FF3, Zoom In, New Details Layout, Chicago
Last week we released a new version of Redfin.com.
What happened behind the scenes?
FF3
Without a question we dropped the ball on Firefox 3 support. Since we use a variety of components to build Redfin, some of which don’t support certain browsers, we warn if you’re not using a supported browser. FF3 was one of those browsers. And for good reason too, there were bugs with our site in FF3. Now we fixed those bugs and were planning to release before FF3 released but because of unforeseen issues around complying with MLS regulations in Chicago the release got delayed; delayed past when FF3 was released. We soon started receiving numerous emails every day. Some quite rude. Some asking us to fire out developers for ignoring FF3. We should have hot fixed in FF3 support but since we were just days away from releasing we didn’t. Now that we’ve released we’ve found a bug with FF3 and Virtual Earth. Unfortunately the bug appears to be in FF3. We’re working with Virtual Earth to find a work around but haven’t found one yet.
Zoom In
We were late to the game adding Street View but we now have Google Street View alongside Virtual Earth’s Bird’s Eye imagery and Virtual Earth’s Hybrid and Road views. That’s seven additional views for each listing.
We also not just added Street View to the details page but we added a link to all that imagery from the map page making it easy to get a quick look at the listing in question. In fact we wanted to name the feature “Quick Look” but there wasn’t enough room to the right of the photo nav arrows.
Like other sites we made Street View the default view when we have it. Unfortunately I think we made the wrong decision and may reverse that :).
On an imagery related note, we upgraded to Virtual Earth 6.1, this means that the Bird’s Eye view now shows the street names so you don’t get as disoriented switching between the various views.
Details Page
We also updated the right hand side of the details page. The reason we did so was we suspected that some users weren’t seeing it and so we’re trying a visual presentation where it looks more “attached” to the main content on that page. We also are trying to make folks aware that we’re a brokerage by adding pictures of customers and targeted inline messages. Again we received some good feedback on this and will consider making the messages dismissible. If you know we’re a brokerage no sense bombarding you with that message over and over again!
We were also able to improve details page performance this release so it loads faster. However, we still need to speed up the display of the forums and blog headlines.
On a related note we also changed our header to Search | How Redfin Works from Search | Buying | Selling (originally it was Find | Buy | Sell) to encourage more people to learn what Redfin is all about.
MLS Foreclosures
In our pursuit to add more and more search options we added one to find MLS listings that have some indication that they are a foreclosure. Typically we identify them as such by finding words like “foreclosure” or “bank owned” in the marketing remarks.
We had long debates about the UI for this feature. Should we combine MLS foreclosures and bank-listed foreclosures into one option? Should MLS foreclosures have the same icon color as bank-listed foreclosures? And on and one. In the end we went with the simplest implementation and broke it out to be its own checkbox (except in the Bay Area where its a drop down to comply with MLS regulations.)
Chicago
And most importantly we expanded to Chicago!