Melina Cruickshank, REA Group Chief Audience and Product Officer
While there is no shortage of ideas at REA, we prioritise product innovations that aim to deliver fundamental shifts in performance.
We care deeply about what our users think and the impact our products have on brand trust and loyalty. Well-functioning innovation systems need information, input, and significant integration of effort from a
diverse array of contributors.
We have the patience to iterate to get things right. An example of this is our work on consumer audience segmentation, personalisation and membership. This ten-year focus has been transformational for our consumer platforms and lifecycle marketing.
Our consumer platforms have gone through many iterations throughout the years, but this will be one of our biggest evolutions yet: a new and dynamic interface built for much more immersive experiences and vertical scrolling.
With more properties for sale than any other platform, over 2.4 billion image interactions are generated from realestate.com.au’s listing pages each month.
It has allowed us to turbocharge new features such as our realEstimate property valuation which, despite being only two years old, has over 4 million Australians tracking the valuation of a property via realestate.com.au.
With that in mind, we’re excited to this week announce the launch of the next generation of our property listing experience, with images at the core of the first round of enhancements.
From late September, consumers and customers will see significant updates to the experience with larger image sizes, a new image tour experience, an AI-led image data feature, plus stronger branding presence for agents.
The next generation of property seekers want imagery and video at the core of their
property experience. They expect much more immersive experiences, and over the next 12 months we will unlock many new dynamic features.
The first iteration of the realestate.com.au ‘NextGen listing’ launched on 26 September.
Read today’s announcement from the REA Group:
Australia’s number one address in property, realestate.com.au, will this week launch the next generation of its property listing experience, with images at the core of the first round of enhancements.
With more properties for sale than anywhere else, over 2.4 billion image interactions are generated from realestate.com.au’s listing pages each month. From late September, consumers and customers will see significant updates to the experience with larger image sizes, a new image tour experience, an AI-led image data feature, along with stronger brand presence for agents.
The enhancements are part of a 12-month rollout of realestate.com.au’s ‘NextGen listings’. The launch comes as realestate.com.au reached another record audience in August with more than 12 million Australians visiting the platform.
Immersive imagery is core to the new experience. The first of many new feature drops includes larger and higher resolution listing images, providing consumers with a more detailed view of a property at first glance. Enhancing the property discovery experience, the new ‘Tour the Property’ feature is realestate.com.au’s most immersive media experience to date.
Exclusively available to Premiere+ customers, user testing suggests ‘Tour the Property’ will significantly increase the number of people who view every image on a listing. The drop also includes an AI-enhanced image viewer experience which leverages machine learning models to auto-detect specific features in the full screen media view, helping to highlight special property features.
REA Group Chief Product and Audience Officer, Melina Cruickshank, said more than ever consumers expect brands to value their time and data and help solve pain points. NextGen listings is set to meet rising consumer expectations, while driving fresh value for agents.
“Accelerating our membership base through personalisation is at the heart of our consumer audience strategy. Our members are 4.8 x more like to submit enquiries that result in high intent leads for our customers, and our homepage delivers over 7.5 million personalised recommendations to consumers every day, helping them pick up where they left off on their property journey,” Melina said.
“Our first NextGen listing release sees a larger dynamic hero image, a Tour the Property feature, an AI-enhanced image viewer with higher resolution photography and the addition of new ML models into our core experience.
“realestate.com.au listings will undergo a big evolution over the next year. The changes launching this week are just the beginning. The realestate.com.au NextGen listing of the future has been designed to inspire much deeper discovery and connection and we’re excited to begin rolling out the next era of digital property experiences.”
