A little sugar and cream for CREA Café
CREA Café is a blog for REALTORS®, offering insights, market updates, and guidance from across the industry. The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) saw an opportunity to stir up the user experience, from content and navigation to look and feel.
We helped their team reimagine CREA Café, drawing on our longstanding partnership with the association, including brand strategy work and projects like the REALTOR.ca Living Room blog and the REAL TIME podcast. Together, we created a version of the Café that aligns with the broader CREA brand and the expectations of the REALTORS® it serves.
Client
Canadian Real Estate Association
Sector
Real Estate
content audit & strategy
What do REALTORS® really want?
What makes CREA Café valuable for users? With thousands of articles published over the years, the first step was to do a full content audit. We reviewed performance, evaluated categories, and identified what REALTORS® actually engaged with.
The goal was clear: make it easier for REALTORS® to find what they need, and give the Café a structure that supports ongoing growth. We delivered a cohesive framework with recommendations for category updates, opportunities to refine or archive older pieces, and a rubric to help the CREA team assess future content.
audit
visual identity
It’s a corporate blog.
But dressed down.
Content structure in place, we shifted to the look and feel. CREA wanted the Café to be engaging and approachable. Less like a corporate content portal and more like a blog should be—inviting and inspiring.
visual
Less formal feel
We refreshed the visual identity (wordmark, colour palette, and design accents) to make the Café look and feel less formal than the overarching CREA brand.
More consistent look
We provided CREA with a simple, flexible, long-term solution, creating image templates and editorial styling to keep the blog consistent as their team adds new content.
web UX & UI
Crafting a better user experience
We integrated CREA Café into the CREA.ca ecosystem using Craft CMS. This delivers a more intuitive experience for REALTORS® moving between CREA’s tools, content, and resources. It also offers their team a user-friendly platform to support the volume and variety of content published every week on the blog.
A better way to find it
We reorganized articles to increase their visibility, implementing a tagging system to allow content to live across multiple categories and improve how users find related stories.
A better way to experience it
We considered accessibility to enhance the Café’s UX and UI. From contrast and layout to graphic animation and even an optional voice-reading functionality for select articles.
As a longtime partner, we’ve supported the Canadian Real Estate Association in shaping and reshaping its brand and the industry.
From brand strategy and content marketing to digital platforms and web support. View the case study for more work with CREA.
