How Vanguard Properties Sells Real Estate with Squarespace Enterprise
As the lead web designer at Vanguard Properties, Dillon McSwane knows the value of a strong and stunning online presence. Especially when you’re working in a visual field like real estate.
“Sometimes the only way to showcase a property is virtually,” he said. “Our agents connect with people across the country, and they want information instantly.”
Vanguard Properties uses Squarespace Enterprise to launch dozens of new websites per week and support the work of more than 400 real estate agents. Based in the San Francisco Bay area and operating out of 16 locations, Vanguard Properties prioritizes improving its agents’ online marketing materials, which prominently include property listing websites.
“Agents love the caliber of the finished websites, and how quickly we can complete builds for them,” Dillon said. “It’s a big part of our product suite.”
According to Dillon, agents can request a new website launch for any property on the market by submitting an internal form. He then uses the prebuilt framework of Vanguard Properties’ approved Enterprise templates – complete with properly formatted branding and graphics – to customize the order with visuals related to that listing.
Squarespace makes the process so seamless, he said, that he’s able to fulfill an average of ten new listing website requests per week – yielding a total of about 50 new sites per month.
“The templates allow me to execute projects quickly while retaining a fully custom look and leaving me time to focus on other, more involved projects,” Dillon said.
Listing websites are typically active for one to three years depending on how long the featured properties remain available. Even after selling, Dillon said many agents continue to draw marketing value from the sites as proof of their track record and marketing prowess.
“It helps agents showcase their portfolio and get new clients,” he said. “They can easily send links to people looking for help buying or selling a home.”
As a longtime personal Squarespace fan, Dillon was excited to learn about the Enterprise platform’s ability to support Vanguard Properties’ scaling business and high-volume website creation needs. Among the features offered exclusively to Enterprise customers, he said tagging and filtering has proved one of the most valuable to his workflow.
That’s because he often receives inquiries from agents about the status of their active websites. By tagging the sites in his enterprise dashboard with their names, he can easily search by ownership and filter results to retrieve the requested information.
“When you have more than 500 sites, it becomes a lot to manage,” he said. “Being able to pull up the ones you need right away is helpful – you need that ability to organize.”
Dillon said Squarespace’s frequent product suite enhancements and expanding functionality encourage him to stick with the platform by keeping pace with Vanguard Properties’ growing web development needs. As he pushes the boundaries of his own site building skills and experiments with new designs, he feels Squarespace can handle the creative stretch – especially with the new Fluid Engine editor.
“If we have a high-end listing, we need to go bigger with presentation – and with Fluid Engine, we can,” Dillon said, “We’ve been able to do a lot more with it like adding animations and splash pages. It’s the future of web design.”
Property Listing Website Example – 856/858 Capp Street
Although his role revolves around website creation, Dillon does not have a traditional web development background and was trained as a graphic designer. He was drawn to Squarespace’s ability to support his artistic visions and launch websites quickly without technical training.
“It’s fun for me to design our custom [enterprise] templates,” he said. “It helps us put everything together in a beautiful package for the agents.”
