The client requested a complete rebranding of Track.be. The website had a simple, cheap layout. Studio Pixili had to transform this into Stylish real estate brand; a company that would look elegant, luxurious and reliable, yet feel approachable.
Track.be is a unique real estate company that focuses on real estate investing, not housing. The site has a selective range of properties that meet their strict criteria for property investment.
In addition to optimising the site for conversion, the client also wanted a customised dashboard to make following up property leads as fast and effective as possible.
Stylish real estate branding
Color
Colour plays a major role in defining a luxurious and elegant atmosphere.
Accessible luxury also came into play at Wauters and Partners. Gold was the most obvious colour for both companies. This colour is used because the link between gold and luxury is made without thinking. At Track.be, we used it as an accent colour because the site had to remain accessible.
Our main colour was less obvious. We chose the colour blue, which is usually seen as a “cheap” colour. Blue is widely used by budget companies like Action, Aldi and Ikea. That was not our intention, but saying blue is cheap is too simplistic.
Dark Royal Blue
#021945
Burlywood
#deb990
Colour, like many things, is very contextual and culturally bound. Dark blue, for example, is a kind of blue that feels royal, partly because of our dealings with authorities, as in the Belgian police uniform and in British, French and American flags. Blue is also prominent in shipping.
Textures
Besides colour, using the right textures was an important part of creating a sense of elegance. Like colours, textures have associations;
marble, for example, is expensive but not unattainable. Wood is an accessible material and is often considered cheap, but the right type of wood can be expensive. The grain of maple wood, the wood species we chose, is smooth and almost marble-like.
Business card
What was not mentioned under the heading ’textures’ is that a third, dark blue texture was also chosen in the beginning. This was eventually removed from the overall website because it did not match the textures of the marble and wood.
Now that they wanted a business card, it worked best by combining all three textures.
From a distance, this looked like a starry sky. The client loved it.
The business card is practical by 3D printing the company logo and putting it in a box of crystals. A photograph was taken of the logo, which was later given to the client as a gift.
Logo
A new company logo also needed to be designed. After the first conversation, it was already clear that the client wanted a simpler, more stylish logo without images. Preferably, the name would be printed in a nice font.
We started looking for fonts and after testing many options, we chose this font. During the search process, we also found a font for the titles and headings.
Photography
Studio Pixili also created original visuals for this client. After all, good visual communication is one of our commandments.
So for Track, we created a series of photo, explaining/visually showing very specific concepts.
These can then be used in their marketing material such as the real estate e-book that Track. But also the in the interface om, is an overview of our favourite images we used in this project.
This below shows e.g. the stability vs income of the investments on offer. Using towers of money.
The least stable tower has the most 2 euro pieces but also a lot of 50 cent and 1 euro pieces. Most stable is almost completely straight but is 100% made up of 50 cent pieces, show that completely risk-free investment often bring in a lot less. Limited-risk investment is similar, but built entirely of 1 euro pieces, and the tower is slightly less stable.
This image was created under the slogan “buiding wealth”. So we took only bricks and painted them gold, so that they look like gold bar that we all know. Variants of this image (with more and less bricks) were also used in the interface to show budget level. A brick was e.g. -100,000 and the image below +300,000
Development
Besides designing the stylish real estate brand, Studio Pixili developed this website.
The entire site was developed using Vue.js, which loads only the latest data instead of the entire page. The website was also pre-rendered based on Wender 1, a more complex but modern way of creating websites.
As a result, we have added unique features, such as: An invisible infinite scroll.
A filtering system that not only looks good, but also instantly filters and displays data not yet loaded on the page
Calculators that directly display gross and net returns
A customised backend where it is easy to sort real estate leads
Disclaimer
Some screenshots have been censored to protect privacy of clients and its customers. Track.be was sold in 2020. This report is a record of our work for track.be at the time. The website has been sold and has new owners with its own development team. We no longer work for track.be, and the current website is not our work.
