AVENUE 8

Comparative Market Analysis

A self-service CMA presentation tool designed to help save agents time and improve the Avenue 8 AEM team’s operational efficiency.

 

Overview

Avenue 8 is a residential brokerage platform that empowers agents to be more entrepreneurial, to close from anywhere, and to keep substantially more of their income. I was responsible for leading the design of our new self-service CMA tool created for our agents to use.


CHALLENGE

Saving agent time while improving operational efficiency

Previously, to get an Avenue 8 branded CMA presentation, our agents had to submit a request to one of our AEMs, (Agent Experience Manager) who would then create one manually through our internal CMA tool. The return rate would typically take over a day, due to all the other tasks and services that AEMS had to provide for our agents.

We found that agents would end up finding other tools outside of Avenue 8 to create a CMA on their own, due to the slow return rate from the AEMS, which in turn would mean that they would be presenting a non-Avenue 8 branded CMA to their clients.

“How might we make a scalable CMA product vertical that saves agents time and improves our operational efficiency as we scale?”

CMA Presentation Example

 
 
 

SOLUTION

Designing a intuitive self-service CMA tool

Redesigning our internal CMA tool into a self-service tool that allows our agents to easily and quickly create a beautiful Avenue 8 branded CMA presentation without the help of an AEM on our team. This in turn will also decrease the amount of time and manual work for AEMs, which then can then reuse to focus on other services for agents.

 

OLD INTERNAL TOOL

NEW SELF SERVICE

Research and Discovery

USER INTERVIEWS

First, we wanted to learn more about how real estate agents today use marketing and comparative market analysis to support their businesses. We conducted user research through interviews with our internal agents as well as external agents through usertesting.com.

Example of interview notes with a NYC agent

 
 

 USER RESEARCH INSIGHTS

  • The comparable ‘Search’ mental model in NY for agents is building > similar units > condition of unit, while CA is neighborhood > similar filters > spec properties.

  • Map view is a lot more useful for California agents as they prioritize drawing in a radius or polygon to filter within a neighborhood as a first step, but not as useful for New York agents

  • There are many agents that use CMA tools to create general presentations of listings for other use cases too (opportunity to iterate this as a CMA tool first, then generalized presentations to give agents flexibility)

 

USER PERSONAS

Using the information that we’d gathered from user surveys and interviews, I created a user persona of our Avenue 8 agents, Mariana DaCosta and Linda Thompson.

 
 

Information Architecture

USER FLOWS

I created a user flow to show how an agent like Mariana or Linda would go through the tool to create a new CMA presentation to send to their clients.

 
 
 
 

WIREFRAMES

Using our research insights and flows, I created wireframes in Figma, keeping in mind to simplify the CMA creation process for the agent as much as possible while still providing all the necessary functionality.

 
 

User Testing

With the wireframes, I created a clickable prototype to user test. We conducted the tests with both internal and external agents in California and New York to learn about the different ways they use CMA tools and what they prioritize in their workflow. Overall, agents were able to pick up the general flow pretty easily. However, we were able to gather some useful feedback for our next iteration.

CHANGES MADE AFTER TESTING

  • Added an extra filter to cater to New York Agents (toggle to search for units within the same building)

  • Made the subject property step optional, agents preferred to have the added flexibility

  • Consolidated filters all into one modal. Originally there were 4 different filters (assuming that those four were the top used filters) and a “more filters” button placed on the search page, but we then learned that there aren’t any “top used filters” amongst all agents for CMAs, it all depends on the use case and region

  • Did a deep dive on UX copy and made adjustments accordingly

Design System

 
 

The Creative Director established a design system for our product, which was also applied across all other future Avenue 8 products.

 
 
 
 
 
 

Visual Design

HIGH-FIDELITY SCREENS

Using the design system, my wireframe designs were brought to life!