Zillow has unveiled a new look for its home page and mobile website. The refresh features a new look for Zillow’s logo and more prominent attribution for listing agents on their listings.
Zillow declined to provide details on the design revamp, which features a monochrome block Zillow logo and other subtle design changes throughout that were not visible to all users today. (If you don’t see the new design, clear your browser’s cache.)
“We are constantly evolving all aspects of our offering — including our look and feel — to better meet the needs of consumers,” Zillow spokeswoman Amanda Woolley said.
One of the more noticeable changes appears on the listing detail pages. Zillow has done away with the faint lettering that describes agents in a listing’s contact list as either the “Listing Agent” or as a Zillow advertiser, a “Premier Agent.”
Comparison of how the agent contact list shows up on a Zillow listing on the portal’s mobile website. New design is on the left; previous design is to the right.
Those labels have been stripped away. Zillow now spotlights listing agents with a green banner on the bottom of their photo with the “Listing Agent” tagline. This is a standard, free feature for all listing agents, Woolley said.
Listing agents have long bemoaned Zillow’s and other portals’ practice of allowing competing agents to pay for leads and branding on their listings.
Zillow says it has always allowed all listing agents to claim the top spot on the agent contact list at no cost by claiming their listings on Zillow. Zillow’s new move makes listing agents even more prominent.
The revamp also removes the “Premier Agent” label identifying which agents are Zillow advertisers, opening up the possibility that Zillow could make some of those slots available to other agents in deals with franchisors or brokerages.
Zillow, which is set to acquire Trulia sometime in 2015 if the deal passes regulatory hurdles, gained a formidable competitor last week when global media giant News Corp announced its agreement to acquire realtor.com operator Move Inc.
Execs at Move and Zillow each said they’ll look to gain an edge by becoming the most industry-friendly partner. Zillow’s move to showcase listing agents more prominently and its recently clarified practice of putting links to brokers’ websites on all brokers’ listings for free may be Zillow’s first swing at its new rival.
Other new tweaks to Zillow’s site include a larger call-to-action button on property detail pages.
The changes to the listing detail pages don’t show up on Zillow’s iOS mobile app at the moment. It’s also not clear if Zillow’s app for other mobile operating systems has the update now or not.
On Thursday, Zillow reverted the agent contact list design to its previous format. It noted the listing agent and the three advertising agents with faint labels and removed the green banner highlighting listing agents. Zillow declined to comment about the new design tweaks, but it appears it’s experimenting with a few different options.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to note that Zillow says it has always placed listing agents first on the agent contact list when they claimed their listings, to clarify that the new listing agent highlight feature is standard for all listing agents and to note that Zillow is actively tweaking the new design.
