Gilson Bailey

We were approached by one of the leading estate agents in Norfolk, Gilson Bailey, to design and develop them a fully functional property website. Here is the story of how we developed the new site from start to finish.

About Gilson Bailey

Gilson Bailey was established in 1995. Specialising in residential sales Gilson Bailey swiftly took its place as a leading independent estate agent in the city setting itself apart with its 7 day opening and energetic approach to selling.

Gilson Bailey Lettings was formed in 2011, offering established and new clients a quality residential lettings and property management service. The property management team now manage a sizeable portfolio throughout Norwich and extending into the Norfolk villages, offering unique services such as pre-check out inspection and no quibble, on time rental guarantee scheme.

Gilson Bailey opened their Brundall office at the end of 2020, the year they also proudly celebrated their 25th anniversary.  The Brundall office specialises in the NR13 area and towards the East Coast.

Gilson Bailey

Aim of the project

The aim of was to build an easy navigable property website with a fresh and modern design. The main feature will be property listings, which will feed in from their current residential management software. This will enable potential new customers to browse property listings and allow Gilson Bailey to generate leads on their own website.

From our initial consultation, we laid out a few key points for the design of the new site:

  • Comprehensive property search and results page
  • User friendly page structure
  • Fresh and modern design
  • Properties to be imported into the site
  • An area for blog content and articles
  • Tools such as mortgage and stamp duty calculators
  • Property listings to display information such as images, price, floorplan, virtual tours, map view, street view and local area information such as school and broadband
  • A feed of the latest google reviews

The process

Due to the nature and size of this property website, a lot of planning had to take place. Initial concept designs were drawn up and approved by Gilson Bailey, which gave them an idea of how the site would look once built.

In terms of design and page layout, each page has a ‘hero’ section at the top of the page, with a clear label to show what page users are on. Content and images take up the majority of the page, with a red sidebar running along the side of each page for easy navigation and information for each area of the site. The homepage features the main search, with other sales and lettings searches being found on the relevant pages on the site. There are content forms available and ready at the bottom of each page.

The property listings features information such as images, price, floorplan, virtual tours, map view, street view and local area information such as school and broadband. There is also a relevant contact form which will send an enquiry to the relevant branch.

Other features of the site include a feed of Google Reviews, and a floating sidebar which links to an online property valuation form.

Overall, we have achieved every aim and goal outlined in our design consultation.

We initially contacted KH Digital to help us with some issues on our old website having already been recommended by other companies who had been pleased with their work.  Having found them efficient, knowledgeable and essentially accessible we knew these were the team to work with for our new website as we wanted much more than just a ‘shop window’.

We are thoroughly pleased with the finished article, KH Digital were able to deliver on all of our requirements and gave invaluable input on new additions that work really well.  They spoke our language from initial brain storming/planning through design and final implementation and importantly they listened to what we wanted to achieve.  They were incredibly flexible and patient when we wanted to try out different ideas and we’re delighted that we now have a great looking website which not only generates business for us but provides a great resource centre for all of our clients to revisit, as and when their property journey requires.

The future

Gilson Bailey have opted to use one of our website maintenance plans. This means that the site will be hosted on our servers and Gilson Bailey will receive 40 minutes of support per month. This includes website maintenance, updates to plugins and WordPress, as well as any minor cosmetic changes to products and website.

Ongoing SEO works will be a part of the site’s future. This will include keyword research, competitor analysis, content creation, on page implementation and measuring performance via google search console.