Site redesign takes top honours at AIMIAs
6 March 2007 – domain.com.au was awarded Best Classifieds in a night of
recognition for leaders of the interactive industry at the 13th Annual Australian
Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA) Awards on Friday.
The award was judged on a range of criteria including design innovation, visual impact and aesthetics, usability, accessibility and technical expertise. domain.com.au received the award in recognition of its site redesign in mid-2006 that reflected the new domain.com.au brand proposition: ‘the easiest way to find property.’
“It’s fantastic to be recognised by the interactive industry for the huge effort we’ve put in over the past 12 months,” commented Sam Plowman, general manager, domain.com.au. “Winning this award is a credit to the whole domain.com.au team and reflects our focus on delivering an innovative product that drives value for agents and helps consumers make an easier, more informed property decision.
“We’ve had a huge start to 2007, with the Fairfax Digital Online Real Estate suite of sites pushing past the two million unique browsers mark* and now taking away top honours in our category at the AIMIAs.”
domain.com.au’s site stood out from the pack because of its seamless user experience,
involving a clean, uncluttered design, improved navigation and personalisation tools
that make it easier for consumers to find the property and property-related
information they are searching for.
The domain.com.au focus on a personalised search process has been validated by a strong increase in property-seekers signing up to MyDomain, a free membership service that includes tools such as Last Search (which remembers a searcher’s last search criteria), Property Shortlist (to save specific properties for easy review at a later time) and Home Alert (where new listings tailored to the property seeker’s criteria are automatically emailed to them).
In the past six months, domain.com.au has added new features and tools to its website, such as in-depth suburb report profiles, recently sold data and interactive Domain Maps as powered by Google Maps.
These changes have been met with resounding approval by the market, with email
enquiries jumping by an amazing 80 per cent since a personalised enquiry form was
introduced and property searches increasing by almost 50 per cent since the
introduction of the refine search feature.
Plowman concluded, “While we’re proud of our achievements, things are heating up in the online real estate arena, so we won’t be sitting on our laurels and will continue to innovate with our products – watch this space!”
* Nielsen//NetRatings Market Intelligence January 2007
