How we rebuilt
Wahala Realty.

Pick the colours.

Colour is the first choice, and it comes in three parts.

First, choose the base: white or black.

The base is the colour most of the page sits on. Everything else goes on top of it.

• Why not green or goldA whole page in green or gold gets tiring fast, and nothing on it can stand out.
• Most businessesPick white or black. Your photos, your text and your buttons do the talking.
• The exceptionArt, fashion and other creative work can use a real colour as the base. The colour is part of what you're selling.

Then, make the contrast strong.

Contrast is how much something stands out from what's around it. It's how a visitor understands a page without thinking.

• Contrast makes it readableDark on light, or light on dark. Text on a busy photo has neither, so you squint.
• Contrast sets the orderThe biggest, darkest thing is read first. On the new site that's her name, then one sentence, then one green button.
• Low contrast everywhereWhen everything is thin, light and the same size, nothing is first. So you read nothing.

Last, use three colours. Not more.

A base, a text colour, and one colour for buttons. Every extra colour or shade is one more thing your eye has to sort out.

Decide what goes on the site.

Before any design, we list what a home buyer needs. Then every section has to earn its place.

• Who it's forThe old site was built for sellers. We turned it toward buyers.
• Why buyersAgents usually pay sites like Zillow for buyer leads. This site earns them itself.
• HowGive a buyer something useful, like what they can afford, in exchange for a name and number.

Pick a font you don't have to read twice.

Fancy letters look nice. But they slow you down.

• Thin letters fadeThe old text was thin, light cream on a photo. The new text is solid and dark.
• Capitals are harderWe read words by their shape. ALL CAPS WITH WIDE GAPS has no shape.
• One plain fontSimple letters that don't look alike. Easier for everyone, and for people with dyslexia most of all.

Make buttons say what happens.

A button should answer a question you already have.

• Normal words"What can I afford?" is what a buyer is already thinking.
• One main buttonTwo buttons the same size make you choose. One makes it easy.
• Bigger textThe old button text was 12 pixels, in capitals. The new one is larger and normal case.

Pick one theme and repeat it everywhere.

The best websites have one idea they repeat on every section. After a few seconds, you know how the site works, and it feels like one thing, not a pile of parts.

• On WahalaGreen only on buttons. One thick, rounded arrow on every button that has one. On a computer, sections slide over the one before as you scroll.
• Why it worksRepetition teaches. Once you've pressed one green button, you know what every green button does.
• The rulePick one or two of these, and use them everywhere. Six different effects is noise.

Use what people already know.

There's no reason to reinvent the wheel. When something looks like what people use every day, they understand it instantly.

Always show reviews. Make them look like Google.

People trust other buyers more than anything an agent says about herself. And everyone has read reviews on Google, so we show them the way Google does.

• Familiar on sightA letter in a circle, a name, five stars, the Google logo. You know what it is before you read it.
• Proof you can checkEach card opens that exact review on Google.
• Ours, not a copyGreen stars, her colours. It feels like Google, but it belongs to her site.

The rest of the page works the same way.

• Familiar is fastNobody has to figure out how anything works. They just use it.
• Familiar isn't boringThe shapes are known. The colour, the size, the photos and the care make it stand out.
• Simple, well madeEasy to use on the surface. A lot of work underneath.

Clean up the first screen.

The old photo was a busy skyline, and the text sat right on top of it. Now you see her.

0 words on the old first screen. 0 on the new one.

• Less to readWe cut the words nobody reads: slogans, labels, a long paragraph.
• Nothing behind the wordsText on a plain background reads itself. Text on a photo makes you work.
• A faceYou see who you'll work with before you read a word. That's trust.

Show her face, more than once.

Most real estate sites show a city skyline or a row of houses. You could swap in any agent's name. Here you see Neysa, again and again, so by the end of the page you feel like you've met her.

• People hire peopleBuying a home is personal. You want to know who's on your side before you call.
• A picture in your headA face is remembered. A skyline isn't. Days later, you remember her, not the site.
• Every time she asksWhen the page asks you to reach out, her face is right there. It's a person asking, not a form.

On a phone, her photo and her name read as one.

The first phone version was two separate boxes: a short photo, then her name under it. Evan called it "a bit boring". We built three new versions in the real site.

• One pieceThe photo is taller and its bottom fades into the page. Her name sits on the fade, so face and name read together.
• Why not BA full-screen face stops being a portrait and becomes a close up, in a darker mood than the rest of the site.
• Why not CIt kept the two boxes, and its tags repeated numbers already shown right below.

We tried three first screens.

Our first version put a three-box calculator right in the hero. Her face, her promise and a form were all asking for attention at once.

Design for the phone first.

Most people will find her on a phone. So every section was designed for a phone screen, not squeezed down from a computer.

• One columnNothing side by side that has to shrink. You read straight down.
• Big enough to tapButtons and choices are sized for a thumb, not a mouse.
• The bar never leavesTalk, Call and Save sit at the bottom of every screen above.

Make it easy to become a client.

A pretty site isn't the goal. The goal is more clients for Neysa. So every part of the page pushes a visitor one step closer to calling her.

Her contact is always under your thumb.

If you have to look around to contact someone, you give up. On a phone, Talk to Neysa, Call and Save stay at the bottom of the screen the whole way down.

• Talk to NeysaOpens a short form, right there. No new page.
• CallOne tap and your phone dials her.
• SaveOne tap and she's in your contacts, with her photo, number, email, WhatsApp and office.

We tried five versions of the bar.

On a phone, a visitor who scrolls halfway down has to scroll all the way back up to find a way to reach her.

A button in every section.

Wherever you stop reading, there's a next step right there. Each button says what you get.

A free answer, in exchange for a name.

The calculator tells you what you can afford for free. The full breakdown (down payment, cash to close, every monthly cost) asks for your name, phone and email. You get real value. Neysa gets a buyer who's actually interested.

A friendly pop-up, later.

After someone has read most of the page, a short note from Neysa offers to send homes that fit their budget. It waits, it shows rarely, and never to someone who already wrote to her.

The same idea works for any business.

Think of a small free tool your customers want. Let them use it, and send the full result to their email or phone, as a PDF or a text.

• A mortgage broker"What will my payment be?" with the full plan sent as a PDF.
• A contractor"Roughly what will my kitchen cost?" with the estimate sent by text.
• A restaurant"Plan a party for 20" with a menu and price sent by email.

Show proof, not labels.

Anyone can call themselves a specialist. Real numbers and real homes she sold are things a buyer can check.

Make several versions. Keep one.

For every important part, we built a few versions side by side, picked the best, and threw the rest away.

The calculator.

Three empty boxes feel like homework. Nobody wants to type their income into a blank form.

Speak their language.

In Miami, many buyers would rather read in Spanish. So the whole site is in English and Spanish, not just a button or two.

• Written, not machine-translatedEvery new line was written in both languages at the same time.
• Fits in bothSpanish words are longer. "Guardar" was getting cut off, so each language's bar is sized to fit.
• Easy to switchEN and ES sit at the top of every page.

Make Google understand it.

A site can look great and still be hard for Google to read. Google reads the page's title, its description and its main heading, so those have to say who she is and what she does.

• Her name firstPeople search for an agent by name. Now her name leads the title and the heading.
• What she does, where"Miami real estate broker" is what buyers type into Google.
• Two languages, told apartThe old description mixed English and Spanish in one line. Now each language has its own page, and Google is told which is which.

Nothing is there by accident.

Every part of the page has to answer one question: why is this here? If there's no good answer, it goes.

• Why it mattersThings thrown in for no reason make a site feel cheap, or made by AI without anyone checking.
• How it feelsWhen every part has a job, the whole site feels intentional. Visitors can feel that, even if they can't say why.
• The testPoint at anything on the page. We can tell you why it's there.

The new site, top to bottom.

Everything above, working together. On a computer and on a phone.

The whole new site, top to bottom, on a computer and a phone.