WESP, Lincoln.

Where it started

Student lettings is a short season and a crowded one. The old site was a stack of promotional banners, and the things a student actually decides on, the rent per person per week, whether bills are in, how far it is to campus, were somewhere further down if they were there at all.

It also only spoke to one audience. Students pick the house; parents, very often, are the ones asking whether the agent is any good and who is on the hook for what.

What we built

Every house card now answers the question before it is asked: price per person per week, all in or not, rooms left, walking minutes to the University of Lincoln and cycling minutes to Lincoln Bishop. Viewings are booked on the page rather than by phone during office hours.

Parents have their own route through the site, and so do the awkward subjects: guarantors, deposits, what the tenancy actually commits them to.

An area guide covers where to live in Lincoln, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, which is the job the campus tour cannot do for someone deciding in February from three hours away.

Ask for it in words, or just say it

Students can work the filters, or they can say what they actually want. The box shows them how, in their own words rather than an agent's: “ensuite room under £120 a week for 5 of us near the Brayford”.

That one sentence carries a room type, a budget per person, a group size and a landmark. There is no filter set on any portal that expresses it, and it is exactly how a group of five talk to each other about finding a house.

A microphone sits beside the box, so it can be spoken rather than typed. Filter search and AI search sit behind a switch rather than in one panel, so nobody is left wondering which one they are using.

Behind the login

Students get an account. They keep a shortlist, and when a house that matches goes live they get an email rather than finding out when it has gone.

Once they are in, repairs are reported straight to the in-house team from the same account, with a record of what was said and when.

WESP add and manage every property themselves, photos, rooms, availability and all, so the site is theirs to run rather than something they have to ring a web company about in the middle of the letting season.

The pages nobody reads until they have to

Complaints, terms, privacy, cookies, a separate data protection page, tenant fees, and a safety page covering gas, electrical and fire. For a student let, that last one is not box ticking: it is the page a parent goes looking for.

The cookie banner offers Reject all beside Accept all, and it holds. Before anyone touches it the page loads its own analytics, the fonts and the map, and nothing else. Google Analytics, Google Ads and the doubleclick tags only appear once somebody accepts.