Markel Homes came to me with a WordPress site built using the Casa theme which had many features they wanted in terms of details about properties for sale but was quite limited in functionality. The site was difficult to navigate and dated looking.
Working with their in-house designer and staff members, we collaborated on a design for a new site using the WP Jump Start theme and the following features:
- Custom Post Types with Advanced Custom Fields relational fields tie together Neighborhoods with Properties in those neighborhoods.
- Custom Taxonomies allow cross-population of different states of construction and home types across the site and auto generated archive pages of each.
- FacetWP plugin for a dynamic Property Search page.
- MapPress Pro to populate Google maps on each property page.
- Image Map Pro plugin used for the interactive image map on the home page and Communities page.
- Gravity Forms to email sales representatives automatically based on sales reps associated with each property.
- Bootstrap modal windows for neighborhood maps, contact forms, and more.
- Custom PHP templates using WP Query to tie all these pieces together across different post types and templates.
- Masonry grid for blog posts with full-width featured images.
As a result of the organization of Neighborhoods and Properties, their Google Analytics shows a 300% increase in page views as it is much easier for visitors to navigate and look at all available properties easily. The site is also now mobile friendly and easy to maintain as all the content works dynamically across the site.
