For the year 2013 Private Property received an Outstanding Achievement Award in the ‘Real Estate’ category, with an overall score of 95%. The portal also received the accolade in the ‘Lifestyle’ category recently with a score of 478 out of a possible 500, with content and functionality scoring 99% and 98% respectively.
Private Property’s CEO Justin Clarke says, “These are extremely challenging awards to win. We are proud that the IMA awards recognise our high standards of planning, execution and overall professionalism. We have all of South Africa’s best property in one place for buyers and renters to peruse. Private sellers, estate agents, banks, developers, and landlords all list with us to give our browsers the widest variety of properties to be found on any South African portal.”
In January 2014, Private Property delivered more than a million quality leads to its advertisers, and this can definitely be attributed to the new functionality of the site.
COO Simon Bray says that the website’s design – both visual and its underlying code – is significant in that it presents a market-leading innovation in the South African online property market. The interface is interactive, intuitive and inspirational.
In 2013, in a first for the South African property industry, the company migrated to Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform to deliver a seamless, responsive version of its website. Says Bray, “We believe that we deliver the best property browsing experience available in South Africa, for both desktop and mobile devices.”
Never before has a property website been optimised like this for mobile devices. Now, when a browser navigates to Private Property, the website recognises the device’s type and screen size, and responds by giving the best possible version of the site for that device – whether it is mobile or not.
“Our goal is to make it easier for buyers and tenants to find their perfect homes and start talking to sellers, landlords and agents,” says Bray. “This recognition of our efforts shows that we are well on our way to achieving this.”
