I built creedefitch.com when I moved to Austin and started my real estate career 10 years ago. By focusing on the user, I built a site with 650,000 visitors and 1.1 million views, a newsletter of 1,200 subscribers and drove 95+ home purchases worth more than $45 million. It helped me rank at the top of Google searches for “Austin mid-century modern realtor" and led to me writing for Dwell and a print feature of my own home in Dwell. Here's how I did it.
SOLO DESIGNER, STRATEGY, CONTENT, UX, UI, BUILD
SELF-INITIATED BRAND PLATFORM, UX/UI MARKETING SITE
Let’s be honest, real estate websites are pretty horrible. They have gotten better, but ten years ago they were a mess. Most were not great to look at, weren't responsive, and relied heavily on forced registration, which made them unhelpful at best and downright annoying at worst for potential clients.
A TYPICAL REALTOR WEBSITE 10 YEARS AGO
MY COMPETITION
The solution was what I now know as human-centered design. I built an audience by giving potential homebuyers what they wanted: curated content, updated daily, that helped them make sense of the market and trust my taste. I shared my favorite homes for sale, highlighted local businesses, documented local mid-century modern architects, and presented everything in a clean, usable, responsive web experience.
DESIGN-FORWARD DESIGN
RESPONSIVE CONTENT
SHARING MY STORY HELPED BUILD TRUST
TREATING CLIENTS LIKE FRIENDS, NOT LEADS
Long before I knew what UX or product design was, I approached CreedeFitch.com the same way I approach design today. I started with the audience, built a content system with clear goals, designed workflows that could scale, organized information to make discovery easy, wrote honestly to build trust, and refined the site based on real user behavior and conversations with clients. Here’s the process that shaped it.
When I started the website, I had plenty of ideas about what might work. Not all of them did. My attempt to sell mid-century furniture bombed. Photographing and interviewing local businesses took a lot of time and did not move the needle on traffic.
What people did want were posts about building a home, so I documented my own construction project. Content about mid-century modern architects was also a hit, so I doubled down on it. Traffic grew, I refined how I converted visitors into clients, and the business took off.
MY FAILED MID-CENTURY MODERN FURNITURE STORE
AN EARLY STORY ABOUT A LOCAL BUSINESS
CONTENT READERS WANTED
"THE REAL COST OF BUILDING A POOL" WAS A BIG HIT
