Rightmove redesign thanks to ever-more mobile users

Rightmove is to relaunch its portal with a design to emphasise what it claims is increasing consumer-friendliness and ever-higher volumes of mobile usage. 

The portal claims the redesign offers a quicker and cleaner search, fully integrated mobile and desktop pages with responsive designs that automatically resize to the device, fiilters that sit at the top of the page giving listed properties more space, and improved functionality that allows user to select multiple criteria like detached and semi-detached properties for example

Rightmove’s previously desktop-only products like Featured Property and Featured Agent will now be visible on its mobile site and apps. 

“A rebuild of Rightmove’s search results pages will be launching in beta in a few weeks, which will offer members more exposure and give home hunters a simpler and faster way to search for a new home” says a statement from the portal.

It says design and development teams have been working on the redesign for about a year and the result “will offer agents more than double the exposure for their brand as over half of views to Rightmove now take place on the mobile site and apps.”

The beta testing will run into November when Rightmove plans to roll out the changes for lettings and sales, with apps to follow shortly after.

James Micklethwait, head of product development at Rightmove, says “these changes will make Rightmove an even more compelling search experience and make the advertising products even more engaging.”

The portal is asking agents for comments and account managers will be talking with clients in the next six weeks. 

This is the second major portal investment to be announced this week alone. 

Zoopla says a “new comprehensive campaign” to market its offering will run across thousands of billboards and hundreds of bus-sides until the end of the year. The portal calculates that during the campaign period at least two-thirds of UK adults will hear the radio ads “dozens of times” on mainstream radio stations. 

Rightmove is also ramping up its marketing with a new animated TV advertisement.