Case studyDNB Eiendom
Rebuilding the digital experience of Norway’s largest real estate agency.
Driving 75% more leads and improving customer-experience scores by 40% — a complete platform rebuild around the distinct needs of buyers and sellers, with measurement infrastructure established from scratch.
One product, two very different customers.
DNB Eiendom is Norway’s largest real estate agency and part of DNB Group, one of the Nordic region’s largest financial institutions. Real estate is a uniquely two-sided product challenge: the platform must serve sellers looking for an agent and buyers searching for their next home — audiences with different needs, motivations, timelines and definitions of value.
When I joined in late 2020, the digital product was outdated, measurement was underdeveloped, and the online experience didn’t reflect DNB Eiendom’s position in the market. My mandate was to close that gap.
I owned the full digital product across buyer and seller journeys — strategy, roadmap, UX, development, analytics and customer experience — leading a cross-functional team through a complete platform rebuild and introducing the measurement infrastructure needed to understand and continuously improve performance. The result: a 75% increase in lead generation and a 40% improvement in customer-experience scores.
The starting point
A powerful brand, a digital experience that lagged it.
DNB Eiendom had a strong brand, an extensive national presence and high recognition among Norwegian buyers and sellers — but its digital experience didn’t yet live up to that position. The existing platform had several connected challenges:
- An outdated property-discovery experience and inconsistent listing presentation
- Weak conversion journeys
- Different buyer and seller needs compressed into the same structure
- Limited insight into user behaviour and no mature measurement framework
- A gap between the offline brand and its digital expression
- Product prioritisation without sufficient behavioural evidence
What I owned
The digital product and customer experience, end-to-end.
I owned the digital product across both sides of the market — leading developers, designers and analysts while working closely with DNB Eiendom’s commercial, marketing and brand functions to translate customer needs, business objectives and brand ambitions into one coherent product:
Act I
Understanding a two-sided journey
Buyers and sellers use the same market, but need fundamentally different product strategies.
The buyer journey
Buyers came to search, browse and compare listings, understand locations and details, evaluate fit, and move from inspiration to active decision-making. For them, the product needed to make discovery intuitive, present listings clearly, and reduce friction between interest and action — across:
- Searching, browsing and comparing listings
- Understanding locations and property details
- Evaluating whether a home matched their needs
- Registering interest or contacting an agent
The seller journey
Sellers had a different objective — less about search, more about credibility, reassurance and local expertise. The journey needed to build trust and lead them to the first step:
- Understanding DNB Eiendom’s value and the selling process
- Building trust in the agency and local agents
- Requesting a property valuation
- Contacting the right agent with confidence
Both, without one diluting the other
The new platform had to support both experiences fully — without allowing one audience to dominate the structure or dilute the other.
Act II
Rebuilding the platform from the ground up
A ground-up rethink, not an incremental update.
A ground-up rethink
The central initiative was a complete rebuild. I defined the product specification, led the UX strategy, established the roadmap and managed the cross-functional team through design, development and launch — rethinking property discovery, search and navigation, listing presentation, buyer conversion, seller lead generation, agent discovery, information architecture, mobile experience and brand expression.
Property discovery
The buyer experience was redesigned to make finding and evaluating relevant properties easier — helping buyers understand a property quickly without removing the depth a serious purchase requires:
- Clearer search and navigation, and stronger property presentation
- Better visual hierarchy and improved listing information
- Easier movement from browsing to enquiry
- A more coherent mobile experience
Seller conversion
Rather than treating sellers as a secondary website audience, the new experience gave them a dedicated path — a clearer conversion architecture for one of the company’s most commercially important lead sources:
- Understanding the sales process
- Discovering relevant agents and evaluating DNB Eiendom
- Requesting a valuation and making contact
Act III
Translating the brand into product
Making the digital product feel like a natural extension of DNB Eiendom.
More than colours and type
DNB Eiendom’s market position carried expectations of trust, quality and professionalism that the previous experience didn’t consistently communicate. Working closely with the brand and commercial teams, I translated the new brand expression into the product across:
- Information hierarchy, layout and visual rhythm
- Property presentation and imagery
- Tone of voice and calls to action
- Interaction patterns, mobile behaviour and trust signals
Act IV
Building the measurement foundation
From retrospective reporting to an active input into product development.
From no visibility to structured insight
Before the rebuild, it was hard to answer basic product questions — where users entered, which paths they followed, where they dropped out, what drove buyer enquiries, and what led sellers to request a valuation. I implemented a new measurement and analytics strategy from scratch:
- Defining critical buyer and seller journeys
- Establishing conversion events and behavioural tracking
- Creating funnel measurement and dashboards
- Connecting product changes to commercial outcomes
- Introducing data into prioritisation and roadmap decisions
Analytics as an active input
For the first time, the team gained structured visibility into how the digital product performed across both sides of the market — changing the role of analytics from retrospective reporting into an active input into product development.
Act V
Creating a data-driven product practice
Treating launch as a beginning, not the end of the project.
Launch as a beginning
The new measurement foundation let the team identify friction, prioritise improvements and evaluate changes by customer and commercial outcomes — connecting user behaviour, customer feedback, lead generation, experience scores, product releases and commercial priorities. Roadmap decisions became informed by evidence rather than stakeholder assumptions alone, and the combination of platform design, UX strategy and measurement-led optimisation produced significant gains across both customer experience and lead generation.
Results
A two-sided platform, built on evidence.
Customer experience and commercial performance improved together.
Lead generation increased by 75%
The new platform and conversion architecture increased lead generation by 75% — clearer paths for buyers to express interest, and stronger seller journeys toward agent contact and property valuation.
Customer-experience scores improved by 40%
CX scores improved by 40% across buyer and seller journeys, reflecting gains in usability, clarity, property discovery, seller guidance and overall consistency.
A complete platform launched
A new property-discovery platform with new UX, brand expression and information architecture, improved listing presentation, separate buyer and seller journeys and a new conversion architecture.
Measurement infrastructure from scratch
The tracking, analytics and dashboard foundation needed to understand product behaviour and prioritise future improvements — and a cross-functional product model connecting strategy, insight, delivery, measurement and iteration.
Key learnings
What the transformation taught.
Two-sided platforms need distinct customer journeys.
Buyers and sellers interact with the same market but have fundamentally different goals and decision processes.
A strong brand creates a product expectation.
The digital experience must express the same trust and quality as the wider organisation.
Measurement should be designed with the product.
Tracking added after launch rarely provides the same quality of insight as measurement built into the journey from the start.
Lead generation is a product outcome.
Better conversion came from improving customer understanding, confidence and next actions — not simply adding more forms.
Customer experience and commercial performance reinforce each other.
The improvements that made the product clearer and easier to use also generated more leads.
A launch creates the foundation for optimisation.
The platform became more valuable when analytics and continuous iteration were treated as part of the product, not follow-up activities.
“I rebuilt DNB Eiendom’s digital platform around the distinct needs of buyers and sellers — driving 75% more leads, improving customer-experience scores by 40%, and establishing the measurement foundation for continuous product development.”
My role
Digital product transformation, end-to-end.
I led DNB Eiendom’s digital product transformation across strategy, experience, delivery and measurement — aligning Product, Technology, Analytics, Brand and Commercial teams:
- Product vision and roadmap
- Buyer and seller journey strategy
- Complete platform specification
- UX and information architecture
- Property-discovery experience and seller conversion journeys
- Digital brand implementation
- Measurement and analytics strategy
- Funnel and behavioural tracking, and dashboard development
- Cross-functional leadership
- Launch and post-launch optimisation
Rebuilding a digital product?
Whether it’s a two-sided platform, a brand-to-product translation or a measurement foundation, let’s talk about building an experience that compounds.
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