Designing for trust in Real Estate: Enabling self-service land acquisition online

Buying land is a huge commitment for most people, and it’s usually a long decision-making process involving legal complexity.

So when my former team lead (now an entrepreneur) approached me with his vision—an OTA, but for real estate—I immediately saw the challenge.

The idea brought me back to my time at PriceTravel, where I had refined and adapted its e-commerce experience across different channels and devices. I could see the similarities—selecting a hotel room, choosing a cruise cabin—but I also knew real estate came with much higher stakes.

Uncovering the Core Challenge

Before jumping into design, I did what I always do—I asked a lot of questions.

I had a few in-depth conversations with my client and his business partners, digging into their business goals, challenges, and existing sales process.

Selling land wasn’t just about showcasing inventory through a new online sales channel; it was about guiding buyers through a complex decision-making journey while handling a sales workflow that was still heavily reliant on manual processes.

Before tackling the online experience, I led them to take a step back and analyze their internal workflows—what was working, what wasn’t, and where technology could help streamline operations. In my experience, a messy internal operation almost always leads to a poor customer experience.

At first, the stakeholders believed they were ready to increase their sales volume. But after analyzing call recordings and shadowing sales conversations, I saw that there was plenty to fix and improve in their selling processes before they were ready to become a trusted name online.

Competitive Benchmarking and Key Insights

To gain a deeper understanding of the tech and real estate landscape, I conducted a competitive analysis across different product categories in the space:

• Real estate aggregators like Zillow, Realtor, and EasyAviso.
• Integrated real estate CRM solutions like EasyBroker to analyze value propositions.
• Standalone real estate brochure websites to examine lead generation strategies.
• High-ticket e-commerce trusted brands like Tesla, Rivian, and Apple for inspiration.

After collecting hours of sales call recordings and observing salespeople interact with customers, I found that the biggest problem was trust. Fear of scams was the most significant barrier, and buyers needed reassurance that the listings were legitimate and the process was safe.

The online experience needed to address three key pain points:

1. Fear of scams: Customers needed reassurance through transparency, detailed information, and credibility markers.
2. Legal complexity: The legal process felt overwhelming, requiring guidance beyond just FAQs.
3. Project updates & ROI: Investors cared deeply about project progress and return potential but struggled to track it.

With these three perspectives—the business, the market, and the customers—the stakeholders and I collaborated to define a plan for the MVP. Our main assumption to test was whether customers saw enough value in reserving lots online themselves.

Designing for Familiarity and Confidence

As a full-stack product designer and consultant, I approached the solution holistically—defining the experience from information architecture to UI, content strategy, and front-end development.

One of my core design principles was to position the platform as an online trusted advisor, curating real estate developers to mitigate customers’ risks of being scammed.

I wanted the platform to serve as a guide—not just a transaction portal. This meant curating real estate developers, providing clear and detailed information on each project, and ensuring that customers felt supported throughout the process, whether online or with an advisor.

Rather than reinvent the wheel, I studied how Tesla, Rivian, and Apple guided users through high-value online purchases and took inspiration from their approach to shape the experience:

• From Rivian: I adopted the way their financial calculator reacts immediately to user input while preventing errors, ensuring a smooth and reliable experience.
• From Apple: I borrowed from their product configurator, using large, detailed radio buttons to present options clearly and conversationally. This approach made selecting a lot intuitive rather than overwhelming.
• From Tesla: I looked at how they worded the reservation deposit and their terms and conditions to set clear expectations and reduce hesitation.

Every design decision was made with two goals in mind: reducing friction and building trust.

Looking Ahead

With the MVP in place, the next step is observing how customers interact with the system. Will they reserve lots online independently, or will they still feel the need to speak with a salesperson? What prevents them from completing the process? These are the questions that will drive the next iteration, informed by conversion rates, reservation data, and direct customer feedback.

If successful, the long-term vision is to evolve the platform into a marketing and sales ecosystem for vetted real estate projects—allowing third-party developers to list, manage, and promote their properties. This would mean expanding the platform’s capabilities to support new user roles, inventory management, and even integrated marketing solutions to help developers bridge their digital expertise gap.

For now, the focus remains on validating the core experience: making online reservations seamless, trustworthy, and friction-free. Because in real estate, the biggest barrier to conversion isn’t just price—it’s trust.