Overview
Building and scaling a real estate digital platform in less than five months
From student accommodation to family homes, the goal is to support renters through every stage of the renter journey with personalized, connected journeys that grow as they do.
The first step was the re-platforming and migration of Greystar’s Canvas Student brand onto a new tech stack, to create Canvas World, a unified digital experience that also incorporates its young professionals’ brand, Canvas Living. Designed as both a rental hub and a lifestyle destination, the site offers prospective and current renters a seamless way to discover and book living spaces.
Built on Sitecore XM Cloud, Canvas World was launched in just five months in partnership with Horizontal Digital. What began as a single brand site is now the foundation for a scalable, composable ecosystem, ready to scale across Greystar’s global presence.
Reinventing real estate
Watch Ben Parkinson, Senior Director of Digital at Greystar, and George Smith, Regional Managing Director (MEIA) at Horizontal Digital, as they unpack the strategy, challenges and transformation behind Canvas World at Sitecore City Tour London 2025.
The situation
From booking bottlenecks to seamless leasing experiences
Scaling a world-class digital experience across dozens of brands required more than a new look. With a patchwork of content management systems, siloed marketing teams, and inconsistent user experiences (UX), Greystar needed a way to deliver a unified, renter-first journey.
But the biggest roadblock? The booking experience itself.
Each brand site handed off prospective renters to third-party property management systems for the final steps of booking, meaning Greystar had no control over layout, UX or performance at the most critical conversion point.
The challenge was clear: friction and frustration, with drop-off rates of up to 80% at the account creation stage, and no way to test, personalize or improve the journey.
Beyond booking, other challenges included:
- No single view of the customer, limiting personalization and lifecycle engagement
- Expensive, time-consuming rollouts for every new property site
- Limited flexibility for local teams to update content quickly or consistently
While Greystar’s vision was end-to-end personalization – from first lease to family home – the reality was fragmented systems, disjointed touchpoints and missed opportunities.
The response
The multi-site factory: Built once, launched everywhere
With a five-month runway, Horizontal hit the ground running. The team kicked off with UX audits and deep-dive stakeholder workshops to align on Greystar’s goals and define a clear roadmap.
At the heart of the solution was Greystar’s vision to build a “multi-site factory”: a systemized, scalable approach that consists of reusable website components, consolidating platforms and team alignment. This model reduces cost and dramatically accelerates time to market, while ensuring consistent, high-quality brand experiences across every market.
Key moves included:
- Component-first Sitecore XM Cloud build: A multi-site framework to support faster future brand and site launches.
- Tokenized Figma design system: Reusable, brand-flexible components built for speed and consistency.
- Custom middleware layer: Streamlined integration with Greystar’s existing property management systems and Salesforce, enabling real-time data capture, lead routing and performance analytics to power smarter marketing and sales engagement.
- Global agile delivery: Cross-functional teams across the UK, US, South Africa, India and Dubai working in sync.
The outcome is a composable digital experience platform built for scale, with Canvas World as the working prototype for future sites in Greystar’s growing portfolio.
We didn’t just launch a site – together we flipped the switch on a smarter, faster way to scale globally. The site went live in five months, but the real milestone is what it unlocks: consistency, flexibility and a blueprint for lifelong digital engagement.
The results
A blueprint for continued growth
What started as a single student accommodation site is now powering a global platform shift. Key achievements included:
- On time, on budget: Delivered in just five months
- Reusable component system: Already rolled out across Greystar diverse brand portfolio including Accolade and District Living, accelerating time-to-market for new sites
- Cross-regional collaboration: A single platform for multiple countries and languages
- Improved UX: Streamlined booking flows, faster load times, better SEO
- Smart, reusable middleware connecting to major booking platforms including Entrata, Yardi, StarRez, Mews
More importantly, Greystar isn’t just reacting anymore – it’s proactively launching new sites. With a modern, composable stack in place, the team can now personalize, optimize and scale renter experiences across every stage of life.
And the groundwork is laid for what’s next: brand-aware AI agents that deliver intelligent, human-like interactions, evolving with each renter from their first lease to their family home.
This vision looks well beyond today’s booking needs. The long-term ambition? To create a “digital twin” of each customer – a living profile that helps Greystar anticipate and respond to needs over time, unlocking tailored, AI-powered experiences at every stage of the renter journey.
Immediate outcomes
169%Increase in booking conversions
1.2xImproved engagement rate in less than one month
45xFewer 404 errors in less than one month
26xIncrease in traffic in just three weeks post launch
Let's chat
Need help building a digital experience that scales and converts? Horizontal can help. Reach out and let's get started.
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