As our customers know by now, Redfin stops at nothing to make sure our data quality is the best, and we obsess over making sure our customers have access to as much of the same information agents use to list homes or record sale information as we’re able. That said, like a day-old bagel I found under my daughter’s car seat, the previous property page felt (and tasted) stale. It takes a certain bit of crazy to reinvent your most-visited page, but sometimes you have to make bold moves to keep what you love moving forward. It frustrated us to no end when usability tests consistently showed that customers were missing out on detailed property history, tax information, School Attendance Zones, or public records because this information was hiding in plain sight on a jumbled page.

That’s why we didn’t take the design process lightly: it’s the culmination of years of feature requests and feedback from customers, months of in-person usability tests, surveys, and the largest public beta program we’ve ever put together. As this has rolled out, your feedback has already helped us optimize the design for the smaller screens of netbook computers, and convinced us (rightly so) that the map on the page absolutely had to be interactive.

So what’s different on the new page? The most noticeable change is the size of the images – big, beautiful images of the home are front-and-center. We all eat with our eyes, so we’re giving you a second helping of deliciousness. All the same information from the previous page is still there, and the reorganized layout makes it even easier to find the information you can only find on Redfin, like what our Redfin agents thought of a home when they saw it in person. If you decide you’re ready to tour a home, we’ve made it even easier to find the local Redfin agent who can make it happen.

Larger photos: Images are 35% larger, and you can expand it to a full-screen slideshow. Hit the left / right arrow keys to page through them all. (or hit the ‘?’ key to see all keyboard shortcuts)

Completely re-architected page: Loads up to 31% faster and it really screams on mobile browsers.

Easier navigation: An easy-to-navigate menu helps you keep track of where you are on the page and can take you to any section of the page quickly. Just click the section name and go.

Address bar: Core details, such as price, beds, baths, square feet, address and more “lock” to the top of the page as you scroll down, and you’ll always be able to favorite a home as you learn more.

Neighborhood map: In real estate, it’s all about Location, Location, Location. We’ve moved the map to the top of the page, so you’ll know as soon as the page loads where a house is located, or how much of the property it takes up. Adjust to satellite mode or zoom in, and we’ll remember your preferences from page to page. It’s the map of your dreams right there as soon as the page loads. One click takes the map full-screen.

Redfin Activity Stats: New Redfin Activity Stats (in the new “Activity” section), will give you a great sense for how many people have Viewed, Favorited, X’d-Out and Toured with Redfin for this particular listing, and across all time. It’s already a feature we find ourselves obsessing about on the homes we’re tracking.

A gigantic thank-you goes out to the engineering, marketing, products and design teams that made this happen. This was truly a company-wide effort, and we’re proud of all the hard work and careful planning that went into it.

We’ve built a helpful guide on how to get the most of the new design, and if you’re interested in some of the groundbreaking new technology we’re using on the new page, please also check out our Dev Blog on the development process. We discuss how we load the different elements of the page in sequence to show content even before the full page has loaded, as well as how we handle the different streams of data simultaneously.

As always, we want to hear what you think: Please share with us what you like best, or any changes you’d like to see. Let us know with your comments below.

The post You Look Beautiful Darling appeared first on Redfin Real Estate Blog.

To that end, we launched a feature on our search menu today to let you filter out homes above a maximum monthly homeowner’s association dues amount – or even “No HOA.”  Might not seem like a big deal at first glance (and maybe it’s not if you have an extra $600/month handy), but anyone looking at condos or townhomes can tell you that HOA dues can be the difference between a great home you can afford and one that’s out of your price range.

You can find the Max HOA option under Home Facts on the search menu.  This can be used for any search, including your saved searches, and even used on the iPad or iPhone through a saved search.  And it’s another way you can refine the homes that are exactly what you’re looking for with our Listing Alert feature.

So thanks for the feedback, and keep it coming! We do turn your ideas into features!  And in the meantime, what do you think of the new filter?

The post Now Available on Redfin: Filter by HOA Dues! appeared first on Redfin Real Estate Blog.

I love Dan, precisely because I have never met such a pure engineer — he wears Ms. Pac Man t-shirts quoting Dickens and runs Harry Potter conferences — with a deadly commercial instinct.  His comment brought to mind a drug dealer I once heard about, who happily declared on an FBI tape that “if it ain’t a CONSIDERABLE piece of business, I ain’t gonna f*** with it!” As my brother’s law-school class would later learn, this statement was enough to move the dealer up from petty crime to racketeering. In our own world as dealers of addictive websites, we all want to think like gangstas, and think big.

But there’s also a place for artistry and craftsmanship, for starting small. When painting the Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci didn’t ask himself if each brushstroke would really move the needle. He was painting first to please himself, alone and ecstatic. The most profitable websites I’ve ever seen were made by people who weren’t obsessed with profits. They wanted to fix a problem that drove them nuts or to impress a cute guy or to create something gorgeous for the sheer joy of it. They weren’t afraid of failure, and they didn’t “pivot” when faced with their first setback.

But now, as the bubble drives us all to think like Groupon or Twitter, we are in a year of frantic, magical thinking. We lose sight of the user, and lose sight of ourselves, in pursuit of the almighty dollar. The beginning of the end for Microsoft’s innovative phase was when it began quashing projects that couldn’t conceivably lead to billion-dollar businesses, as if anyone could really know how tall a flower can grow before watering it. Redfin began as a website designed to please home-buyers and home-owners — and designed first to please ourselves — from which, quite improbably, tens of millions of dollars have flowed.

I am not arguing against a healthy dose of skepticism for any website feature, nor for the quarter-bath, search-by-houseboat incrementalism that leads to a complicated user experience rather than a big new idea. I love it that Dan is thinking big, and thinking deadly, about whether a new project can become a killer application. But when we think about a killer application, we still want to think first about whether it will delight people, starting with ourselves. From that, the money will usually come.

The post Does It Really Move the Needle? appeared first on Redfin Real Estate Blog.

We decided to do this now because our two-year contract with Microsoft was up for renewal. We did an evaluation and figured out a way to draw a large number of pushpins on GMaps very quickly. When we went with VE in 2006, GMaps was faster out of the box but slower once we started drawing on it, especially on IE6.

We like a lot of things about going with Google Maps:

• Fast downloads
• Fast drawing speeds
• Broad browser support
• High-resolution Geoeye-1 satellite images

We don’t like that we can no longer embed Bird’s Eye views on our site and that 3 developers spent four weeks to do the switch instead of adding more features. Plus, Redfin has had a very good relationship with the Microsoft Virtual Earth team, which we’ll miss. We’d like to give special thanks to Sujatha, the Microsoft PM who answered our e-mails, calls, and random entreaties with the utmost of professionalism and speed. We really only have good things to say about VE. Anyone looking to build a map-based Web 2.0 site has two solid choices.

In the end, it was speed, speed, speed that convinced us to switch. In our worst case scenario of 500 pushpins on the map in IE6, GMaps is 385% faster.

“Every millisecond counts” is a “Googley” UX design principle that we remember from Marissa Mayer’s evangelism of speed and that we strongly believe in (see here, here, and here). Users who come to Redfin’s site now should see maps load and render just a little bit quicker, which makes us feel a little Googley inside.

That’s it! Happy holidays from Redfin Engineering. You won’t hear from us until February, as we’re already working on a major release that will take a little more time. But it’ll be worth it. For those of you using the site, can you notice a performance difference? Leave a comment and let us know!

Bonus for developers: read about our experience switching from Virtual Earth to Google Maps. 

The post Our Maps Are Googley Now appeared first on Redfin Real Estate Blog.

In an effort to improve our forms, ace product manager Matt Goyer bought a book on usability for one of his young charges, Jim Lamb. But when Jim started reading the book, he found that one of the forms the book was supposed to help us improve was already in the book:

On the left side of the page pictured here, you’ll see Redfin’s Offer Wizard.

When Matt came into my office to show it to me, I could only think of Groucho Marx’s rejection of any club that would accept him as a member. “Wow,” I thought. “It’s time to get Jim another book.”

(In fact, the book looks fantastic. Many thanks to author Luke Wroblewski for including us!)

The post Redfin Writes the Book on Usability appeared first on Redfin Real Estate Blog.

When we released the latest version of Redfin.com, we ran our first message this space announcing our new neighborhood pages. The text was: “New! Pricing trends for every neighborhood. And more.” With “neighborhood,” we linked to a respective city page for each market. With “more,” we linked to the Redfin blog post about the features of the latest release.

We were worried that placing an announcement across the top of the map would annoy people searching for homes. We ran the message for a week and tracked how often people dismissed the box and clicked-through to the links.

Click-Through Rate
The total click-through rate (CTR) for the message box was high (1.95%), higher than any other message location on Redfin.com. For the “neighborhood” anchor text, Seattle (2.93%) had the highest CTR and Southern California (1.35%) the lowest. The anchor text linking to the blog post had a CTR of 0.15%, which is not surprising given that it was the second link in the message.

Dismissal Rate
The dismissal rate for the message box was 1.50%. DC had the highest rate (1.86%) and Boston had the lowest (1.08%). The dismissal rate was lower than we expected. The low rate is likely due to the fact that users: 1) weren’t seeing the box; 2) were unable to find the X to close the box; or 3) didn’t mind having the box on the screen.

We’re thinking about trying out a few different treatments for the box- different colors and different length messages to test how the dismissal and click-through rates change.

What about you? Did you notice the message? Did you leave it open or click it away?

The post Message in a Bottle appeared first on Redfin Real Estate Blog.

Before launching the feature we debated what the top service would be. Glenn, voted for Delicious, I voted for Facebook. In fact I thought Facebook would win by a long shot which is why we used the text “Share on Facebook” instead of something more generic like “Share on…”

Curious who won the bet we used the AddThis analytics feature to settle up. Here’s a breakdown of how many times the various services have been used:

Of course, maybe the fact that the link specifically calls out Facebook is the reason it is the leading bookmarking service :).

Here’s a breakdown by day.

In our next release we’ll add a Facebook icon in front of the link to increase its discoverability.

Big thanks to Dan, for pushing us to use AddThis.com, instead of adding only a Share on Facebook link.

The post And The Leading Bookmarking Service Is… appeared first on Redfin Real Estate Blog.

When we re-designed our website in April one of the changes we made was hiding the search options. The reasoning behind this controversial design was that since users spend most of their time navigating the map and only occasionally change the number of beds or square footage that they’re looking for, we should make the map as large as possible and move the search options to an overlay. The overlay then only appears when you give focus to the search input box or click a widget.

Initially to display the search overlay pictured above users would need to click the link ‘Filter Search’:

However, we heard occasional stories of users not knowing they could search on number of beds or price. So our next design was to include a drop down widget besides the search button. This is reminiscent of what many Windows applications do or what Facebook does.

But still we heard stories of users not knowing they could change their search options. With our next release we’re looking at combining both the link and drop down widget approachs by moving the drop down widget and changing the name on the link to hint at what it enables you to change:

Unfortunately a number of co-workers stormed into my office yesterday, criticized the design and called me names. If I were to pass you the Redfin Search Product Manager baton how would you solve this discoverability problem? Feedback welcome but Photoshop submissions preferred :). To sweeten the pot we’re offering $250 if we use your submission. However, if you have a winning submission the real question is, why haven’t you applied for our interaction designer position yet?

And with that I’m off to Whistler. Happy Thanksgiving!

The post Redfin has search options!? appeared first on Redfin Real Estate Blog.

We only get one shot at the explanation because returning visitors see a view of our map as they left it on their last visit. Many are so thunderstruck by Redfin’s search superpowers that they never realize we have to make a living buying and selling homes.

When we surveyed our customers about what they wanted to see on the home page 58% asked for an explanation of our commission refund, 47% for an overview of our company, and 45% for a step-by-step guide to the process. But you should just say what you want: even though this blog is by and for people at an absurd remove from reality, please don’t feel like you have to channel anyone normal. It never works.

Here are the choices, which you can click to enlarge:

1. Illustrated explanation of the buying process:

2. Photo illustration of the buying process:

3. Who we are, in paragraph form:

4. Who we are, in bullet form:

Tell us which one you like first, second, third and last; suggest modifications or an entirely new treatment. Thanks to Savan Kong, Jason Wu, Michael Young, Matt Goyer, Jeff Yee, Marc Singer, Dana Irming, Bryan Selner, Leo Shklovskii and many others for their input so far. And thanks to everybody else for your feedback now…

We’ll also post a link to Redfin Forums, too.

The post Vote Early, Vote Often appeared first on Redfin Real Estate Blog.

Scroll down a bit and look for the above box on the left-hand side of the listing detail page, usually below the “Sales History” box. Note: clicking on the links will open another window, leaving your Redfin search intact on the original page.

I checked out my own Zip Code (98109 in the Queen Anne area of Seattle) and immediately homed in on education level and school test scores. I think I secretly wanted to know if my neighbors could hold their own on the new hot game show where “smart, educated” adults pit themselves against a handful of Golden State fifth-graders. I learned some fascinating conversation topics for my next cocktail party or playground chat with a neighborhood fifth-grader … I’ll crush them with my local knowledge.

A few things I learned about my area (which you can discover about your current or prospective one too!):

1. The median age is 36.28, not 9 (the average age of a fifth-grader).
2. Summer break comes at just the right time. July’s average high is 74 degrees!
3. The bachelor-of-arts crowd dominates at 31.2 percent, beating the fifth-graders at only 1.4 percent.
   
4. We’re under average for murders, but we must have easy-to-steal cars because the motor vehicle theft rate is more than 300 times the national average.
   
5. Earthquakes are the biggest weather risk – eek! A reminder for Seattleites to go to the mailbox and vote … tunnel, viaduct, both or neither?! sigh
   
6. Another cool thing you can do is compare cost of living, down to how much more or less your clothes will cost.
   
7. Out of 15,395 people, there are only 63 fifth-graders. Majority rules!

Warning: the comparison feature is addictive! I looked at a couple different cities I’ve lived in:

1. If I wanted to move back to Redondo Beach, Calif., I’d need to get an 11 percent raise to maintain my “Bud Light” lifestyle.
2. I could go back to Pullman, Wash. and get by with 37 percent less money (a round of drinks at the Coug on me!).

We also added open house information, when available. In the next couple months, they’ll be easier to find, but right now you will see the information under the house photo on the listing detail page.

Look for the above box under the listing’s main photo

An added bonus for you trivia hounds out there (real questions from Are You Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader? – no cheating!):

1. Which U.S. border is longer – Canada or Mexico?
2. Name the ship the pilgrims sailed from Plymouth, England to the Plymouth colony in America in 1620.
3. How many teaspoons are in a tablespoon?
4. How many U.S. states border the Pacific Ocean?
5. If you mix equal amounts of red and yellow paint, what color do you get?

Stumped? Comment or shoot me an e-mail and I’ll give you a hint – cynthia.pang(at)redfin.com.

The post Is Your Neighborhood Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader? appeared first on Redfin Real Estate Blog.