Domu was founded by two brothers who realized the apartment searching process was confusing and intimidating to many renters. In 2010, they launched Domu with a simple user interface and design scheme. The goal was as streamlined as the site’s clean layout: help people find the best apartments for rent in Chicago.
The site relied on a minimalist design for many years. Apartment and condo listings showed up as pins on a map and could be viewed as a scrolling list beside the map. Keyword searches delivered refined results, or users could filter based on the standard apartment search criteria: number of bedrooms, price range, available parking, etc. The listings relied on content supplied by users and no ads were allowed on the site – something that still sets Domu apart from other apartment websites.
Another core functionality on Domu is the ability to browse Chicago apartments by neighborhood. This was a very deliberate user experience choice because neighborhoods are a huge part of the local vernacular when it comes to describing Chicago’s physical geography, hence residents and apartment hunters tend to define their search by neighborhood when trying to find their new home.
The redesigned site tells a story that’s uniquely Chicago, relying on local talent to bring a totally new look to life. The new illustrations give Domu a sense of place to help users identify the apartment site with its hometown of Chicago.
The new look of Domu is also seen on the distinct "For Rent" signs that prominently advertise the apartment listings throughout Chicago’s various neighborhoods.
About the project
Domu pursued an aggressive goal of maintaining local relevance across the redesigned site. This required extensive SEO audits of existing pages and complete overhauls of several sections of the site. Many fields were added or expanded in admin view to allow customization with an eye towards SEO relevance.
Functionality
There are two main types of users on Domu. There are apartment seekers and apartment landlords. Anyone can browse listings and read content on the site without signing up for an account. In order to save apartments to a list of favorites or create an apartment listing, users need to create a free account before accessing these features of the site.
For apartment renters or anyone searching for apartments:
- Renters can browse listings in Chicago neighborhoods or nearby suburbs for free.
- Apartment seekers can utilize a search bar that draws on the zip code, city, state and national database in cascading queries.
- Users can read blog posts about Chicago neighborhood highlights, stellar apartment building features and other aspects that cover the lifecycle of renting an apartment in Chicago.
- Sign up for Chicago apartment news and updates.
For landlords or anyone who needs to list an apartment for rent:
- Landlords can enjoy an unlimited upload of apartment photos and links to apartment videos on their apartment listings.
- They can access listing performance stats and analytics dashboard when they are signed in.
- Landlords automatically receive emails from prospective tenants who complete the contact form within the listing page.
- A Landlord Resources section is available that includes useful explanations of Chicago apartment law (written to make sense to the layperson). Landlords can also find every required disclosure document needed in Chicago apartments and a model apartment lease that landlords can use to get the leasing process jump started as soon as they hear from a prospective tenant.
- Landlords and property managers can sign up for the Chicago apartments newsletter.
- Landlords have access to a field in the checkout page for discount codes which can apply to bulk purchases. These are meant for agents or property managers with large rental property portfolios.
Core Technical Components
- The site runs on Drupal 7.
- New page layouts make use of the Flexpage content type, which leverages the Paragraphs module. These flexible pages allow site editors to add, remove, and rearrange components that range from a simple image carousel to FAQ text, as well as a searchable map to pricing information.
- Domu’s search is central to the entire site. It makes innovative use of geocoded apartment listings gathered from a variety of sources, Domu’s own listings, and Google’s Places and Geolocation APIs to enable users to find apartments.
- One of the goals associated with the redesign was to move Domu.com from a dated hosting infrastructure on Rackspace that was not highly available to a modern hosting environment on Pantheon.
- Listings integrations were re-worked to allow for consistent imports of listings on the redesigned platform. A new integration with Entrata’s third-party API was also created.
- Previously, the site used third-party software as an intermediary to integrate with Salesforce. Now, Drupal connects directly to Salesforce’s APIs.
Why Drupal was chosen
The site was already built out on Drupal for its flexibility and robust ecosystem. Duo completed a redesign and added new features and functionality.
Technical Specifications
Drupal version:
Key modules/theme/distribution used:
S3 File System: Domu has a lot of great photos associated with their listings to show off available apartments. To account for the number of high-resolution photos for the site and to make everything perform well, S3 File System (s3fs) was implemented and extended to host files on Amazon S3 and meet Domu’s performance and usability requirements.
SMTP Authentication Support: The SMTP Authentication Support module provides a good base for integrating third-party email solutions. Given the large volume of helpful notifications that go out to site users, this has helped us to solve a number of key issues with the site’s previous iteration.
