Yopa
Yopa’s independent estate agents guide
Project overview
Following our work with their ‘Homeowners Hub’, full service estate agents Yopa contacted us for help with creating an independent estate agents guide that communicates market trends across the United Kingdom, helping homeowners to better understand their options.
The result – The Agent Guide – is a brand new impartial comparison site, separate from Yopa’s own website, that provides impartial data about estate agents in hundreds of towns and cities, from independent branches to big chains.
Features
- Automating the data input
- Analysing and segmenting 65 million data points
- Dynamic, user centric design
0.65g
C02 per page view
89%
Lighthouse Accessibility score
Ben Johnson – SEO ConsultantFrom start to finish, Wholegrain has been more of an extension to our team than an agency. From workshops with the marketing team through to technical discussions with our in-house developers, this approach meant that the project was completed on-budget, on-time and with the absolute minimum of friction
Automating the data input
The first challenge we needed to address was how to import the data, and ensure that this stays up to date. To begin with this, we worked with the team at Yopa to create an SQL file that could be imported directly to the new website for analysis.
To keep the data up to date, we created a specific, private url to which the team could export the latest version of their database at regular intervals. Then we wrote a script for updating the website from this database, ensuring that these monthly updates to the website would not affect the end users.
Analysing and segmenting 65 million data points
Once the data was available on the website, we needed to consider how to turn this into useful information and statistics, that would be meaningful to those who would be using the website.
As the Agent guide is dedicated to showing information about statistics based on location, this was our first means of segmenting the data. We then needed to analyse this against the name of any estate agents in the area with property for sale, and create a script that would work out the average listing price. Once we created the queries and analysis for this, we needed to ensure that the information would always be up to date, and that this would not impact the site’s performance. We did this by introducing multiple caching layers, each targeting different parts of the process that ultimately delivers a page to a browser. Learn more about this process from the lead developer on this project.
Dynamic, user centric design
All of the challenges we addressed in the creation of this new website were with one main goal in mind – to create a website that works for those who would be using it, providing them with the information they need, in an easy to use, accessible format. So design was equally as important as the data it presents.
The homepage design makes the purpose of the website clear from the outset, immediately inviting users to enter their location to begin their search for information. For quick information at a glance, the latest stats for the whole of the UK are on the homepage, as well as examples of the most searched locations. Sticky calls to action ensure that anyone visiting the site is encouraged to seek a free valuation, either online or face to face.
The search results are presented in 3 easy to digest formats:
A list view presenting each of the agents and their statistics:
A ‘compare’ view, highlighting the best agent for each statistic:
A map view, showing the location of local estate agents:
The result has been a website that is entirely unique, on-brand, and adds genuine value to the internet.
