Mike Greer Homes: Empowering the journey to a new home

Laying a strong foundation

As with many of our projects, for the MGH website build the Voyage team began with a series of intensive discovery workshop sessions. This allowed us to sit down with the primary stakeholders of the project and key leaders within the business, to better understand the internal and external influences that had to be considered. The discovery sessions included the MGH CEO, sales managers, investment managers, marketing managers and the Voyage experts.

The Voyage team took the MGH stakeholders through the foundational elements of the project. This included the scope, success criteria, key aspects that had to be included in the site, potential risks, and user interface considerations.

The group had in-depth conversations around MGH’s key offerings, primarily house and land packages, first home buyers, and, of course, homes for sale, and how these could or needed to be positioned. In addition, it became clear the website had to factor in the different offices and allow visitors to tailor the information to their location or region - a feature that the old site didn’t accommodate.

Building a framework to last

To better understand the customer experience and how the site could be put together, the Voyage team created user personas and stories based on typical MGH customers. Aligned with MGH’s offerings, this included first home buyers, second home or family home buyers, home builders and investors.

Now it was time to put these learnings into practice. The first sitemaps and wireframes were put together for web and mobile devices, staying true to the core brand of MGH and extending the functionality, purpose and flow of the website. As much for the Voyage team as the MGH execs, this stage ensured everyone was on the same page, and everything worked together.

Maximising the use of advanced technologies

Dubbed ‘the most advanced headless CMS’, the Voyage team opted to use Sanity CMS as the foundation for the website build. This relatively new tech is an open source, API-based CMS built with React.js.

This enabled the Voyage experts to bring in maximum customisability, defining content models in JavaScript and integrating the site with MGH’s bespoke API and CRM. Uploading all houses available, Voyage also integrated leads with Pipedrive to streamline management and ensure no opportunities slipped through unattended.

Algolia, the suite of artificially intelligent search solutions, makes searching for anything on the new MGH website dramatically simplified, fast and easy - no matter what visitors are looking for. The site has also been populated with ample imagery and video content to engage visitors even further.

A seemingly effortless frontend design

Design was a major factor for the new website, as is to be expected with a such a personal and visual product - a home. To ensure all stakeholders were happy with the final result, the design process required ongoing conversations between Voyage and MGH, with Voyage experts tasked with maintaining expectations, offering expertise and insight, and staying on budget.

The final result sees the MGH website remaining true to the original brand palette of red, black and white, while also developing it further to modernise the look and feel, and add warmth to the final product.

Alongside design, dedicated time and attention was put on the frontend experience to improve the overall flow, bring in engaging animations, and add useful integrations and tools such as an investment calculator, a section dedicated to home development, a new blog section with filter search.

Overall, the refreshed MGH website is visually engaging, simple and easy to manage in the backend, with the MGH team able to edit and change content and sections as is relevant and necessary as the business continues to grow.