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Flawless Marketing at the Click of a Button
THE CLIENT
Paragon Real Estate was a premiere real estate agency based out of San Francisco with decades of experience and an impressive approach that has generated billions of dollars in sales. As a boutique-minded company that knows every block of SF and nearby Marin county, Paragon offers unparalleled expertise in marketing, negotiating, pricing, and customer service for both buyers and sellers in the home and commercial sectors. Known for their market intelligence, they deliver analytic reports that have been featured in SF Gate, The San Francisco Business Times, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.
THE PROJECT
Paragon sensed early on that technology was going to be a game-changer in the real estate industry. A boutique agency with a big vision, they wanted to offer their agents and staff a suite of tools to make listing and marketing properties both efficient and effective. Initially they approached High Seas with a unique challenge: a custom tool for print-ready marketing materials, fully integrated and foolproof, with pixel-perfect print quality to handle their high-end design standards, while also allowing images, text, and bullet point fields to be edited.
THE APPROACH
High Seas and Paragon collaborated heavily to develop prototypes and engage in an R&D process as we explored ways to bring the vision to reality. With Paragon’s particular attention to detail, it wasn’t enough to simply make print-quality materials - the colors, fonts, text formatting, and image placement had to be pixel-perfect based on their in-house designer’s collection of brochures, postcards, and statements. This involved early use of technology to dissect and re-insert elements and components into an existing PDF. We worked directly with Paragon to ensure all design elements could manage the many types of content.
With many variations for image orientation and layout options, one of the most critical requirements was that the system had to be designed to be simple and approachable for all technology comfort levels. Once we had a functional proof of concept, our User Experience process carefully analyzed the workflows and noted where other third-party tools were lacking. A series of intensive user persona and scenario workshops were held with Paragon staff in order to take into account any edge cases and make the process as streamlined as possible.
THE RESULT
A marketing center with unparalleled design and user experience, that allows Paragon to fully control their brand presentation while giving autonomy to their agents. At the time of launch, no other real estate company offered an in-house tool that enabled and empowered agents and staff to create their own materials.
Fully integrated with Paragon’s database and high-resolution image library, the workflow allows agents and staff to simply drag-and-drop images and content into the pre-made template formats. All copy is fully populated based on the most up-to-date data in the Paragon system, including descriptions, open houses, and property features. Simple text-editing allows any field to be modified or abbreviated depending on template size and content space. With one click the completed template can be downloaded as a PDF or sent as a print order request. In the case of mini-sites, one click will publish the site and generate a unique URL that can be used immediately to market the property.
