Addland becomes Tytl: a site to discover, a tool to work with

A new face but still the same vision: in a competitive sector like real estate, it has become essential to assert yourself. Standing out, rethinking yourself, reinventing yourself: that’s the challenge Addland takes on with this redesign. Of course, changing your identity isn’t just about pretty colours and a new typeface; that’s the part with the sparkle in the eyes :)

With Tytl, we set down and rethink the way we present the brand and the site. Who are the audiences? How do we make the experience easier on a B2B2C platform that offers so many possibilities, while having as little impact as possible on the users of a platform already well rooted in this industry?

Reinventing a complete product experience without losing your users: that’s pretty much the motto of this redesign.

A sizeable undertaking is ahead of us. The whole site has to be redesigned of course, but we also have to think about the redesign at the global level: email templates, communication materials…

The aim of the redesign is to turn the current site into a marketing site and the SaaS application into a real business tool.

A key step at the start of this project is to get a handle on the effort the redesign will require: we have to make choices. With the project team, we mapped out the whole site to get the full picture of the pages to redesign.

In the end, we agreed to tackle the redesign page template by page template, leaving the in-house developers to roll it out to the rest of the site afterwards.

In parallel, the creation of a Design System tailored to this new art direction helps the developers take ownership of the graphic rules of the redesign.

Tytl serves a wide range of users: professionals, individuals, agents… all with specific needs.

There is also a dual usage: on one side those who are discovering Tytl and want to learn about its offers and benefits, on the other those who are already using it every day. Separating these two user experiences is what comes through in this need for renewal.

The site’s information architecture is reworked: a logged-out version for discovering the offers, a logged-in version for action. A menu and an interface with more commercial/marketing content for new users so they can discover the platform’s key features. Users who are exploring can browse the site freely, understand the added value of the service by exploring the different offers, and even try the platform and its features without any commitment.

In logged-in mode, the focus is purely on the business tool and all its features, so users can work effectively, fully immersed in the world of Tytl.

This duality in the new experience that Tytl offers is precisely its strength. A platform able to offer everyone a tailored journey, while keeping the whole thing clear, smooth and accessible.

Redesigning Addland around a product-driven logic aims to clarify the navigation and guide visitors more effectively toward high-value content that meets their business needs, to convert them into daily users.

An exhaustive piece of work was carried out to ensure that every existing page finds a relevant equivalent in the new structure. Decisions to merge or remove pages were made with care, weighing their impact on search engine optimisation (SEO) while removing redundancies and obsolete content.

This business priority guided the prioritisation of the redesign. Some pages just needed an aesthetic update, while others, more strategic, required deeper UX rework.

On the discovery side, the effort went into the home page and the product landing pages.

On the action side, the effort went into the shift to a business-tool mode, with particular attention to the dashboard of the logged-in space and to the Tytl Insights tool.

To optimise design time and ensure visual and functional consistency, a systemic design logic is adopted, enabling the reuse of components across the different pages. This approach reconciles production efficiency, improved user experience and interface consistency.

It’s the chance to lay down a clean Design System, to rethink how its components are built, to turn them into variables and so much more! A stimulating redesign where constraint becomes a creative engine.

Going back to the drawing board on a Design System lets us rethink small elements that end up having a more global impact, which makes possible this subtle balance between a more modern UI redesign and the need to keep the structure of our older components so we don’t have to redo the entire site.

This redesign is therefore the chance to rebuild a Design System that is solid and consistent, rethought by a team much more experienced on the subject than a few years earlier. We lay down solid foundations that let us industrialise our file and save time during creation. We also work on the principle of page templates, which lets us create pages that are at once industrialisable, designed and dynamic, in a short timeframe.

The challenge is also to adapt a brand-new visual identity across the whole site without changing its foundations. Here we want to adapt the site to the new art direction and the new image of Tytl, but we also want to do it on the solid, established foundations of the existing site.

As is the case everywhere, the homepage is clearly our decisive element. At a glance, the elements have to be striking: the colours, the graphic choices and the rebrand as a whole have to bring clarity to the information. We want to be able to foreground features and new additions that, until now, were a little lost in the vastness of a platform that has a lot to offer.

And of course we want it to be impactful.

Our second decisive point is the experiences. Clearly distinguishing the experience between the logged-in and logged-out user, while keeping visual consistency.

A distinction made mainly through two clearly separate navigations. Once inside the tool, the navigation turns into a side panel, creating the feel of a genuine work tool and no longer of a classic website. This distinction between the navigation modes is one of the major assets of this overhaul, allowing the user to fully immerse themselves in the platform and in using its different features.

A new design isn’t just about nice rectangles and better overall readability. It also comes through elements sometimes left on the side, like micro-animations and illustrations.

Illustrations help give your site consistency and can have a much greater impact than you might think. That’s why we chose modern, colourful and simple illustrations. No more characters you don’t necessarily recognise yourself in, or that you’ve already seen a hundred times. Here we put gestures and objects in the spotlight, making these illustrations almost timeless.

The same goes for micro-animations. Often overlooked, they bring a site to life. And that’s exactly what we were looking for in Tytl’s redesign. On a topic as dense and serious as this, these little touches help bring some energy to the navigation and make otherwise monotonous pages feel more alive.

A redesign of this scale, spread over several months, lets us land on a platform that is clearer, more alive and more in tune, and also on a smooth experience all along the journey and for every audience.

Even if a change this radical for a well-established company can carry risks, it’s above all the chance to leave a mark with a strong visual impact.

This innovative new art direction, combined with a new business strategy, is a meaningful differentiator on the market.

In the end, it’s more than a hundred pages that we had the chance to rework, in UX and UI, over a period of 8 months. A demanding but rewarding piece of work that pushed us to think outside the usual frameworks.

A piece of work that is far from finished, since we keep supporting Tytl every week in the development of their platform. A dedicated team meets regularly to round out, improve and grow a platform that is constantly evolving and far from having stopped its growth.