When you visit the website for Newbury Companies today, you're greeted with a welcoming layout and a promise: "We're with you all the way." Looking back, the sentence has been just as true of our own experience with the real estate company over the years as it has been for their long list of happy homebuyers.
In 2012, Newbury Companies owner, Steve Newcomb, took a chance on a fledgling web development startup. The result has been a seven years running relationship that continues to foster substantial growth, both in Newbury Companies and in Chek Creative. In fact, Newbury's current website is a leveled up iteration of the previous site for Avery Place, one of Chek Creative's very first projects. With the recent launch, we thought it would be a fitting time to explore this transition through the eyes of Chek Creative Web Developer, Alex Chekanoff.
Of the old website, Alex says it just wasn't on par with Newbury Companies or their work as a whole anymore. "Dark and plain colors made the company feel outdated." It no longer represented Steve's vision, so it was time to shake things up.
Considering Newbury's progress and growth to date, Alex and the team worked to put together something that could evolve with the company's vision well into the future. "We used advanced custom fields to make the site completely customizable so that we could add and edit content." With that structure in place, the sky would be the limit going forward.
From the decision to invest in drone footage to the integration of virtual walk-throughs with Matterport, the goal was a site that could "stand out from the cookie-cutter companies." But Alex explains that it also had to be easily navigable, allowing visitors to "make an informed decision in a simple, elegant fashion."
It was important to present a straightforward interface for folks considering their housing options with Newbury. Adding Mailchimp (one of our favorite tools) into the mix opened up contact possibilities. The team set it up as "a way for people to contact the realtor of a specific project easily," says Alex, thereby substantially streamlining the process for Steve's potential tenants and buyers.
At the end of the day, "relationship" isn't a business term at Chek Creative. Our relationship with Newbury Companies has, as Alex puts it, "allowed us to learn and grow in the way we approach client work." It's been a way of refining the team's ability to start with a person's dream and grow it into something tangible. For Alex, that means transforming the client's dream into "a website they are proud to show off to their colleagues." Ultimately, we're excited to keep growing alongside everyone we work with, because that's what a relationship is to us.
