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home.dk

New, user-centric, lightning-fast site for Denmark's entire real estate chain
See their website here

home.dk - the chain's digital storefront

The decision to sell or buy a home is one of the most significant turning points in the lives of most Danes. This is understood by home A/S, a modern, digital real estate chain covering the entire country with skilled agents who prioritize local knowledge and personalized service for the customer. This demands a finely tuned website where the customer experience takes top priority.

The solution: a modern, sleek website

The work began with a thorough and comprehensive pre-analysis and research phase, where Novicell uncovered the needs and desires for the platform through user testing and stakeholder interviews. This formed the basis for an Umbraco solution built on modern MACH architecture and the right tech stack. Additionally, the site underwent a total redesign with a focus on a fast and excellent user experience. This ensures that sellers and buyers now receive the best possible impression of homes for sale on home.dk. And considering the underlying complexity of the site, delivering this experience wasn't a straightforward task

Read more about user-friendly design

We have a lot of logic behind the scenes, and that complexity isn't visible to the user. It needs to be user-friendly and look good—and we've succeeded! We've received a lot of praise for the site from local home businesses, and many end-users have told us it looks fantastic. That makes us very happy.

Claus Smedegaard Makholm
IT-projectleader, home A/S

home.dk's tech stack

  • Enterspeed

    Lightning-fast data delivery between back- and frontend in a headless hub system, regardless of the systems in use. This makes it easier for both web editors at home A/S headquarters and local brokerage firms to create new content and swiftly pull data from third-party systems into the frontend.

    Read more about Enterspeed
  • Umbraco logo

    Umbraco

    A robust CMS system built on open-source principles, providing web editors with an easy working environment. Umbraco was chosen by home A/S as their CMS due to their previous positive experiences with the platform. However, at that time, the version they were using was nearing its end-of-life.

    Read more about Umbraco

  • Algolia

    Ensures fast and relevant search among thousands of properties for sale. As a search engine, Algolia is easy to interact with and search through, making it perfect, especially for homebuyers who want to quickly and easily find their potential dream home.

    Read more about Algolia

Composable architecture ensures the right foundation - from the beginning

home A/S didn't just want a new site built on old code. No, the whole thing had to be built from scratch to ensure a solid site that could continuously modernize and evolve. Therefore, a crucial part of the solution was to build it on composable principles. This means that home can now introduce new systems, APIs, and integrations without causing regression in existing elements and code. In other words, the codebase can be replaced and updated much easier and faster without risking 'breaking something.' home.dk is future-proofed and ready for new, awesome features that benefit both buyers, sellers, and local real estate agents.

Reduced time in creating listings makes all the difference

Many of home.dk’s users come from external housing portals like boligsiden.dk. Here, they can see some information about the property but need to click through to view the entire listing. Data travels from home.dk to Boligsiden through a third-party system, Mindworking. However, prior to the new site, it sometimes took up to 45 minutes from a local agent clicking ‘publish’ on a property in home’s CMS before it appeared on home.dk. This resulted in the property existing on boligsiden.dk but not yet on home.dk, leading the buyer to encounter a 404-page. This was detrimental to conversion rates, making it a high priority to address. With the new site, the publishing time has been reduced to under a minute. All properties are swiftly displayed, and edits to existing listings can happen rapidly. Previously, an agent had to wait 45 minutes to see edits reflected.

Unique, organic design process with collaborative participation drove progress

An integral part of the new home.dk is the complete redesign conducted by Novicell. Our research and analysis unveiled a crucial insight: Dreams. Homebuying is about dreams - and emotions. You're not just buying a house. You're purchasing your first shared home with your partner, your children's childhood home, your final residence, or something entirely different. Hence, we actively worked on enhancing the perspective of dreams and emotions through the use of imagery, neighborhood information, and much more. All to create the best user experience and assist many more Danes in finding their dream homes.

To ensure this excellent experience, Novicell and home A/S conducted agile design workshops where design elements were tested 'live' on a large screen with project participants from both sides. This allowed for rapid testing of ideas and collaboratively created the best possible framework for a user experience that works for the user while achieving home A/S' business goals for the site.

”Novicell provided a razor-sharp team, which has been perfect for us and a great process.”

Claus Smedegaard Makholm
IT-projectleader, home A/S

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