Website for a developer with a catalog of apartments - case study

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olivia25
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Joined: Wed Dec 04, 2024 4:47 am

Website for a developer with a catalog of apartments - case study

Post by olivia25 »

Recently we had the opportunity to work on a website for a developer - Active company from Krakow, for which we created a website with a catalog of apartments in a new apartment building on Mikołowska Street in Katowice. If you are planning to create a website with an offer of apartments or premises for sale or rent, this entry may be for you, and you can see the website.


The service was the first implementation of a website with a catalog of apartments on the new Wirtualizer EMS system, which is why we were very positive about the project.
Below you can read what we learned during this implementation, maybe this knowledge will be useful to you too.

1. Interactive apartment catalog
In addition to the typical information pages, an important part of the service was a catalog with the offer of apartments. You are probably wondering why there is a catalog of united arab emirates b2b leads apartments on a website of this type. After all, you could make a normal information page with a description of the investment, with sample 3D visualizations of apartments in the photo gallery, and include detailed information about the apartments in a file or PDF files for download. Of course you can. However, if you care about user convenience (UX), which translates into high conversion (sales leads), a catalog can be a great solution.

The main advantages of the apartment catalog on the website:
convenient filtering of the catalog by floors, area, availability and sorting of apartments using the same criteria

convenient browsing of apartment and premises offers in two different views - as tiles or a table

the ability to conveniently submit inquiries about a specific apartment or premises directly in the details

complete information about each apartment/premises - area, amenities, photos, location

increasing the volume of the website thanks to additional catalog subpages, important for website positioning

the ability to share/save a link to a specific apartment/premises

the possibility of using the catalog in Facebook Ads and Google Ads remarketing campaigns

the ability to conveniently submit inquiries about a selected apartment or premises

Image


In the project we were to implement, we not only had to implement a catalog of apartments, but it was to be interactive in a sense. It involved subpages with a view of the building in a 3D projection and subpages with projections of individual floors presenting the layout of apartments in a 2D projection. These subpages were to provide information about apartments after hovering over a floor or a specific apartment, respectively.

Interactive apartment catalog - floor selection


In the case of the subpage with a 3D building view, after hovering over a given floor, it was to be highlighted and information about the apartments was to be displayed - the total number, in the reservation, available. On the subpages with a 2D floor view, hovering over an apartment was to cause it to light up and information about the given apartment was to appear.

Apartment catalog - choosing an apartment on the first floor


We needed a solution that would allow us to create vectors in photos in a flexible way, i.e. mark any areas and then color them with a separate plane, with possible transparency. We were looking for ready-made scripts that could be used and possibly implemented in our CMS system. We found several solutions and started testing them one by one and trying to implement them as elements of the management panel.


Apartment catalog - apartment details


Testing the available tools for creating vectors took us a lot of time and energy, not to mention trying to implement them as part of the CMS panel. We were wasting hours and days and not making any progress. Finally, we gave up. We thought about it and came to the conclusion that it really doesn't matter where we create vectors, the important thing is to have a tool that will allow it and will be easy to use.

First of all, you can apply areas in the form of polygons and apply any number of them, and even edit existing ones. The problem turned out to be mapping points close to each other, too low photo resolution plus a small working area meant that sometimes the created vectors did not perfectly cover the walls of the apartments. Fortunately, you can deal with this too.

Creating vectors


Chrome and Firefox browsers allow you to enable responsive mode and set any screen resolution. Increasing the resolution to extreme values, e.g. 6000px and additional modification of the CSS code in the browser inspector allowed you to enlarge the work area, thanks to which it was possible to perform mapping on enlarged photos and thus more detailed manipulation of the points of the created polygons.

After applying the vectors, the tool generates a code with coordinates. Since all the apartments were added independently as a catalog, we could assign these coordinates to them and then read them in the service. Of course, we had to use the same photos so that everything matched.

It matched... but not completely.

It turned out that the person responsible for the implementation of the project on the client's side, the vectors were shifted relative to the photos. After analysis, it turned out that they use a 27-inch monitor with a resolution of 2880px and we use full HD monitors with a resolution of 1920px. It was necessary to introduce modifications, generate larger images and introduce the appropriate shift of coordinates. In the end, everything was coordinated so that in every resolution the vectors matched the image lines.

To sum up. Sometimes it is better to use external tools and focus on achieving the goal than to waste energy and implement tool integration at all costs, "because it would be nice if it worked". We wanted to implement vector support modules as part of our system by force, which was completely unnecessary. Something that seemed easy to do at the beginning turned out to be an insurmountable problem, or requiring a huge amount of work and time. Fortunately, we came to our senses in time and finally changed our approach to implementation, thanks to which we managed to achieve what we wanted - the desired effect, flexibility using easy-to-use tools.

2. Entering content
In the project, we were also responsible for entering the content, i.e. the parameters of all the apartments. We received materials in the form of Excel files during the implementation work. While the implementation was still in progress, we started entering the apartments into the database. Entering almost 200 apartments along with attaching photos is a considerable amount of work. It could not be automated, which is why it was laborious, manual work.

After entering the apartments into the database, it turned out that the numbering would change. And this is where the problems began.
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