5 ms·

Show HN: Minimalist (Brutalist?) Real Estate Web Design

13 points by cabinguy 10y ago

cabinguy 10y ago
Hi Everyone, we just launched Dane Arthur, a minimalist (brutalist?) real estate website that covers all areas of Minnesota & Wisconsin (19 MLS boards). The idea was to run in the opposite direction of everyone else. Mobile version will be up next week (currently looks terrible on mobile, fine on desktop/tablet). Feedback is welcome - thanks!
- holografix 10y ago
  Best thing I've seen in years. Risking an oxymoron I think you could achieve a prettier brutalist design with a little more care around the typography. I like it a lot.
  - cabinguy 10y ago
    Wow. Thank you very much. I appreciate it and will keep playing around with the typography.
    - atjamielittle 10y ago
      I think this is the only time I've ever visited a real estate site that didn't cause me immense suffering. It's amazing how much more usable it is if you remove all the marketing site style fluff.
  - legitster 10y ago
    I was going to say, Brutalism aside, this site is about 10 CSS rules away from being gorgeous on top.
    - cabinguy 10y ago
      You know how it goes...when you work on something intensely, you can lose some perspective. I'm very open to suggestions. Thanks.
nwrk 10y ago
good luck! did you tried to make the font even more smaller so you don't have to scroll that much ?
- cabinguy 10y ago
  Thanks. We went with a "scroll and click" UI. Keyboard not necessary.
threesixandnine 10y ago
With my over 30+ almost 40 eyes and glasses and a 1920x1200 24" monitor fonts are simply too small. Otherwise it looks good and I like the simplicity.
- cabinguy 10y ago
  Agreed. We plan on fixing that. Thanks for taking the time to review!
stocktech 10y ago
https://danearthur.com/mn/akeley/residential https://danearthur.com/mn/akeley/residential On Chrome, if you expand the listing, the description's text-overflow isn't working. You need overflow:hidden for the ellipsis to work, but I'd rather see the nowrap gone. Otherwise I love it.
- cabinguy 10y ago
  Great catch. We just made a change 20 minutes ago that must have broken this. Thank you very much!
mfluderx 10y ago
I like it and did something similar a few years ago with a villa rental site. I used to add the number of available properties after the place name in the list view e.g. Tenerife (12).
perfmode 10y ago
This is beautiful. Great work.
- cabinguy 10y ago
  Thank you.
aepearson 10y ago
I sort of like it. Basically a slightly nicer version of craigslist. To be honest though... With my experience in this particular niche...I don't "get it". The pages are printer friendly (a lot of realtors gripe about that). Pages load fast. Gallery/map view. It's challenging to integrate with that many MLS' as well...Some good stuff in there. It's obviously you put a lot of work into it. Great job on doing something against the grain. If the purpose is to make money...probably not the greatest site. Other than a very tiny sliver of the population who appreciates this sort of approach (ie. hackernews readers), most people are going to bounce right off the site. The single biggest missing piece is any sort of search functionality. It's REALLY annoying to use the site for anything other than a bit of browsing. That said - great work...I hope you got paid! EDIT * The more time I spend trying to hate this website, the more I end up liking it. Mission accomplished :)
- cabinguy 10y ago
  Thanks for the great feedback. Current average visit is about 9 minutes...so it seems pretty sticky compared to our more polished/shiny real estate sites (7 min avg). We will most likely add an advanced search down the road, but as someone who has made their living with real estate websites for a dozen years, I love this one the most (as is).
  - aepearson 10y ago
    How about bounce rate comparison? From a user perspective - I spent more time on the site than I do any other real estate site...because I was trying to figure out where to find things, and it took significantly longer to look at multiple areas than any other site. I'm not sure time on site is a reasonable measure of success - but I also think 9 minutes is impressive regardless :) You definitely have me thinking about doing some experimentation in minimalism (we, apparently, service a very similar niche).
    - cabinguy 10y ago
      Actually, we don't service the real estate industry, we're in the real estate industry. It's a long story[1] but we stumbled into the business. The main idea behind Dane Arthur is that we need to stand out from everyone else. We built a niche real estate company/brokerage to $200M/year in sales on the back of a website and want to expand our offerings, but not our geography. And you're 100% correct about time on site. The only measure we're really interested in is converting unique users into happy clients. [1] http://davegooden.com/2013/08/our-story-10-years-of-bootstrapping/ http://davegooden.com/2013/08/our-story-10-years-of-bootstra...

13 points by cabinguy 10y ago

Hi Everyone, we just launched Dane Arthur, a minimalist (brutalist?) real estate website that covers all areas of Minnesota & Wisconsin (19 MLS boards). The idea was to run in the opposite direction of everyone else. Mobile version will be up next week (currently looks terrible on mobile, fine on desktop/tablet). Feedback is welcome - thanks!

holografix 10y ago
Best thing I've seen in years. Risking an oxymoron I think you could achieve a prettier brutalist design with a little more care around the typography. I like it a lot.
- cabinguy 10y ago
  Wow. Thank you very much. I appreciate it and will keep playing around with the typography.
  - atjamielittle 10y ago
    I think this is the only time I've ever visited a real estate site that didn't cause me immense suffering. It's amazing how much more usable it is if you remove all the marketing site style fluff.
- legitster 10y ago
  I was going to say, Brutalism aside, this site is about 10 CSS rules away from being gorgeous on top.
  - cabinguy 10y ago
    You know how it goes...when you work on something intensely, you can lose some perspective. I'm very open to suggestions. Thanks.

nwrk 10y ago

good luck! did you tried to make the font even more smaller so you don't have to scroll that much ?

cabinguy 10y ago
Thanks. We went with a "scroll and click" UI. Keyboard not necessary.

threesixandnine 10y ago

With my over 30+ almost 40 eyes and glasses and a 1920x1200 24" monitor fonts are simply too small. Otherwise it looks good and I like the simplicity.

cabinguy 10y ago
Agreed. We plan on fixing that. Thanks for taking the time to review!

stocktech 10y ago

https://danearthur.com/mn/akeley/residential https://danearthur.com/mn/akeley/residential On Chrome, if you expand the listing, the description's text-overflow isn't working. You need overflow:hidden for the ellipsis to work, but I'd rather see the nowrap gone. Otherwise I love it.

cabinguy 10y ago
Great catch. We just made a change 20 minutes ago that must have broken this. Thank you very much!

mfluderx 10y ago

I like it and did something similar a few years ago with a villa rental site. I used to add the number of available properties after the place name in the list view e.g. Tenerife (12).

perfmode 10y ago

This is beautiful. Great work.

cabinguy 10y ago
Thank you.

aepearson 10y ago

I sort of like it. Basically a slightly nicer version of craigslist. To be honest though... With my experience in this particular niche...I don't "get it". The pages are printer friendly (a lot of realtors gripe about that). Pages load fast. Gallery/map view. It's challenging to integrate with that many MLS' as well...Some good stuff in there. It's obviously you put a lot of work into it. Great job on doing something against the grain. If the purpose is to make money...probably not the greatest site. Other than a very tiny sliver of the population who appreciates this sort of approach (ie. hackernews readers), most people are going to bounce right off the site. The single biggest missing piece is any sort of search functionality. It's REALLY annoying to use the site for anything other than a bit of browsing. That said - great work...I hope you got paid! EDIT * The more time I spend trying to hate this website, the more I end up liking it. Mission accomplished :)

cabinguy 10y ago
Thanks for the great feedback. Current average visit is about 9 minutes...so it seems pretty sticky compared to our more polished/shiny real estate sites (7 min avg). We will most likely add an advanced search down the road, but as someone who has made their living with real estate websites for a dozen years, I love this one the most (as is).
- aepearson 10y ago
  How about bounce rate comparison? From a user perspective - I spent more time on the site than I do any other real estate site...because I was trying to figure out where to find things, and it took significantly longer to look at multiple areas than any other site. I'm not sure time on site is a reasonable measure of success - but I also think 9 minutes is impressive regardless :) You definitely have me thinking about doing some experimentation in minimalism (we, apparently, service a very similar niche).
  - cabinguy 10y ago
    Actually, we don't service the real estate industry, we're in the real estate industry. It's a long story[1] but we stumbled into the business. The main idea behind Dane Arthur is that we need to stand out from everyone else. We built a niche real estate company/brokerage to $200M/year in sales on the back of a website and want to expand our offerings, but not our geography. And you're 100% correct about time on site. The only measure we're really interested in is converting unique users into happy clients. [1] http://davegooden.com/2013/08/our-story-10-years-of-bootstrapping/ http://davegooden.com/2013/08/our-story-10-years-of-bootstra...