Website Best Practices for Real Estate Associations in 2022, Part 1: Design Trends

Evolving your real estate association's website to fit the needs of your members can be complex. In this new four-part series, Website Best Practices for Real Estate Associations in 2022, we’re going to provide your real estate association with tools and tips on:

• Design trends
• Navigation
• Website essentials: ADA Compliance, Privacy, DMCA, and User Agreements
• Common website integration options 

Let’s get started by showing you examples of the latest web design trends and some tips on how to incorporate them into your association website. 

• Component-Based Design
• St. Louis REALTORS®
• Coastal Carolinas Association of REALTORS®
• Lexington Bluegrass Association of REALTORS®
• Colors & Typography
• Super Gradient
• Muted Palettes
• Big & Bold Fonts
• Shapes & Lines
• Grids & Frames
• Rounded Lines
• Geometric Shapes 

Component-Based Design

A component-based design is comprised of various full-width design components on each page. This is actually a great choice for your site’s framework when it comes to building out your entire website. Using a component-based design is extremely beneficial for adding pages to your website when you need it without having to start from scratch with a design and layout. This design choice….

• Is highly customizable
• Offers reusable components library
• Has the ability to rapidly change the design as needed
• Allows users to easily share content to multiple pages
• Comes with a flexible design, even for interior pages

A component-based design gives your real estate association a flexible infrastructure even with interior pages. Here are some examples of websites built with this design style.

St. Louis REALTORS®

Coastal Carolinas Association of REALTORS®

Lexington Bluegrass Association of REALTORS®

Colors & Typography

Another way to do something bold on your website is to incorporate more colors and fun typography. Here are examples of sites that have incorporated the use of gradients, muted palettes, and big and bold typography.

Super Gradients

Gradients are making a come-back after being very popular in the early 2000s. This design trend choice can be used as a background for content, as a color filter over images or illustrations, or as an accent for functional elements such as the call-to-action buttons. This color choice adds some depth to flat layouts and makes them more visually interesting. A great example and use of gradient colors are on the Association of Chamber of Commerce Executive’s website. 

Muted Palettes

Muted colors are always easy on the eyes. These dulled-out colors give a peaceful look on any site. Golden Isles Association of REALTORS® is a great example of an organization using muted colors on its website.

Big & Bold Fonts 

Injecting unique typography can engage your site visitors. Greater Nashville REALTORS® uses big and bold fonts throughout their website. On their Upcoming Classes scrolling calendar, the numerical days of the month are displayed in big font while the class titles are nice and bolded. 

Shapes & Lines

Adding grids, frames, shapes, lines, and geometric elements to your website is a simple yet effective way to make your design more appealing to visitors. These creative elements can also be a great visual divider to differentiate between different sections and content on your website.

Grids & Frames

Using grids and frames in your real estate association website design, you can help keep content interesting, better organized, and allow your organization to clearly provide calls to action. [Read more about grids and frames here, too.] Here are a couple of examples of this design trend on the images below of the county directory and social media wall.

Rounded Lines

Adding rounded lines into your website design is a fun way to break up typical straight edges and helps direct a user’s focus to the center of the rounded line. This is a simple way to add a creative element to your page design. Check out the below examples from the REALTOR® Association of Pioneer Valley's hero image and homepage hover effects and the rounded wave lines on Cape Fear REALTORS® market statistics.

Geometric Shapes 

This is a fun design element that helps maintain interest and increases more interactivity from users. Geometric shapes can be used over images or videos or behind data or statistics to just add in more of a playful design element. Here is an example of geometric elements used on the International Economic Development Council’s homepage design.

We hope these real estate association website design trends helped inspire you with your digital strategy. If you’re interested in incorporating any of these design trends on your real estate association’s website, be sure to reach out to us and someone from our team will be in contact with you.