Indexing 10,000 properties an hour, and serving over a million queries a month, OnOneMap is property search for people who like to get stuff done. Forget ten results per page, try three hundred - all precisely plotted on one map. Started as an in-house project by an Assanka developer, OnOneMap provides a great showcase for our development skills.
We don't know much about buying property. But it doesn't take a genius to realise that it's location, location, location that counts. Your basic requirements are always going to need to be accommodated - price, number of bedrooms, property type and so on, but once you've plugged all that in, you're often faced with choosing a location, and that's often the hard bit.
Why does some website think it can arbitrarily define your search area, we thought. Say you want to live anywhere in West London. On many sites that type of wide ranging search simply can't be done, and on others it requires laboriously ticking boxes for each individual area. And then you get a list of properties with titles that barely suggest where they might be. You have to go through each one to reach any decision.
In one place - on one map
What is needed is a way of displaying all the properties in the area you're interested in, on one map. And once you've done your search, you need a way of keeping track of new properties in your search area without having to trawl through all the ones you've seen before, whilst remembering the ones that you liked and keeping track of whether they have sold.
OnOneMap presents users with a new approach to searching for property. First, it does not market properties on behalf of estate agents, and is therefore independent in the true sense of the term. Assanka developed a sophisticated crawler engine to find and index property listings from across the web. Properties advertised on multiple sites are identified, grouped, and presented to OnOneMap users as a single property. The crawler engine is supplemented by an extraordinarily accommodating and highly automated submissions process, allowing any agent, vendor or portal to upload their listings to OnOneMap using the method of their choice and with minimal fuss. The indexing system turns over roughly 10,000 properties an hour, 24 hours a day, to keep the search database up to date.
However, the real selling point is the interface. Using the superb Google Maps system to its full advantage, we designed clustering and conflict resolution algorithms to allow huge, powerfully wide-ranging searches to be presented to the user without overwhelming them with results. We put ourselves in the place of the user, and refused to compromise on the scope of the search facilities we would offer. If people want to search the entire country, why shouldn't they?
With this thinking in mind, OnOneMap's location search will find virtually anything that is tied to a specific location. Want to live near Alton Towers, or search for your local Welsh town using its local name (try "Dinbych-ypysgod")? Need to be near a specific motorway junction or a tube station? Absolutely have to get the children into the Good School? Typing any of these things into OnOneMap's location search will take you there, but even more importantly it won't constrain your search to that area.
Shortlists and personalisation
Adding the ability to register and compile your own shortlist, we empowered users further by allowing them to rename properties, and add their own notes. OnOneMap became the centrepoint of their property search, the information hub where they can co-ordinate their hunt for a new home and keep track of changes in the market. It's all about not trying to dictate how users should behave, and simply giving them the tools that they need.
It seems to be addictive - watching real time log feeds, it's amazing to see how people's search patterns change as they use the site. They start with a typical search, eg. £250k two bed in a particular town, and then they realise that OnOneMap can do so much more. Then you start to see people enjoy the experience of searching wide areas in aspirational price ranges. Some people stay on OnOneMap for hours.
"Once in a while you come across a website that really stands out. This is one of them."
RSS - property comes kicking and screaming into the 21st century
In essence, RSS allows you to 'subscribe' to a website, so that any changes are brought to your attention easily. Because RSS is a standard format, you can subscribe to several websites and manage all the content in one place - a program called a newsreader or news aggregator. Having centred the map view on precisely the area you're interested in, and having set your criteria, OnOneMap offers you a unique, personalised RSS feed. You just sit back and watch the properties roll in.
"Bloody genius - was only told about it an hour ago, but already it has been a massive help in househunting. Nice interface, very easy to use, wonderfully fast."
Local knowledge
Do an OnOneMap search and not only do you see property for sale, but you can switch on 'layers', showing sold property as well (courtesy of the Land Registry), schools and their 2006 performance reported by the Department for Education.
New information sets are being continuously added, thanks to an accommodating plug-in system. OnOneMap knows what people care about and is committed to providing that local knowledge in as simple and effective a way as possible.
We just can't stand bad software, and if there's a better way, we'll find it. If you want your project to have this kind of success, do yourself a favour and give us a call.