Rebuilding thte flagship research portal for CBRE to revitalising their client facing business

The mission

CBRE were keen to breathe new life into a suite of ageing client facing business products which allow users to explore the global Retail and Office property sectors.

The brief was to create a new website design experience that replaced a 5 year old digital product and companion brochure and allowed a user to interact with their incredibly rich data sets in new and exciting ways.

Building a new foundation

We worked in partnership with the research teams in London and the Global marketing team in New York and LA to build out a scope for the new website that was in line with the high expectations for the new project.

We began by drilling into the pain points that the existing product generated for the business. This gave us a firm understanding of the gap that needed to be closed and allowed us to create an initial set of ideas to drive the direction of the new website.

Designing for success

Once a detailed functional specification had been created, we were able to create wire frames for the core user journeys allowing us to explore the new ideas with confidence.

Understanding how the vast data sets could potentially be used and interacted with by new and existing users was core to this process.

Each wire frame was then skinned with a new CBRE design, which had to conform to the brands global guidelines.

Technical delivery

The business had an internal requirement that the new website platform was built using the Sitefinity website CMS, which we had plenty of experience in using, so this didn’t cause us any issues.

Several custom modules were created by our expert team of website developers to fulfil specific needs within the project, particularly around the way the internal data was handled.

Ribbon-cutting ceremony

The final website launched in the summer to a big fanfare and became a primary feature at industry and brand sponsored events, as well as generating increased awareness with property professionals.