Deconstructing Salter Rex, an Estate Agents website
Despite the weather, the summer months are upon us and the race to find new properties is on. With depressingly low stocks battling a rising tide of demand, it’s more important now more than ever for estate agents to have a strong online presence to attract new sellers and stimulate business. This month I’ll be analysing the website of Salter Rex, a well-known estate agent based in London, with Web Design Psychology in mind. Below I’ve diced up their sparse ‘home’ page, and we’ll be looking at each section in our analysis below.
Initial impressions
The nineties. Oh dear. A lot of white space, an elastic div and appalling graphics. The dowdy colour combination (dark blue and beige) makes for a generally dreary landing page, and the logos scattered beneath the main photos add unnecessary mess.
Hierarchy of information
#1 Logo / Header
Two words: Star Trek.
It’s as though whoever designed Salter Rex’s logo stumbled upon the 1996 Paramount Pictures re-design of the Star Trek Television logo, and didn’t look back. The beige/blue combination along with capitalised, nineties font shows up the company’s age, and conveys a tired brand in need of rejuvenation. This does nothing to inspire confidence in prospective clients, and in this market confidence is one of the tools we cannot afford to go without when it comes to sustaining and sourcing business online.
#2 Navigation
The only navigation here is a choice between Sales and Lettings, and Professional Services. The page is centred but there is little to differentiate the two portals in terms of their colour and design – this website (and its visitors) would be better served by displaying the two onwards options by presenting two distinctly-coloured clickable buttons (for example red for sales*, green for professional services):
#3 Partner Logos
Asides from their mis-match in sizes and alignment, these clickable partner links don’t link to their respective websites, but instead direct back to the Salter Rex homepage. Unattractive and ineffective.
#4 Address
Simple, clear, but again – unattractive.
#5 Footer
Ditto.
Conclusion
An aged, unattractive site that could do with a complete overhaul – from the logo to the website itself.
I hope this post has been informative, and if you’d like to email me with any suggestions or comments, I would be happy to hear from you. Thanks for reading!
References
* Bellizzi, J. A., Crowley, A. E., & Hasty, R. W. The effects of colour in store design. Journal of Retailing. Retrieved from http://www.jjtok.io/3m10p/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Effect-of-COlor-on-Store-Design.pdf
If you’d like to read more, join us next month when we’ll be deconstructing another website using the principles of Web Design Psychology.
If you have any comments, suggestions or tips on this post do comment, I’d love to hear what you think.
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