Pequot Properties is a large real estate company with seven offices in eastern Connecticut and western Rhode Island. Since 1974, the company has provided buyers, sellers, and investors with access to both private and commercial properties.

Pequot recently decided to redesign its Web site to create a better online experience for clients. The site's original design gave the impression of a small real estate firm, when in fact Pequot holds the largest market share in southeastern Connecticut. Pequot also needed to integrate two new systems — an IDXreal estate system to display property listings from the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) and a new system for displaying commercial properties. Pequot turned to designer Darryl O'Donnell, who used FrontPage 2003 to address all of these issues.

Web site requirements

"Our goals in redesigning our Web site were to make the site user friendly and deliver content that would ensure repeat customers and clients," Pequot President Peter Guille said. "We also wanted to provide daily contact through IDX and the automatic sending of e-mail messages about new listings. We were also interested in customizing the commercial portion of our site to include mapping and brochure capabilities."

O'Donnell said she found it easy to meet Pequot's needs by using FrontPage 2003. She was able to seamlessly integrate listings from IDX while creating a more intuitive user experience. "I wanted nice, simple navigation with everything readily available so users would not need to drill down," she said. "But it was also important to consolidate everything on the home page for better search engine placement. By setting up my categories of navigation on Include Pages, I could use them all over the site in different layouts but maintain the links in just one place."

FrontPage 2003 also helped O'Donnell meet Pequot's tight deadline by allowing her to import much of the copy from the original Web site. "I used Navigation view to find the correct page. Then I simply opened the pages and attached the Dynamic Web Template.

"Pequot was amazed at how quickly the site came together once the design was approved," O'Donnell said.

FrontPage features

O'Donnell always begins the design process with Navigation view. "It enables me to see how to organize a site in a way that makes sense for me as a designer and, more important, for visitors so that they can find the information they are looking for quickly and easily," she said.

Cascading style sheets (CSS) allowed O'Donnell to maintain a consistent look throughout the site. "When I imported real estate listings from the MLS, the style sheets automatically reformatted the text to match the rest of the site. Everything looked perfect."

Code Snippets streamlined the incorporation of metatags throughout the site, ensuring better search engine results. The Browser Compatibility feature helped ensure compatibility with targeted browsers.

Dynamic Web Templates are O'Donnell's favorite feature. "This was key and fun!" she said. "I designed two different layouts for the residential properties and one for the commercial properties pages, and once the layouts were approved, I could save them with editable page regions."

Additional tools

In addition to FrontPage 2003, O'Donnell used the following software to create the Pequot site:

• Microsoft Office Word 2003
• Macromedia Fireworks
• Adobe Photoshop