Meerstad is a residential and recreational area close to the city of Groningen: In the middle of nature but with the centre just around the corner.
It is now time for a new mission: To sell available houses and plots in the area. With a redesign of the site, Bureau Meerstad aims to reach as many potential buyers as possible and enthuse them to come and live in Meerstad.
- The customer Bureau Meerstad
- Services
- Result www.meerstad.eu
From brand awareness to conversion
Meerstad is a residential and recreational area close to the city of Groningen: in the middle of nature but with the city centre around the corner. Bureau Meerstad is responsible for developing the area and in recent years has focused on increasing brand awareness among residents in the northern Netherlands.
It is now time for a new mission: selling available homes and plots in the area. With a redesign of the site, Bureau Meerstad aims to reach as many potential buyers as possible and get them excited about coming to live in Meerstad.
Convenience and freedom seekers
To immerse ourselves in our clients' world, we provided a deep dive session. A session with the client in which we discover:
Who is Meerstad as an organisation?
What are its ambitions?
What are its pitfalls?
What are Meerstad's desires?
Who are its target groups?
What are their needs and wants in the customer journey? What are thresholds in this?
All with one central goal: how do we ensure that we make the target group fall in love with their new dream location in Meerstad?
customer journey. This is aimed at the target group we call 'Relocationists' (people considering moving). Here, we distinguish between 'Convenience seekers' and 'Freedom seekers'. In other words, people who want to buy a home and people who prefer to buy a plot.
In love with a location
Together with Bureau Meerstad, we defined the concept for the new site: "On the website, I as a customer fall in love with the Meerstad location and am perfectly guided in finding my dream home or buying my plot.
We translated the concept idea into the design, starting with design principles. They define the look & feel and experience of the site:
Show, don't tell. Here we use full-screen photos and videos, with atmospheric impressions and floor plans.
Be complete. We bundle relevant information in one place, both about the property and information about the area. And we make purchasing processes understandable.
Look to the future. We do not emphasise the present (the area is still under development, after all), but emphasise how Meerstad is going to be. In doing so, we do not make false promises.
We worked this out concretely in the prototype and page graphics.
User test: the power of photography
Our elaborations test we always prefer to do this with users. For Bureau Meerstad, we did that with a eyetrack survey. This is how you get confirmation as to whether the user actually understands the concept and elaboration.
The eyetrack showed that the concept worked; users got the Meerstad experience right and were guided through all relevant information in a comprehensible and accessible way.
An unexpected insight from the user test was the photography used: because the test version contained many pictures of children, some testers got the feeling that Meerstad was only aimed at young families.
This was not the look Meerstad wanted, so we adjusted the photos. By alternating more in the photography, the freedom and diversity of Meerstad became clearer to different audiences.
After the design phase, Ilionx for the back- and Alserda Media for the front-end got busy with the implementation which in the new year resulted in the site for Meerstad.
Do we have a match?
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