Guy Hoquet: Redesigning France's Real Estate Experience
A complete website redesign for Guy Hoquet — L'Immobilier Garanti — one of France's largest real estate franchise networks, helping users buy, sell, rent, or manage properties with a modern, intuitive interface.
Guy Hoquet l'Immobilier is a group of real estate agencies with 480 franchises in France and abroad. Currently in the digital transformation stage, the group tries to reposition its brand and business strategies with future digital solutions.
The primary goals were to promote sales and brand awareness, as well as to incite conversion rates and increase customer loyalty by implementing new features on the website.
- Optimize SEO to increase Guy Hoquet's visibility
- Engage customers through strong visual narratives
- Improve map search engine, utilities, and content areas
- Highlight CTAs to build engagement (estimation your house value)
- Maintain local agency sites' UI consistency and functionality with the main site
We got five days to reply this call for bids.
SEMrush Analysis
According to SEMrush report from 24/01-30/01/2017, the visibility of guy-hoquet.com is in the fourth grade comparing other competitors.
Competitive Review
To better understand the market context, I conducted a competitive review of similar brands including Century21, Orpi, Laforet and Stephane Plaza immobilier. While all competitors put Buyers as a priority to promote on their website, Guy Hoquet differentiates itself as offering a unique perspective: "Guaranties for Sellers" to attract as many sellers as possible.
HMW Note Taking
During the team briefing, team members (PM & Visual Designer) and I wrote down as many HMW post-its as possible to convert customers' frustrations into measurable opportunities:
- Optimize SEO to get customers visited Guy Hoquet (GH) site while first searching real estate site?
- Focus on guaranties that GH propose to get sellers onboarding?
- Improve the listing search engine?
- Create an online estimation tool for sellers to price their home?
- Use geolocation to show the nearby houses price and nearby GH agencies?
- Provide both seller and buyer guides to prepare their plan?
- Encourage buyers to register to save their search and favorite homes?
Following HMWs, I made quickly a "Business Model Canvas" to have a more clear image of connections between customers and value proposition:
After the research phase, we discovered some facts:
For Sellers
Currently, in France, there isn't any free and fast online estimation tool to get instant information about the housing market value and how many potential buyers exist.
For Buyers
They need a powerful map search engine with neighborhood filters depending on their needs to refine their search results and finally find their dream house.
We aimed to demonstrate GH local real agent's expertises by providing strategic solutions such as:
- Well structured home page with strong visual narratives to get more sellers onboarding
- Online estimation tool and timely local agency contact
- More refined and tailored search engine
Customer Journey Flows
We soon created a simple customer journey trying to make all the decisions from the sellers' and buyers' mindset during their visiting guy-hoquet.com
Based on the customer journey flows, several during-visit site features were generated from sellers/buyers' perspectives. Looking back on the opportunities identified in the HMWs phase, it's clear to see where and when these features can benefit sellers/buyers in the journey.
A key differentiator was the online property estimation tool — allowing sellers to get an instant price estimate by entering their address. The tool uses geolocation to show nearby properties and connects sellers with local Guy Hoquet agencies.
The final UI uses Guy Hoquet's signature blue as the primary brand color, creating a professional and trustworthy aesthetic.
The platform was designed mobile-first, ensuring users could access property information on-the-go from any device.
I created an interactive prototype to demonstrate the user flow and validate design decisions with stakeholders.
The redesigned Guy Hoquet website proposal delivered:
- Modern brand experience — Aligned with "L'Immobilier Garanti" positioning
- Improved user flows — Clear paths for all user segments
- Online estimation tool — Key differentiator for sellers
- Mobile-first design — Responsive experience across devices
- Map-based search — Visual property discovery for 480 agencies nationwide