Streeteasy: The New Yorker’s Real Estate Platform

The challenge:

StreetEasy has had a long history being NYC’s top real estate platform—with origins back in the old “go to a realtor’s office and look at a binder” days. As the lead copywriter and UX content strategist on the team, I set my sites on two things: 1.)ensuring the app, the website, and all the go-to-market materials were consistent, and 2.)that they brought authentic New York attitude to the table.

In my time at StreetEasy I ran a comb through nearly a hundred web pages and app sections to bring some dated UX writing to the modern day. I also brought some friendliness and irreverence that matched StreetEasy’s sassy out-of-home ad campaigns. This led to increased engagement, strong, net-positive app downloads, and some pretty fun projects!

THE TWO-SIDED MARKETPLACE

One of the key challenges I identified when I joined StreetEasy is that the brand (and the strategy, and the content design) had to work for both apartment hunters and the real estate agents that sold/rented those apartments. While the B2B and B2C audiences required two different tones, there needed to be synergy. Here’s how I thought about it:

Hey, I’m Apartment-hunting here!

StreetEasy’s personality was well-established having run a number of years’ worth of glossy, clever subway ads. New Yorkers also knew the app well because it was keenly optimized to provide targeted searches in your email. My role? To bring some of that personality into the app, and ensure that users wanted to activate all the features that made it so great. So we sought UXR direction, wireframed, and developed an extensive, personality-driven onboarding that looked a little something like this:

Meeting consumers where they lIve

It was important to deliver on the StreetEasy promise across all the touchpoints—web experiences, social media ads, app reminders, and more. Here are just a few ways that I helped to deliver the StreetEasy tone and educate homebuyers and renters on the complicated NYC market.

Keeping it realtor

It wasn’t all fun and mobile apps, though. A huge part of the New York real estate market (like any real estate market, honestly) was making sure that realtors were comfortable using the StreetEasy listing tools. As the copy and UX lead for the business, I developed relationships with some of the biggest firms in the city and helped to craft digital experiences the adequately enticed these agents and made listing the apartments they repped easy and seamless. Below you’ll see the agent version of the onboarding above (sorry for the fuzzy screenshots) and a web-based portal guiding agents toward the right tools and solutions for them.

Agent App onboarding

AGENT SOLUTIONS EXPERIENCE AND HOW-TO PDF

MY ROLE AT STREETEASY

  • UX content design lead

  • Copywriting and brand voice development

  • User research

  • Product manager and stakeholder partnership

  • Interviews with real estate agents

  • App modernization and accessibility