PORTALS TO THE PROFESSION
During an economic downturn, most cities don’t have much demand for Realtor® services, but San Antonio is fortunate. With a booming international healthcare industry, San Antonio is growing as other cities shrink. The Realtors in our city are busy indeed, and the San Antonio Board of Realtors (SABOR) needed a comprehensive, vibrant website. They turned to esd.
creating vibrant spaces for three varied functions
The key to a well-functioning website is effective organization. Users need to feel at home when they arrive, and quickly find the information they seek. For SABOR, esd designed a welcoming interface that put it all up front: an instantly identifiable link to property search and three prominent department links – Member Services, Real Estate School and Governmental Affairs. The departments catalog more than 425 pages into three effective mini-sites. Alongside these links, a rotating series of graphics promote SABOR’s most important current offerings.
The website works because visitors can quickly find the resource they’re seeking. The landing page (or home page) needs to mark a clear route to the desired information. Feature rotators – on the home page and on each of the departmental microsites – offer shortcuts to the most popular items.
making it easy to keep it current
The only way to keep the website easy to navigate is to keep it current. esd designs and programs your website, but the most efficient way to maintain content is for your staff – the people organizing events and communicating for your organization – to post new offerings as they occur. esd makes that possible by making a content management system (CMS).
SABOR is constantly developing new courses, holding conferences, updating news of their civic involvement and keeping up with our robust, active market. The SABOR CMS works like an online form – clearly identified fields and buttons show the user where to put information for headlines and copy, and how to upload graphics, photos, video and other media. Client loved the ease of use and tremendous flexibility of their CMS.
moving into a fresh web environment
As we gave the keys to the new website to its owners, SABOR expressed the excitement and relief that comes with a newly organized, intuitive website refresh. As San Antonio welcomes new residents to its neighborhoods, San Antonio’s Realtors learn and participate in civic and industry activities using a vastly improved online channel.