Southern Space is a development company specialising in aspirational new homes for sale. Established in 2005 as a subsidiary of Southern Housing Group, their aim is to develop innovative living space for all.

Our aim is to help them achieve their goals with a well designed website.

The new site’s focus will be to help promote their developments and the company’s position in the market place.

Where to next?

In 2010, we’re entering a new era of digital and social media marketing – one based on information, rationalisation, and resolve. Websites and digital applications are a cost effective and feature rich. Most importantly you can directly measure their success… How much impact a website has in selling a property? How successful is a campaign? Defining the “R” in ROI is a valuable tool in managing marketing spend, as it relates to business goals and performance indicators specifically.

For a digital campaign to work it needs to make a maximum impact, this could come from the development itself or from the way in which the presentation is geared to penetrate the market.

The property industry creates, markets and sells spaces to and for people. These spaces are designed to suite people’s lives, a place to live, a place to work. It’s no secret that we are becoming more and more accustomed to reading our news online and managing our money via the Internet.

How do we harness the power of this medium for the property sector? Instead of relying solely on the more traditional and somewhat formulaic print brochures. Consider teaser website campaigns which have a huge advantages (in amercing your audience in the property but with the advantage of video, virtual 3D simulations and sound it’s now even more reason to consider how your brand fits in) in addition websites and mobile phone apps have the advantage of tracking the interest in a development or space, measuring these numbers against the overall marketing budget and the size of the development is a powerful marketing tool that you simply don’t get with a printed brochure.

But why stop there, if digital is measurable, what of Social Media? Even though much of Social Media is free, not forgetting the cost of resources, engagement as it relates to employees, time, equipment, and opportunity cost (what they’re not focusing on or accomplishing while engaging in social and digital media). What does a property developer want with twitter? Well, that depends on the development, many don’t have the resources or PR capacity to warrant Social intervention.

We’ve become more accustomed to the digital environment and our buildings are becoming smarter and more environmentally friendly and “teched up”, it’s time our marketing does too. Consider the added benefit to the consumer if a mixed-use development had a community website to help both the managers and the occupants of the building. Much like other helpful services, this kind of added value helps build a developer’s brand from those occupants who have benefited directly.

When we truly grasp the ability to define action and measure it, we can expand the impact of new media beyond the profit and loss. We can adapt business processes, inspire ingenuity, and more effectively compete for the future.

Rife’s design presents the transport, planning, urban design and economics consultancy’s range of disciplines and services offered in a clear, creative and modern way.  A key element was implementing new ‘real-life’ photography of Colin Buchanan’s own staff at work to highlight the organisation’s personal and people-centric approach.  At the same time Rife ensured that the new look and feel reflected existing communications material in order to maintain brand consistency.

“Rife has created a modern and progressive new design for Colin Buchanan’s website that presents our varied disciplines and services in a way that is visually attractive and easy for visitors to navigate.  This is enhanced by the creative photography of our staff – the company’s most important asset – which lends the new site both a personal and professional feel,” comments Adele Jacques, marketing and quality manager at Colin Buchanan.

Rife also introduced a bespoke Content Management System (CMS) that gives Colin Buchanan the means to update the website content itself as a tactic to continually engage visitors.  Simple and intuitive, the CMS enables users to create, edit and delete pages, images and sections as required.

Lloyd Colling, creative director at Rife, explains:  “We aimed to introduce a fresh and innovative design concept that would help Colin Buchanan showcase its achievements in order to drive business.  But it is also important to get the balance right between a website that stands out from the crowd and a communications tool that is well-suited to the industry in which it operates.”

About Colin Buchanan
Colin Buchanan is a leading transport, planning, urban design and economics consultancy founded by Sir Colin Buchanan in 1964. The company remains true to its independent roots, offering impartial and objective advice and excellent design solutions to a wide variety of clients. It prides itself on the integrity and professionalism of its staff, which is key to the business, to provide a bespoke service to its broad spectrum of clients.

Design
Does your site communicate on the same level as the rest of your collateral? Your website is possibly the most seen part of your armory, whether it’s a Flash-based site with all the bells and whistles or a clean and simple HTML site, it should deliver your message proudly and in the same voice as everything else you do.

Content
Fresh and up-to-date content not only keeps the Search Engines happy, it helps keep those all-important visitors returning to your site for more. Likewise, well-written content and commented images have a similar effect on both.

Feature Functionality
Is your site suited to your business, does it serve the purpose it was intended for? Often businesses overstep the “whizziness” boundary when trying to make the most of their space on the World Wide Web; unfortunately this often ends up with a cluttered and confusing site. For most businesses, less is indeed more; the aim should be to get your messages across in as clear and effective manor as possible.

Usability
If a website is difficult to use, people leave. Intuitive navigation and information structure is paramount to making a user’s stay a pleasant one. People often make assumptions of your business based on how clearly you communicate your offering to them.

Standards Compliance & Cross-Browser Compatibility
Although there is no perfect browser that completely adheres to all standards at any one time, huge advancement has been made by several major web browsers. A well-built, compliant site makes for a consistent user experience across most of these browsers.

Top 5 SEO checklist. User-friendly = SEO-friendly.

META DESCRIPTIONS
The text you see below links in Google or your favorite Search Engine, often overlooked, web users might get the text on your site out of context and not visit.

PAGE TITLES
These should be logical, informative and page specific.

IMAGE DESCRIPTIONS
Search engines can’t “see”, at least not in the traditional sense, descriptions of your images are very important for the accessibility of your information.

LINKS, LINKS, LINKS
References to your site improve the importance of your site as a valid source of information.

UP-TO-DATE
Possibly most important, making sure your information is topical and up-to-date will insure return visits from web users/clients and Search Engine Bots.

Please feel free to contact us to talk about any of the topics featured.