About Growthpoint
Growthpoint is a leading international property company, providing space to thrive. They create value for all our stakeholders through innovative and sustainable property solutions.
The problem
In response to the changing dynamics of the property industry in a post-COVID world, Growthpoint launched a project called SmartMove. SmartMove provides high value and returns on investment for property rentals.
Digitlab was commissioned to build a WordPress website that would integrate with its property database to promote the SmartMove portfolio on a campaign website. The challenge was made more interesting in that the property database was created in MS SharePoint, and integrates with a Laravel CMS and database system. These two systems needed to integrate seamlessly with WordPress to provide a simple and easy-to-use user journey for their customers.
Our Role
Digitlab was brought on as the digital agency to develop the WordPress site and build the necessary system integrations. Also, Digitlab designed the user experience and managed all the content collation and database restructuring.
Our Solution
The user journey was simplified down to a single home page and a search engine for properties – creating an incredibly simple experience for website users.
Once the user journey was developed, we designed a simple explanatory home page with a sophisticated search engine.
The Property Database
Digitlab developed a custom, Laravel-based property database management system. This system automatically pulled current property information from the internal property database on MS SharePoint. In addition, a CMS system was developed to allow more data points and information to be shared about each property. In essence, we created a single backend platform to collect all static, dynamic, and automatic data points. An API was then built to make the property more accessible to various platforms.
The Search Engine
Next, we built a custom WordPress plugin to create a search engine that searches the property database, extending beyond what default WordPress searches are capable of retrieving.
The Result
We were proud to deliver a powerful web-based lead engine with a smart data search engine. It provides real-time vacancy, pricing, sales, and marketing data in a simple and beautiful WordPress website.