Dublin Arial Photo

Lisney

The Brief

Lisney Outlook 2023

For nearly 90 years, Lisney has been the biggest name in Irish property, but their latest building project has been a brand new best-in-class website, designed and developed by Matrix Internet, with ongoing development and collaboration. From foundation to sign-off, it’s one of the largest-scale projects in our 23-year history.

Matrix created a dynamic site with a strong foundation and flexibility to evolve. Since its initial launch in 2021, the site has gone through several redesigns and a company rebranding, and Matrix has implemented these changes.

As always, we started the partnership with a detailed user experience phase, to discover how to engage fully with customers, rather than simply focusing on the directors’ wish list. Lisney’s success and reputation is built on meaningful relationships with clients, and we wanted the website to strengthen this trust and connection.

Due to the scope of the project, we held two UX workshops at Lisney’s St Stephen’s Green offices, with over 20 senior Lisney team members and eight of the Matrix team focusing on goals for branding, benchmarking and UX functionality. Lisney’s Managing Director was heavily involved in this planning stage, and each decision was underlined by his powerful vision for the brand. We built up a strong professional rapport with Lisney in these initial sessions, which strengthened our working relationship through months of hands-on remote collaboration during the ongoing Covid-19 restrictions.

From the first meeting, we applied our trusted Design Thinking methodology for a complex platform with over 200 pages, to serve Lisney’s offices in Dublin, Cork and Belfast. We involved key stakeholders at all stages, from a choice between distinct design concepts, to the creation of wireframes and an updated content strategy, including writing and editing content for 80+ landing pages and 25+ neighbourhood guides.

Lisney
Soterby's Mobile Website

The new site has maintained and modernised Lisney’s impactful red and white branding, and incorporated an updated corporate palette when Lisney acquired the exclusive Irish franchise for the world famous Sotheby’s International Realty. The site includes hundreds of newly commissioned professional photos of Lisney offices, staff, and all the key neighbourhoods they serve. One key aspect of the new Lisney website is the personalised experience for the different types of customer. The Matrix UX team carefully unpicked the emotional and commercial mindset of typical users who are buying, selling or valuing property.

Lisney homepage

We focused on a world-class UX at all levels on the site, from a streamlined user flow, to essential property guides and FAQs for tenants, buyers, sellers and landlords, and a comprehensive new portal for Lisney’s decades of respected industry research.
And UX excellence doesn’t just mean a rewarding navigation for the end user; we held training sessions for over 50 staff, so they can take control and update content and pages on a site that will serve them for years.

We’re proud of Lisney’s new online home — it’s a site that draws on their proud heritage, while appealing to tech-savvy clients with cutting-edge expectations.

 

Phase 2: A new chapter with Lisney Sotheby’s International Realty

A year after Lisney’s relaunch and rebranding, they called on Matrix to lead another exciting chapter in their history. Lisney has acquired the exclusive Irish franchise for the world famous Sotheby’s International Realty, combining the heritage of two iconic brands for Lisney’s residential operations in Ireland. Lisney’s residential portfolio is now open to a huge global network of international buyers and expats, and it needed a distinct new look to launch in these markets.

Lisney website

Lisney wanted to maintain their iconic red and white branding for the commercial arm of their business, while launching Lisney Sotheby’s International Realty with a bold blue visual identity. Their main goal was preserving Lisney’s decades of tradition, while promoting the high-profile franchise acquisition.

Thanks to our approach of creating dynamic platforms that are easy to update, we were able to incorporate Lisney Sotheby’s International Realty’s services within the Lisney site. Our development team created the newly branded pages and functionality, while preserving the UX and visual integrity of the existing site. And while Lisney is now partnering with Sotheby’s, they are retaining the content we crafted during the original project, with minor edits to reflect their new status.

 

Phase 3: Improving a dynamic platform with further design and CMS updates

In 2023, Lisney partnered with Matrix again, to help implement new functionality and designs for another update to the platform. We collaborated with design agency Begley Hutton to oversee this next phase of their digital journey, based on evolving user and client needs.

Lisney’s initial design and development work was a strong foundation for this phase, which involved improving UX site-wide, including updating all visuals to align with the new branding.

Lisney Commercial Website

Matrix also collaborated closely with the Begley Hutton team to apply design updates throughout the site, including a new design for the lisney.com homepage, and key new designs for several key pages on the site’s commercial real estate platform. The improvement project also involved implementing a full new redesign of Lisney’s Belfast website.

This new chapter highlights how a Matrix website isn’t ‘finished’ when it goes live. It’s a best-in-class platform that can be updated when our clients’ needs change. In this case, Lisney needed an extension to their online home, and they called the Matrix builders in!

Website

Key Features

  • 01
    Powerful Content Management System, with staff trained in updating the site;
  • 02
    Powerful and intuitive geolocated property search;
  • 03
    Integration with three different Customer Relationship Management Systems (CRMs) to populate the website with property data (RPS, Ascendix and Salesforce);
  • 04
    Integration with Ireland’s major property portals (Daft; MyHome; PropertyPal/RightMove; PropertyNews; PerfectProperty and SalesForce), to automatically populate these platforms with Lisney properties;
  • 05
    Geolocated redirection between regions: users in Munster are directed to the Cork portal, Belfast users are redirected to the Belfast site, and users in the rest of the Republic will be directed to th
  • 06
    Integration of Elavon payments online for booking deposits;
  • 07
    Integration of private ‘Dataroom’ functionality, for clients to securely store and retrieve private documents.
Goals

Goals

To design and develop the best property website in Ireland, highlighting Lisney’s huge range of property services and research, and strengthening trust in an iconic Irish brand.

  • Reclaim the online presence of Linsey as Ireland’s most respected estate agents, through powerful branding and rewarding UX at all levels on the platform;
  • To provide an essential service in Irish property, seamlessly balancing logical functionality with essential resources;
  • Strengthen bonds with their target audience, through engaging, client-focused content;
  • Future-proof Lisney from a technology and user experience perspective, with a foundation that facilitates future updates.
Process

Process

UX design thinking and close collaboration with the client lays the foundation for a winning project.

  • Detailed UX discovery process to determine the goals and scope of the project;
  • Sitemap created (over 200 pages), with updates and amendments approved by the Lisney team;
  • Wireframes created for key pages — 25 different wireframes for both desktop and mobile, with amendments based on Lisney feedback;
  • Three distinct design concepts created and presented to Lisney, with one final concept chosen after an appraisal process;
  • Development stage — coding of all website elements;
  • Content writing for the whole site, with client sign-off on every page;
  • Creation of SEO descriptions for all pages — over 500 between Belfast and Dublin;
  • Comprehensive 301 redirect process from old website to new (over 2,500 redirects);
  • Extensive QA process with key Lisney stakeholders;
  • Set-up of fully redundant server for added security;
  • Training session with over 50 employees, in four groups of four sessions. Matrix presented Lisney presented with a comprehensive 75-page instruction manual for staff using the new system;
  • New website launched;
  • Implementing new designs for rebranding as Lisney Sotheby’s Realty;
  • Ongoing development improvements and adaptation of key CMS functionality, and collaboration with Beggley Hutton to implement new designs throughout the platform.
Results

Results

For 80 years Lisney has been the most respected name in the Irish property market, and they now have a website to match their reputation in the industry.

  • A new, ultra-modern online platform for one of Ireland’s leading brands, that combines rewarding functionality with elegant aesthetics;
  • A more engaging and inviting tone in content throughout the site;
  • A user journey that is made to measure for every cohort within the property industry;
  • Content strategy also incorporates SEO excellence, to increase conversions in this new phase of Lisney’s online evolution.

Testimonial

During my career I’ve been lucky enough to have worked with Matrix on three different occasions. Their professionalism and in depth technical knowledge is unrivalled in my view so when it came to the most daunting website build that I’ve encountered to date they were the name at the top of the list. And they well and truly delivered. The Lisney website is now at the forefront of technology in property and it’s something that everyone in the business is truly proud of.

Cathal Burke

Head of Marketing
Lisney