind (you know of what I speak), is there any advantage in creating an app vs website optimized for that experience? budgets in mind of course. I think the multitude of device platforms (iphone, android, ipad, android tablet?, etc) creates some economic challenges for us brokers.
That’s a good question Kevin – one I’ll have to noodle on a bit.
But my instinct, having seen what was done with the Realtor.com app for example, is that the iPad is a separate beast, i.e. a device you might consider going native on. The large screen size gives you a lot more room to play.
Budget must be considered of course. But the iPad is also the only tablet platform worth building on for now – so you’ll only have to build one app. 2 years from now their may be other players in the tablet space, but as of today Apple has the whole scene pretty much buttoned up.
Smart moves all around. Having built quite a few native apps and *felt the pain* first hand, our team has been running the apps versus mobile web debate through a simple test question. “How many downloads can the app owner expect to get?” Many people hear about the explosion of apps, it’s a hot topic, and they get stars in their eyes. Our partners have asked us to build them apps for standard, website on mobile experiences and–while we could’ve made quite a bit of money from the projects–we steer them away from it.
One thing I am on the hunt for is a regional brokerage that actually does build an app that does 1, highly sought after thing better than anyone else. I do think we’ll see some winners in this department: extremely simple > very few steps > yields a cool, real estate specific result.
[...] 1000Watt Consulting published a post on mobile websites and how to present them on mobile devices such as an Android, iPhone or iPad. I'm not sure what [...]
[...] 1000Watt Consulting published a post on mobile websites and how to present them on mobile devices such as an Android, iPhone or iPad. I'm not sure what [...]
Nice job on the interface.
It could be a little smarter. When you pout in $400k as a minimum price, then the max should start at like $450k, not at $50k.
I’m in Atlanta so I could not explore the map feature, assuming it has one.
Looks good tho!