The new Deep Blue Apartments web site has been a remarkable project, not least because of our collaboration with designers Lightcircus in putting the project together, but also because of the very high level of integration between Google Maps, the Joomla web site, and a directory product for Joomla called K2.
The concept was to take an existing library of very stylish luxury apartments, and make them searchable in a completely new way, with a very close integration with Google Maps.
Features designed to bring the inventory closer to the user include (in no particular order):
- Predictive text search.
- An easy to navigate hierarchical structure.
- The ability to feature and promote particular apartments or areas.
- The ability both to search the directory and see the results on the map, or to search the map and see the results in the directory.
- Search by post code, location, radial proximity and apartment features.
- Search result sorting by price, distance, new and recommended listings.
- The ability to shortlist and enquire about individual apartments.
- Multiple price points and features for each apartment block.
- Pop up apartment details to save the user from having to negotiate down to the lowest level of the directory.
- Integrated image galleries for each individual apartment.
- Content features that are revealed and hidden at the click of a mouse to avoid cluttering the page.
- Integrated social media and email marketing.
- Search Engine Optimisation best practice built into every aspect of the design.
- Live chat for contacting an operator during office hours.
As you can imagine a project like that has kept everybody occupied for a long time, but we do believe that the outcome is something really special. One challenge with an extremely content-rich web site like this is to ensure that its multitude of features does not make the site run slow. The team has been kept busy working on a multitude of optimisation features, including page caching, database indexing, javascript and CSS minification, Ajax image loading, and a host of other techie features that you're probably wishing you'd never even heard about.
Please browse round and enjoy the site, especially the search and map features that we and Lightcircus have worked together to design and build, and of course book these delightful apartments from Deep Blue anywhere in the country: they do look rather nice!
We wish Steve and the team at Deep Blue Apartments the very best with the evolution of their business and web presence.
