Creative Website Design Company

The Brief

Know Your Home, a newly established business, came to Lava with a concept for an entirely online home records and diary system. This system was to be designed to assist home owners, their family members and friends, and property investors with logging essential details relating to their home property(s).

It has been identified that whilst many people are very organised during their work daytime activities, this level of organisation often does not flow through to their personal lives, such as logging important and often basic details relating to their home. Aside from the ‘down time’ nature of life outside work, KYH recognized the often detailed and complex nature of home ownership, and the fact that people get busier and often travel as their life progresses.

Whilst the general public can always use basic record keeping tools such as Excel and Outlook for recording details relating to their home(s), the pre-defined nature of KYH with over 100 categories and subcategories, and its proposed very low membership subscription model, means the site will provide a simpler, and more accurate log. As well as logging details, Lava will build in system ‘smarts’, such as a social sharing aspect (family) and anniversary reminders.

Lava’s Solution

Lava started with business branding. This resulted in a logo that features house and tree motifs, to reflect the nature of the Know Your Home online product. We chose a colourful and professional style, to gives users a sense of security and trustworthiness. Essential, given they will be loading personal data online.

A promotional site was established, to help market Know Your Home to new prospective buyers. We wanted to keep this site quite small and concise. The client came up with the idea of presenting 4 scenarios that users can relate to, and with the focus on presenting Know Your Home as a solution to a problem. For example, a person repainting a room but unable to match the paint colours because he failed to record them when the room was initially painted. Another involves fire damage. Lava presented these using written text accompanied with a feature photo. We also created a product demonstration video, which is very informative, and giving users a quick glimpse of what Know Your Home can do.

Users can then buy a membership to Know Your Home, via an integrated e-commerce process. This includes the ability to store their credit card details, and be direct debited for future annual renewals. Lava also provided Know Your Home with a promotional codes system, so they can generate unique codes and run marketing campaigns (e.g. a radio campaign, with a discount for listeners).

Once a user is a member and logged in, they are presented with a nice, simple framework for entering their data. This includes a main menu, with categories (sections) including Property Details, The House Inside, and Garden & Outdoors. Each of these then has further subsections, such as Structural Details and Rooms, and the user is then provided with a predefined set of fields and functionality enabling them to populate the system. For example, they can type in details of a particular room, upload photos, add notes, and set automated reminders. Lava has carefully designed this user interface to be clean and attractive, and for ease of use. This is important, to ensure the vast amount of data isn’t overwhelming.

Lava also built a Smartphone mobile ‘lite’ version of the Know Your Home resource. This enables members to login via their phone and access select crucial details (e.g. insurance, if an incident happens wile they are travelling overseas). Lava’s solution also enables members to add other people to their account (e.g. their children), and associate them with particular aspects of their records. Another nice feature is the ability to set auto-reminders in a calendar feature.

Know Your Home is another example of Lava’s ability to deliver large-scale, entirely custom concepts. We are able to help workshop and refine concepts. 

"It was a great experience working with all the team at Lava.Brett & Stuart adopt a very refreshing and thought provoking process at the “front end” of the development where every aspect of the sites objectives and functionality is constantly challenged and often re-challenged again before actual development begins.

We found their frank and open discussions stimulating and invaluable in clarifying our thoughts about what we really wanted to ultimately achieve.Some wonderful creative suggestions flowed from the team during the development, providing numerous options for us.

They offered us something different and they delivered – a very professional and talented team that I would highly recommend to anyone."

Scott Grant, Director/ Owner