Interactive Map and Cart
CoreStore platform was a B2B/B2C white-label SaaS in the real estate space that helped brokers manage their agents and helped agents market to their farms with customized print collateral and mini-websites. During my tenure I worked with the internal upper management and clients on creating a broad range of features for the platform including several interactive maps and one page checkout carts.
The software had 3 levels. An Agent level where they could brand and purchase printed and digital promotional materials for themselves. An Office level for two agents to dual brand their materials. An Enterprise level where an Office Admin could manage a large team of agents, set up company branded templates, purchase materials on behalf of their agents and could assign credits on the agent’s accounts for purchases.
As the only product designer on the engineering team, I took ownership of the entire design process from ideation to validation, served as the Agile Product Owner for the platform's team, and managed QA testing and validation using multiple strategies.
Mailing List Creation Map Tools
There were three types mail list tools: one sends to every address as Resident to an entire mail route called EDDM, another allows the user to draw a shape on a map to define the records to be pulled called “Radius,” and the last uses public records data from 2 sources to compile the list geographically by sold data called “Farms.”
1. EDDM Map Tool
This feature allowed a user to build a mailing list based on USPS mailing routes which would address the mail as Resident and send to every physical address on the carrier route selected. These lists could be saved for future mailings. We developed this tool for all users of the platform but gave it special functions on the Enterprise level show later on this page.
User selected target area from address or zip code.
Lists could be saved and populate a menu list.
User could select routes from list or click on the map.
User could refine list by demographics.
2. Radius Map Tool
This tool was also developed for all users of the platform and it expanded on the tech that was used to create the EDDM tool (above) but was used for different print products in the catalog and used public record data for the addresses instead of the USPS carrier routes which meant that the addresses used a person’s name instead of Resident.
The default shape was a 1 mile circle around the target.
User could use draw tool and filters to refine shape of mailing area.
3. Farms Map Tool
This admin only tool utilized the map tech of the other tools but populated it with the sold property data from 2 public records sources that the user could select from. This allowed the user to create mailings specifically targeted for comps in their target area to create price comparisons.
Admin would select the addresses they want to include
Admin would download the data to a CSV for insertion into postcard
Putting it all Together for an Admin Workflow
A client wanted to purchase items on behalf of their agents, download a farm for their internal design team to use and upload a final PDF for printing. At that time, the purchase process per item was lengthy due the amount of customization options available. I created a workflow that allowed the admin to quickly create farms, save them for later use and quickly purchase postcards using saved EDDM or Radius lists. We also added some look up pages for order transparency.
This product was scaleable by adding enterprise account level controls to turn features on/off like a global cart which would allow the office admin to purchase items for different agents on a company invoice. Future plans included expanding the feature to allow for purchasing multiple items using existing templates and auto-populating account information from selected agents.
Admin selects an agent account and then a saved map or farm
Then Admin would upload PDF document and pay with agent’s card
Product scales with adding preconfigured packages
EDDM Look up page client facing
Challenges and Outcomes
APIs surprises
The USPS API updated frequently without warning and caused the product to require careful monitoring. Additionally, the public records APIs were challenging to work with and took twice as long as expected. The data imported was messy and required a lot of massaging to get the product work as intended. The engineer leading this team was able to corral these APIs eventually into a solid product that drives a lot of print volume for the company.
Client workflows
Although it was challenging to get the multiple client teams on the same page they were ultimately happy with the result and reported significant efficiency with using the tools and Office Admin purchasing.
Learnings
Negotiating for the good of the product.
Leaflet is a power mapping product with a lot of plug ins from 3rd party developers. For these I negotiated with the lead engineer for the plug in that would give us the most flexibility with the trade off of being slightly harder to use.
API will always have surprises
I definitely learned that 3rd party APIs are inherently challenging due to the amount of unknowns and to add in more time to account for this in feature planning.