The Challenge
Lendlease's Urban Development sector needed to review its website ecosystem, with the aim of re-imagining and enhancing a complex digital customer experience. The brief centred on three objectives: review the current digital CX across the Development business area to uncover opportunities; establish insights from Lendlease stakeholders and target audience segments to inform improvements; and deliver evidence-based recommendations to improve UX design, content strategy and platform usage (including Optimizely) across each phase of the customer lifecycle.
Context & Constraints
- The digital landscape spanned 11 standalone project sites, 11 email lists, 7 Instagram accounts and 7 Facebook accounts, all loosely connected to lendlease.com/au
- Multiple business units and sub-brands needed to be represented consistently, without losing each project's individual "placemaking" identity
- Ownership and content governance were mixed across the portfolio, with no unifying content or design strategy
Research & Discovery
Methods: Mapped the existing digital ecosystem end-to-end; conducted a competitive analysis across both industry and project-level competitors (including Charter Hall, Frasers Property, Mirvac, Dexus, 22 Bishopsgate and Hudson Yards NY); ran stakeholder surveys and discovery sessions with Urban Development project leaders; and fielded a primary Top Tasks Survey, segmented by development sector.
Primary research — Top Tasks Survey:
Three segmented surveys (Apartments, Urban Retail, Office) asked target audiences to rank what mattered most to them. Results showed a small number of tasks driving the majority of decision-making — for example, in Apartments, the top 6 tasks (of 32) accounted for 50% of what mattered most, led by pricing (10.97%) and location (9.92%). Similar patterns held for Urban Retail (led by restaurants & dining, transport & parking) and Office (led by location, security, facilities & amenities).
Apartments Top Task Results
50% of what matters most to customers can be attributed to the Top 6 Tasks
The remaining 50% of votes is distributed across 26 other tasks
Pricing 10.97%
(range, options, market comparison)
Location 9.92%
(streetscape, neighbourhood, suburb)
Parking 6.96%
(provided/available, visitors, street parking)
Security 6.75%
(access, storage, parking, deliveries)
Floor plans 6.54%
(apartment types, rooms, layout)
Transport 6.12%
(options, proximity, accessibility, dropoff/pickup)
Define & Synthesis
Stakeholder sessions surfaced six recurring themes that shaped the direction of the blueprint: purpose and intent (no unifying content strategy), lifecycle (sites needed to flex across different project phases), governance (mixed ownership and inconsistent guidelines), reporting (a desire for better omni-channel tracking and analytics), cross-selling (customers couldn't intuitively browse across business sectors), and personalisation (seen as key to long-term engagement). Customer-side research — including jobs-to-be-done and pain-point mapping exercises — was layered against this to build a clearer picture of both business and customer needs side by side.
From this synthesis, I developed five key tactical recommendations:
- A stronger Lendlease.com/projects listing, with search, filtering and map-based discovery
- Strengthened "placemaking" for independent project sites, preserving each project's distinct identity and Country acknowledgement
- A universal navigation pattern — I explored two directions (a "specific and related" model vs. a "related and broad" model) before recommending a structure that balanced both
- Cross-linking between projects ("You might also like") to connect the customer journey across the portfolio
- Content shaped around the top customer needs and tasks identified in the survey research (e.g. filtering by floor, price, area; immersive 360° virtual tours)
1
Create a stronger Lendlease.com/projects listing
Grid
Map
Search by name or location
Show All
QLD
Precincts
Label
The Yards
Centrally located on edgy King St, The Yards redefines urban inner-city living, with high quality 1 and 2 bedroom apartments available for rent.
Learn more
Now Selling
2
Strengthen ‘placemaking’ with independent project websites
Town Hall Place
townhallplace.com.au
3
Establish a universal navigation pattern
Lendlease.com
Barangaroo South
Explore
One Sydney Harbour
Apartments
Streets of Barangaroo
Retail
International towers
Office
See Portfolio
You might also like
Sydney Place
Mixed-use
Victoria Harbour
Mixed-use
Similar projects
Barangaroo South
barangaroosouth.com
Lendlease.com
Barangaroo South
You might also like
Brisbane Showgrounds
QLD
Town Hall Place
VIC
Melbourne Quarter
VIC
Similar projects
Explore
Mixed use
Apartments
Office
Communities
Find more
Retail
Industrial
All projects
Barangaroo South
barangaroosouth.com
Option 1 / Specific and Related
Option 2 / Related and Broad
Related to location
Related to location
Broad
Specific to Location
4
Connect the customer experience with project cross-linking
5
Shape content around top customer needs and expectations
Road Map and Customer Experience Blueprint
I translated these recommendations into an initiative roadmap, mapping potential improvements against a three-horizon framework (Efficient → Enabled → Enhanced) across channels including website, email and SEO — from foundational work through to longer-term initiatives like conversion rate optimisation and content personalisation.
After the blueprint was delivered and approved, I was brought on to collaborate directly with Lendlease's internal design and development teams to implement the recommendations across their development sector digital experience.
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