REA Group
Transforming seller lead generation: elevating results through design innovation
How strategic design and product development at REA Group increased seller leads from 15K to 80K annually, empowering real estate professionals with actionable requests and deeper insights via Ignite, our exclusive customer platform.
The Challenge
Real estate professionals rely on a steady stream of high-quality seller leads to grow their business. Previously, the process for homeowners to request an appraisal—a critical first step in selling—was opaque and cumbersome, resulting in lost opportunities for agents.
Our primary challenge was to simplify and supercharge the experience, making it easy for sellers to connect with agents while providing agents with the tools to manage and act on these new leads effectively.
The Basics
Client
REA Group
My role
Product Design Manager
Year
2022-2023
Leadership team
Aimee Pagram, Smrithi Kamtikar, Sylvester D’Souza, Amanda Maykot
Design team
Courtney Carman, Amelia Fraser, Sam Francavilla, Gemma Co, Bjorn Krieg
Vision
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Vision *
Research revealed that sellers were often unsure about where and how to request property appraisals. Additionally, agents struggled to capture, track, and respond to potential sellers, and agency leaders lacked visibility into team performance and market opportunities.
We set out to overhaul this journey in a holistic way, including both public-facing experiences and the underlying agent toolset, ensuring sellers and agents connected quickly and seamlessly.
Our vision was to create an ecosystem where every potential seller feels confident and guided when reaching out, and every customer of Ignite, our agent and agency platform, can manage, track, and leverage seller leads as a catalyst for business growth.
We aimed for transparency, efficiency, and data-backed decision-making, transforming passive interest into actionable relationships.
The approach
We addressed seller confusion and agency lead loss by engaging directly with sellers, agents, and agency leaders. Over the course of the transformation, our teams worked together to design interconnected experiences that deliver genuine value for property sellers and dramatically increased seller leads for our customers.
➸ Discovery
Mapped end-to-end seller and customer journeys
Researched pain points and specific experience gaps with input from sellers, agents, and business stakeholders
➸ Design
Co-created solutions across teams and user groups
Tested and refined concepts through design reviews and stakeholder alignment
➸ Delivery
Launched the new seller appraisal request flow, Ignite Leads Inbox, improved Agent and Agency profiles, and the Leads Insights dashboard
Over 18 months, we built a connected ecosystem in Ignite, unlocking new value for premium customers and enabling seller leads to scale from 15K to 80K per year
My role
As the Product Design Manager, I partner with senior leaders and led cross-functional teams in research, ideation, and iterative design, focusing on seller pain points and agent workflows.
I worked closely with engineering, product, and design leads to design multiple products and deliver on our strategic vision.
The product
Redesign of the appraisal request for property sellers
We rebuilt the appraisal request journey from the ground up, introducing clear prompts and simple forms key entry points from our app and website.
Sellers now instantly see how to request an appraisal, reducing friction and uncertainty. This direct entry point increased engagement and conversion from property enquiry to agent contact.
Creation of Leads Inbox in Ignite
Our customers – Agents and Agencies across Australia – gained access to the Leads Inbox within Ignite, a dedicated space that aggregates seller leads in real time.
Agents can review, prioritise, and act on high-intent seller leads, dramatically improving responsiveness and capture rate compared to email or manual tracking.
We also built a dedicated API to integrate our platform with customers CRMs to ensure a seamless and consolidated workflow.
Redesign of agent and agency profile pages with enhanced appraisal request entry points
By surfacing clear appraisal request options on agent and agency profile pages across REA’s platforms, we made it effortless for sellers to initiate contact with the right professional.
These enhancements drove increased brand visibility for agents and ensured sellers’ requests reached the intended recipients quickly.
Creation of the new Leads Insights page in Ignite
Agency leaders—principals and managing directors—received a powerful new dashboard within Ignite, providing exclusive data and analytics about lead volumes, conversion rates, and team performance.
These insights empowered leaders to track business growth, identify new opportunities, and tailor coaching and marketing strategies.
Outcomes
80K+
Seller leads sent from sellers to sales agents via our platforms
+52%
Growth on total of seller leads estimated for FY24
2.1M
Visits to the Agency Marketplace in March 2024
