How a shared language unlocked premium, personalized brands.
For years, Keller Williams agents had near-identical websites in a competitive market where personal branding is critical for agent retention. I worked with a team of four designers to define a scalable system for personalization. I owned the vision for theming and templates and later, adoption through onboarding.
Framing the Opportunity
We began by grounding the work in agent needs, running interviews to understand what a “marketable” website meant to them. Working with the design lead, we translated these insights into clearer product direction given the existing CMS platform constraints.
Designing for Scale
A core challenge was a lack of shared language between design, product, and engineering. To address this, I drafted a framework for pages, sections, and components that aligned teams and ultimately became embedded in the product. I also defined the template and themes, photography direction, and onboarding flows to empower agents to personalize their sites at scale.
Protecting the Vision
As delivery pressures increased, the risk of de-scoping to generic, undifferentiated websites grew. After raising the flag with the team, we built a case for a more versatile system with minimal additional engineering effort, securing executive buy-in.
As a result, thousands of lifeless real estate agent websites were transformed into professional brands practically overnight. Over 34,000 agent sites were customized in the first month post-launch, and we even built upon these foundations to launch a premium website for the KW Luxury division.
