Windows PhoneCustomer Solution Case Study

Real Estate Site Builds Rich Mobile App in 10 Weeks, Triples Lead Conversion Rate

OverviewCountry or Region: United StatesIndustry: Professional services—Real estate

Customer ProfileMove provides real estate–related information on the web and has a portfolio of sites that includes REALTOR.com, Move.com, Moving.com, and SeniorHousingNet.com. The company has 1,100 employees and is based in Campbell, California.

Business SituationTo connect with as many home shoppers as possible, Move is making the data provided on its REALTOR.com website accessible on all major mobile phone platforms.

SolutionThe company worked with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Neudesic to deliver a mobile app for Windows Phone 7 in only 10 weeks.

Benefits A unique and compelling user

experience Rapid time-to-market New users and higher lead conversion

rate

“The conversion rate for our Windows Phone 7 app—that is, the ratio of users to sales leads generated—is twice that of our Android app and three times that of our iPhone app.”

Dave Story, Chief Technology Officer, Move

To make the data on its REALTOR.com website accessible to homebuyers, Move is committed to delivering mobile apps for all major phone platforms. With assistance from Neudesic, Move built an app for Windows Phone 7 in only 10 weeks—a fraction of the time and effort required for its first iPhone and Android apps. In building the Windows Phone 7 app, three developers took advantage of unique Windows Phone 7 features, such as panoramas, to streamline navigation and make information more immediately and easily accessible. These capabilities have contributed to a lead conversion rate that is twice that of the company’s Android app and three times that of its iPhone app.

SituationMove is a leading provider of real estate–related information on the web, with a network of sites that includes REALTOR.com, Move.com, Moving.com, and SeniorHousingNet.com. REALTOR.com, the company’s flagship, is the official site of the National Association of Realtors and the leading real estate site measured by web traffic, according to Media Metrix. The company has deep local and national advertising relationships with more than 400,000 real estate professionals and offers them a variety of advertising solutions that include subscription, lead generation, text-link and rich media, directory products, price quote tools, and sponsorships. As a consumer real estate site, the REALTOR.com business model is based on maximizing website traffic and converting it to sales leads for realtors. One reason for the site’s popularity—in December 2010 alone, it received more than 38 million visits and 360 million page views—is the excellence of the data provided. Move displays listings from more than 900 Multiple Listing Services across the United States and updates 75 percent of all listing data every 15 minutes to ensure website visitors will always have access to fresh and comprehensive information.

For Dave Story, who joined Move as Chief Technology Officer in 2009, maintaining data excellence is only half the battle. As the person responsible for all technology at the company, from the web properties and data centers, to the telephony systems, he is responsible for making the company’s wealth of information accessible and useful to users. “We spend millions of dollars per year just getting our data ready to present,”

Story says. “Beyond that, we need to expose the data in ways that allow consumers to access it when and where they want so we can engage with those consumers and generate leads for our realtors.”

Prior to 2010, mobile applications were noticeably absent from the tool set that consumers could use to access data on REALTOR.com. “Perhaps no group is more mobile than real estate agents, and the same holds true for real estate buyers,” Story says. “When people see a For Sale sign while driving around, they want to be able to grab their phones and easily view the interior pictures and other data for that property. Usage patterns for real estate data are becoming increasingly mobile, and it’s happening faster than with most other industries.”

Toward that end, Move is committed to delivering mobile apps for all major phone platforms—and it is committed to doing so quickly and frequently. However, the company’s first foray into mobile apps was neither fast nor painless. “Delivering an initial version of our iPhone app required five to six developers working for eight to nine months,” Story says. “We’re primarily a Microsoft .NET shop, so developing for the iPhone was a brute-force effort with a significant learning curve. We focused on basic features for our first release and continue to refine the app. We’ve had four to five developers on our iPhone app since its initial January 2010 release.”

Development of an Android app began in July 2010, and work on a Windows Phone 7 app began in August 2010. “We need to support all major phone platforms,” Story

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“We saw three reasons to build an app for Windows Phone 7: a unique and fresh user interface, a broad range of carrier partners, and the fact that Microsoft is fully committed to delivering a leading mobile phone.”

Dave Story, Chief Technology Officer, Move

says. “When Microsoft started describing Windows Phone 7 in the months leading up to its release, we realized the richness of its user interface provided us with the chance to build an app that best showcases the breadth, depth, and accuracy of the information we have to offer.”

SolutionMove developed its REALTOR.com app for Windows Phone 7 in only 10 weeks—in time to participate in the phone’s United States launch in November 2010. “We saw three reasons to build an app for Windows Phone 7: a unique and fresh user interface, a broad range of carrier partners, and the fact that Microsoft is fully committed to delivering a leading mobile phone,” Story says. “Given all of the indicators that pointed to Windows Phone 7 being a huge success, it made sense to get onboard with an app of our own as soon as possible.”

An Information-Rich Solution

Windows Phone users can find the app in the phone’s Marketplace Hub, which provides a central place for discovering new apps, music, and games. Before installing, users can view a description that includes ratings, reviews, and screenshots. After they install the app, it appears in the phone’s Apps list and can be pinned to the phone’s Start screen for immediate access. Upon starting the app for the first time, the user is asked whether the app should be allowed to access the user’s current location, as determined by the phone’s built-in Wi-Fi and GPS features.

The app’s home screen is a Windows Phone 7 panorama with five panes (Figure 1). On the default pane, users can select from nearby homes for sale, open homes, and rentals, or start a new search, with similarly detailed granularity in specifying search criteria as on the REALTOR.com website. Flicking left or right transitions to the panorama’s other panes and provides access to saved listings, recently viewed

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Figure 1. Move used panoramas in its REALTOR.com app to make a wealth of functionality and data more readily accessible.

listings, saved searches, recent searches, and a feedback form.

To save listings and searches, users must sign in using an account created through either the mobile app or the REALTOR.com website. When the user is signed in, saved listings and searches generated on the phone are available on the website, and vice versa. This can prove convenient when using a laptop for some Sunday morning research before jumping in the car to go take a closer look at available properties.

Doing a search yields a list of results, which users can scroll by flicking up and down. Buttons at the bottom of the screen make it easy to sort by various criteria, refine search results, or switch between a list view and a map view generated by Bing Maps. On the map view, users can pan with a finger, or zoom by pinching or stretching with two fingers. Buttons at the bottom of the map enable toggling between street map and satellite view, switching back to a tabular list, and activating the app’s innovative Area Scout feature. Area Scout makes it easy to drive around and explore homes for sale in a neighborhood, with both the user’s current location, and nearby homes for sale, continually updated on the map as the user drives around.

Individual listing data is displayed using another panorama. The default pane shows the primary picture for a property, along with its price, address, building and lot sizes, listing date, multiple listing ID, and other useful data. The app also provides options for viewing the property on a map, viewing driving directions from the user’s current location, saving the listing, or sending a link to the listing in an email

message. A flick left provides contact information for the listing agent, and another flick left provides a pane showing thumbnails of all photos for the property. Tapping a photo displays a single, larger image.

Yet another flick left displays the details pane. This shows a comprehensive list of property features, such as the type of siding on the home, and whether it has a walk-in closet. A final flick left displays the notes and ratings pane, where signed-in users can rate a listing from one to five stars or add their own text notes. The app even displays a list of common property features and descriptors for insertion into a note. For example, simply “dining room,” “needs paint,” and then “Add Phrase” inserts this full sentence into the note: “The dining room needs paint.” Streamlined Development ProcessAlthough the app itself is impressive, equally impressive is how quickly Move delivered it. The project began in mid-2010, after initial conversations between Move and Microsoft confirmed a desire to have an app ready for the initial United States release of Windows Phone 7. To ensure that the company could hit its aggressive deadline, Move turned to Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Neudesic to assist with the app’s development.

Development began in the second half of August. By the end of October, the app was completed and submitted to Microsoft. During those nine to 10 weeks, one designer and three developers built the app using the Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate development system. “We had an initial build after a week and daily builds

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after that,” Story says. “I’m really impressed with how fast everything came together and how much we were able to do in such a short amount of time.”

Move began working on version 1.1 of the app in November 2010, delivering it just three weeks later. “Although we delivered a rich initial version, it didn’t include everything we wanted,” Story says. “With version 1.1 of our Windows Phone 7 app, we’re getting very close to feature-parity with our iPhone app. That’s pretty impressive considering that we did so with only 20 percent of the total effort and resources that we’ve put into the iPhone app over the prior year.”BenefitsWith its new app for Windows Phone 7, Move is making it easier than ever for home buyers to access the company’s wealth of real estate information when they’re out and about. The company also was able to deliver the app quickly and cost-effectively, with only minimal time and effort required to make REALTOR.com’s top-quality data accessible to a broader potential user base. Story says the new app is the company’s latest step in a long history of adopting Microsoft technology to improve how it engages with consumers. “We operate one of the world’s largest websites on Microsoft technology and have adopted every Microsoft platform evolution since we launched REALTOR.com in 1996.”

Adds Steve Saxon, General Manager for Mobility Product Solutions at Neudesic, “What we learned in developing the REALTOR.com application was that Windows Phone 7 is ready for prime time.

This application is probably one of the most complicated applications in the Marketplace today, and it is a testament to the power of the Windows Phone 7 platform and to Visual Studio 2010 development tools that we were able to complete this application so quickly.”

Unique and Compelling User ExperienceMove took advantage of unique Windows Phone 7 features, such as panoramas, to present its high-quality data in a way that streamlines navigation and makes information more readily accessible than with other platforms. “Windows Phone 7 panoramas enable us to use more of the screen to display data because we don’t need as many navigation controls,” says Mike Leavy, Engineering Manager for Mobile Development at Move. “Users can simply flick left or right to view all the different information we provide for a listing, which is a lot faster and easier than going in and out of different screens, or searching for a ‘back to listing’ navigation control.”

Adds Story, “With Windows Phone 7, we’re able to use existing developer skills to present what consumers really care about—the best real estate data available, in the best possible way. People really love the app and how the data it provides is so well-presented.”

Rapid Time-to-MarketWith assistance from Neudesic, Move developed the initial version of its app for Windows Phone 7 quickly and cost-effectively—in only 10 weeks, with three developers and one designer. “Our first iPhone app required 50 developer-months of effort, whereas our first app for Windows

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“With Windows Phone 7, we’re able to use existing developer skills to present what consumers really care about—the best real estate data available, in the best possible way. People really love the app and how the data it provides is so well-presented.”

Dave Story, Chief Technology Officer, Move

Phone 7 required less than 8 developer-months,” says Leavy. “Our Windows Phone 7 app also came together much faster than our first Android app, which took about 20 developer-months.”

Story attributes such high productivity to developers’ ability to use Visual Studio 2010 and the Visual C# programming language, along with the ability to reuse web services that were developed to support the company’s previous mobile apps. “We’re almost exclusively a .NET shop, from our website to our database servers,” he says. “Being able to develop for Windows Phone 7 using existing developer skills and tools was a huge benefit.”

Leavy agrees with Story’s view of the speedy development. “With the iPhone, we spent a lot of time on memory management, threading issues, and so on—things that we didn’t need to worry about with Windows Phone 7,” he says. “The Objective-C programming language for iPhone development isn’t nearly as powerful as Visual C#, and the tools for iPhone development are not as advanced as Visual Studio. Tools for Android development are even more primitive, and the programming environment is less consistent and well-documented than what Microsoft offers.” New Users and Higher Lead Conversion RateBy developing an app for Windows Phone, Move is increasing its potential user base—

and the value it provides to realtors. “It’s imperative that we deliver our data to mobile users in the best way possible, and that we support all major phone platforms,” Story says. “Our daily active user count on Windows Phone 7 continues to grow, and we’ve been able to show leadership by being the first to market with a real estate app for the latest Microsoft phone.”

The company’s efforts to support Windows Phone 7 also yielded an additional, unexpected benefit. “The conversion rate for our Windows Phone 7 app—that is, the ratio of users to sales leads generated—is twice that of our Android app and three times that of our iPhone app,” Story says. “Number of users and lead conversion rates are two key success metrics, and our new Windows Phone 7 app has led to increases in both. It’s just one more way that we’re taking advantage of our strong partnership with Microsoft to drive business success.”

Windows PhoneWindows Phone 7 is a different kind of phone, designed to bring together what you care about most—easier and faster. It delivers captivating phone experiences across work and play, enables productivity without compromise through Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Office Mobile, and provides a platform for compelling applications that can work across the phone, web, and PC.

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about Neudesic, visit the website at:www.neudesic.com

For more information about Move, visit the website at: www.realtor.com

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published April 2011

Software and Services Windows Phone 7 Microsoft Visual Studio− Microsoft Visual Studio 2010

Ultimate

Partners Neudesic

For more information on Windows Phone 7, go to: www.windowsphone.com

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