WHERE DO YOU start when buying a house? It can be a daunting proposition for a prospective buyer but there’s one popular phrase you should keep in mind above all else: location, location, location.
Knowing where you want to buy allows you to refine your search instantly. However, even when you’re armed with that knowledge, filtering out different areas using most property websites can be troublesome when searching for your dream home.
Luckily, Daft.ie, in association with Allianz, has developed a solution to make your house search that bit easier, saving you precious time and effort. With Daft’s new You Map It tool, you can draw a shape around an area of interest on the map and instantly pull up all available properties within that area.
Speaking on the new tool, which is the first of its kind in the Irish property space, David O’Brien, product manager for Distilled, which owns Daft.ie, told us more:
We had the map search developed a couple of years ago and then we decided that the draw tool piece could be useful to our users. We worked with our design team, product team, and engineers to develop a version of the map piece. Allianz was also involved throughout too, and we got some really good feedback in terms of their opinions on how it’s used, and it’s always good to get user feedback before we push anything to our audience.”
Having seen the feature be successful in different countries, David said the team at Daft felt introducing it to an Irish audience would be a no-brainer:
We’re constantly looking at ways to improve the user experience online, taking feedback from our users, taking feedback from people in Daft, and also looking at best practices for international portals.”
Customer feedback was essential in every step of the process, as Daft wanted to bring a tool that made life easier for its users:
Essentially, the vision we have is better buying and selling for everyone. We’re constantly looking at ways to improve the user experience, take feedback from our users, take feedback from people in Daft, and also look at best practices in international portals.”
The You Map It tool from Daft, in association with Allianz, has been made with ease of use as a key factor.
Making the tool accessible and straightforward is helped by the playful design, which brings us back to drawing shapes in our school days. Instead of using a physical pencil, we digitally draw a shape using a mouse instead.
David gave us a quick tutorial of the tool:
When the user is looking for their next home to buy or rent (the tool is there for all sections), all the user does is click on the little pencil icon, and they can draw any shape they wish over their desired area and once they’re finished drawing their desired boundary, we’ll then present any properties that are available within that boundary to them and then they can continue on their browsing journey.”
The helpfulness of the new feature is immediately tangible. Users can choose the very estate they want if they’re looking for homes close to family, or if they want to live beside the coast, they can draw a boundary around the entire coast of Ireland, and easily see all properties available.
“Any shape that you want, you can do. The whole of Ireland if you want to, around a certain county if you wish, right down to the street that you may be looking for. We hope that users find it flexible and easy to use because ultimately, we want them to find the property that they’re looking for,” said David.
The You Map It tool ties into the recently announced cross-network media partnership between Allianz and Journal Media. The partnership runs across TheJournal.ie, Daft.ie, Donedeal.ie, and The42.ie, which are all part of the Journal Media stable.
Rachel Hanratty, marketing communications executive at Allianz commented on the partnership, stating, “We’re very excited to kick off the partnership with the Journal Media as their audiences across their multiple platforms link very closely to the products we offer at Allianz.”
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say