The Grand Bahama Development Company Limited (DEVCO) is a joint venture between Hutchison Development Limited (Bahamas), a member of the CK Asset Group, and Port Group Limited (a member of The Grand Bahama Port Authority (GBPA) Group of Companies).

DEVCO is responsible for developing the master plan of land zoned for tourist/commercial and residential use within the Lucaya area of Grand Bahama Island. Its portfolio of 75,000 acres contains approximately 40,000 individual lots that have been broken up into 45 subdivisions, ten miles of pristine beachfront development property, and seven miles of bulkhead along a sea-water canal system.

DEVCO undertakes development in its own right or through Joint Ventures with proven international partners. In addition, DEVCO has also gone on to sell land to third-party developers. In business for over 50 years, they have the development experience and the ability to work in-tandem with the government and the GBPA to introduce new investment business to Grand Bahama.

The client has over 70,000 acres of property in its inventory. With a change of times, buying trends, and customer service needs, they required a range of assistance to help them better appropriate their land, such as: 

• An alternative strategy to attract sales and generate sales inquiries.
• A more streamlined, efficient, and modern medium to present offers.
• A reduced workload on their sales teams and an emphasis on closing deals through a website.  
• A conclusive and consolidated primary destination they can point to in all their marketing campaigns.

We were brought in to develop a web-based solution to help bridge the gap between them and their target audience within the sea of changing trends of doing business online. In summary, they needed to get as much of their inventory directly in front of customers to reduce sales workload and increase conversions. Previous versions of their website did not provide leads with the ability to properly view inventory and available properties. Moreover, it was very clunky and cumbersome to navigate from the front and backend. 

Our team worked hand in hand with DEVCO to develop a website in a phased approach. In the first iteration, we designed a smaller, compact website that temporarily improved and enhanced their existing website. This gave them the opportunity to use the website proactively, selling and promoting their properties there and through other forms of media. The second iteration would eventually stand as the complete solution, which was being developed while the company utilized their new and improved existing website.

The objective was to spend as much time perfecting the website as possible to eliminate missed opportunities from people who are interested in buying, whether local or international as they service both of these target markets. We constructed a set of wireframes that would lay the initial design for the final website, which would include a range of content.

As soon as you landed on the homepage, users could quickly search for residential and commercial properties by price, subdivision, and other criteria. In our initial designs, we strived for consistency throughout the website. We built out an information architecture that reflected just that. The flow of information from page to page had to take the user on a journey – the consumer journey roadmap. 

We wanted to provide seamless entry points to property pages, along with clear cut finance options placed on each property page. From there, we made it easy to directly inquire about properties through each property page, essentially automating the early legwork of their sales team. 

The result was a crisp, modern beneficial sales tool.

1. Successfully launched multiple iterations of the website to temporarily service the client’s marketing, branding corporate goals, including integration into its major rebranding and corporate structuring initiative. We did this to align with the goals of its new vision and marketing strategy for all of its subsidiaries, including the Lucaya Service Company. From there, we developed an iterative version of DEVCO’s website to temporarily transition from its previously flawed design, covering the latent security faults and creating a modern and dual-branded style to that of LUSCO’s website.
2. Significantly measurable increase in property sales.
3. Increased the pageviews and website traffic by over 300% and 60%, respectively, compared to previous periods.
4. Decreased their bounce rate and exit rate by over 20% compared to previous periods.
5. The new website also integrated the online land & property inventory that holds a searchable map of available listings offered by the company. 
6. We also integrated a user account platform that gave property owners the ability to manage and pay their annual charges online, saving the LUSCO & DEVCO team countless hours of administration in resolving and following up with customer accounts.