Published: 31 March 2008.

Contributed by Nick Buick of Refreshweb

We’ve now completed a series of major upgrades to our national student accommodation portal: StudentHousing101.com.au. The website is the official portal for many universities around the nation and provides free listing services to all university students. It aims to provide an easy means for students to source affordable housing, ensuring more focus on study, not finding a place to live.

The most significant enhancement is the advanced mapping and satellite-imaging, made possible by Google’s powerful mapping API. In the design of the new site, we moved away from the traditional property portal interface which typically consists of basic property search results. In place of this, students are simply greeted with a large map view of their campus and surrounding suburbs. The map is dynamically populated with interactive icons denoting available housing, including photography and pricing. This redesign allows students to quickly identify listings in relation to transport, facilities, and of course, their campus. Views can be switched between street maps or satellite images to clearly communicate landmarks and addresses. This approach is particularly beneficial to students relocating to unfamiliar campuses, by eliminating guess-work and helping to quickly compare pricing and quality of multiple nearby properties, all from a single screen.

StudentHousing101.com.au is a not-for-profit venture that we operate for the benefit of Australian university students. If you’re interested, please take a moment to visit StudentHousing101.com.au and let us know your thoughts on the new design.

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