Knight Frank is one of the world’s largest global property consultancies. Its global network encompasses 500 offices in 60 territories and more than 19,000 employees handle in excess of US$817 billion worth of commercial, agricultural and residential real estate annually. From their Dublin office, Knight Frank provides market-leading advice and transaction support to residential and commercial property owners, developers, investors and occupiers for their personal and business property needs.

Challenge

Knight Frank approached us seeking a redesign of their current website as a result of consistent user feedback that reflected a poor user experience. Three key areas were identified as being problematic: property search, people search and showcasing their service lines had been highlighted by the business as requiring improvement. Knight Frank had an additional challenge of being bound to a website template that had been created by Knight Frank Global and was used by over sixty territories.

Approach

We began our project with a UX research phase that helped us define the user problems and understand the business need in detail. Taking the initial user feedback into consideration, we were able to build a product strategy that both addressed the business need and solved all of the user issues. We built this strategy by applying our design method which included stakeholder interviews and a number of workshops. 

Solution

The final deliverable was a website that addressed user needs in a frictionless and simple manner. Our research had pointed to the importance of a positive search experience for users, and to that end we provided Knight Frank’s target audience with simple, intuitive and highly functional users flows around search. We also improved the discoverability of services lines for the business and designed templates that presented these services in an elegant and informative way. The completed website was one that fully met the requirements of the initial brief whilst also reflecting the long history of the brand and Knight Frank’s leading position in the property market.