As Senior Product Designer at Side, I enhanced website customization options for real estate partners. The project improved flexibility in the WordPress template system, enabling unique brand experiences through expanded editing capabilities. By introducing advanced color configuration, typography controls, and layout options, we empowered both our implementation team and agent partners to create professional, distinctive websites that truly represented their brands.
Details
Enhanced Customization Options
Identified design gaps in the WordPress template system and introduced improvements to color configurators, typography controls, and layout configurations. These enhancements allowed for greater consideration of the overall art direction, giving our implementation team and partners the ability to create truly unique web experiences that matched their specific brand identities.
WordPress Block Implementation
Researched and enabled core WordPress blocks (headings, paragraphs, buttons, columns, groups) after extensive design reviews and QA with the Engineering team. This provided significantly more layout and content flexibility, allowing the implementation team to create more sophisticated designs and reducing the need for custom development.
Site-wide Customization System
Addressed partner complaints about template uniformity by developing comprehensive site-wide customization options. Created customization controls for headers (background, text color, fonts), footers (colors, fonts, multi-row layouts), typography systems (multiple fonts, size controls, spacing), and block-level spacing adjustments.
Accessibility Integration
Built specialized tools to ensure WCAG 2.1 compliance across all partner websites. Developed a color contrast checker that displayed text and UI elements over different background colors, helping the partner branding team select accessible color palettes while setting clear expectations about web compatibility.
Enhanced website customizer with expanded typography and color options
Custom-built accessibility tool for verifying color contrast compliance
Partner websites showcasing unique branding and customization
Future Roadmap
Updated Property Detail Pages
As partner needs expanded into new markets, more flexible property pages were planned to handle not just single property data, but leases, rentals, multifamily properties, and more diverse listing types.
Increased Focus on Lead Generation
The roadmap included working on lead generation capabilities, enabling partners to include custom pop-ups, contact walls, chat windows, and enhanced data collection methods throughout their sites.
Migration from Custom Components
A comprehensive migration plan was developed to shift from custom-built components to default WordPress blocks, supporting the implementation team's need to create more advanced design layouts quickly and efficiently.