The Coral Gables Story Real Estate Blog Case Study

Before we get started, let me disclose that I am biased: I worked with Janie
and Shelly on The Coral Gables Story - in a personal role, not in my role
at RealBird - but nevertheless, I truly believe that their recently released site
is one of the best real estate blogs out there. After my analyses in Part 2 of
this two parts series - with Janie's and Shelly's permission - I am going to
share some powerful WordPress customization tips.

Concept, context and the vision

The Coral Gables Story is a real estate

blog: their primary goal is to generate
revenue from real estate sales activities,
but they also wanted to create a site that
goes beyond "just" real estate content and
engages the community on a longer term,
not just while people actively seeking a
home to buy or planning to sell. The site
is very much location centric, just like real
estate itself, but it creates a mix of con-
tent that ventures out to other areas,
more specifically, content about things that are the other passions of Janie
and Shelly: history, coffee and social activities (e.g. local events). Working
with them, I know for sure, that they started the whole development process
by first identifying and refining their concept, their content mix and the
overall vision. The whole Story concept is very innovative, social and invit-
ing. They actively seek stories from local businesses, residents and visitors
to their city and they launched with a few stories already posted. Here is
an example post: Memories of Family Vacations from DE that brought a

Family to Coral Gables

What's important to emphasize here is that the concept and the context that glues these different topics together clearly defines the vision. Once defined, the vision made them focused during the whole process and importantly, it is instantly clear for the blog visitors as well. They also posted this featured article ( Just what is The Coral Gables Story all about? ) that clearly commu- nicates the concept and the vision to first time visitors.

Actionable things that can be learned here:

• Define your concept, context and the vision - it will keep you fo-

cused for the long run

• Create a content mix documentation- find the verticals and

niches that are your passions besides real estate, write them down in

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a spreadsheet and try to come up with the percentage of content each
niche will generate. You should be able to generate a pie chart of your
content mix. Again, this will keep you on track for the long run. It does
not have to be complicated, in the case of The Coral Gables Story, a
list of main categories such as "Real estate", "Coffee", "History",
"Events", "Your Story" did the magic. Once documented, it could be
easily decided how much content for each category they wanted to
and can actually create ongoing.

• Iterate until the concept and content mix is in the perfect con-

text of your overall goal: i.e. to generate real estate business

Design, branding and execution

Because I was involved from inception through launch, I know it for a fact, that the design went through many iterations. Janie and Shelly had a vision from the beginning and the functional design and the graphics design went hand-in-hand to create the final product.

In March, the site was almost ready to launch, but after some internal de-
bates about the colors and typography and based on the feedback from oth-
ers, they decided to go through one more large iteration and they changed
the overall color theme and design elements, once again. It was a big deci-
sion, because they've already invested months of work in the first design,
but for the very same reason - due to all the investment in time - they
wanted to make it right at the launch.

Their vision also suggested that they need an overall design that is brand-
able and functional. One that they can use as an overall branding vehicle on
business stationaries, T-shirts, merchandise etc. and one that supports on-

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line applications as well including online marketing such as SEO, social me-

dia marketing etc.

After all the efforts, they got it right. Here is what I like the most:

• Overall color theme - solid, easy on the eye, unique overall design

(brown and green) and the colorful thumbnails and featured posts add

enough spice to keep it exciting on subsequent visits

• Highly emphasized call-for-action buttons - great functional de-

sign example. It's above the fold and drives visitors toward valu-

able actions

• Homepage layout: I love that the large photo slider of their niche

communities and real estate verticals are highlighted for new visitors.
Many new visitors arrive to the homepage first or if not, check it out at
least once during their visit. It's crucial to have a homepage that
makes the vision obvious and intuitive. On the other hand, visitors
through search engines and returning visitors via RSS will end up on
the individual posts. The website is designed in a way that it provides
slightly different landing page, content for new vs. returning visitors.
Very smart design for maximizing the engagement

Actionable things that can be learned here:

• Understand the many faces of design:graphics design, functional

design and branding. Make sure they work together well and support

each other

• Take your time: Design, branding and proper execution takes time

and many iterations.

• Hire a designer: Creative process is a very subjective matter, but

then there are many objective things involved. Professionals know ty-
pography, colors, layouts and what's doable and what's not to tie
graphics, functionality and brand together.

• Get feedback from peers and different people around you.You don't

have to change your idea to accommodate every bit of feedback but

you may get inspired by outsiders.

Janie's and Shelly's diligence in design, execution and attention to details
paid off. Thesis theme founder Chris Pearson found their blog on his own
and tweeted about it to his 9000+ followers. See the screenshot of hisstatus

updatebelow.

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