South Africa’s busiest property portal, Privateproperty.co.za, officially launched its new website this week after months of intense testing. The newly designed site follows international trends towards a clean-looking, search-based website, and also holds a few new innovative features designed to improve the experience of each visitor to the site. According to Private Property CEO, Justinus Adriaanse, the new site is much improved. “It’s uncluttered, and focussed as much as possible on assisting the user to find relevant information. It’s so much more than a design upgrade – there are many upgraded features, as well as new services available to visitors to our website.” The most noticeable improvement is arguably the search function, which has been replaced with a ‘fuzzy search’ facility where phrases can be entered to generate a more targeted search result. “Instead of simply entering the reference number of a property, or the area in which you’re searching, you can now enter a phrase such as ‘2 bedroom house for sale less than R2m Randburg’ and be taken immediately to a list of property results matching your query,” says Adriaanse. The new site also features larger images of properties advertised - not only in the picture gallery for each property listing, but also the images used in search results and elsewhere on the site. “This enhances the experience of the users, as they are able to see clearer, larger pictures of each property.” In addition, the site has introduced a Google mapping interface in the search results, so that users are able to see the exact location of properties listed for sale on Privateproperty.co.za within their search criteria, provided that the full address details have been supplied. “We’re extremely excited about our new website, and we’re sure that our browsers will enjoy the new experience.” You can view the new site on www.privateproperty.co.za