AyosDito: Function over Frills

My grandma, who has been living in NY since the '80s, has finally decided to come back home for good.  A priority on her balikbayan's to-do list before she can really settle back in is, of course, finding a new home in Metro Manila.

Normally, I'd just wing the house hunt on the Google search bar with some of the usual keywords.  But this time, a friend suggested trying out AyosDito.ph.  I don't know many people who use this. But after "experiencing" AyosDito.ph, I can say that I'm kind of a fan now.

The first thing I noticed when the homepage opened up was its neat and simple navigation design.  Nothing to figure out here almost: the essential clickables are immediately onhand and the terms are easy to understand.

What I appreciated right away is that ads are sorted by region. And, in case you're not sure about the geographical location (because you, like me, can never remember which province belongs to which region and where each region is), don't worry because hovering your mouse over a certain area on the map or the list of regions reveals a mousetip text box that tells you what provinces are found in that region.  That is so smart and so cool :-)

I clicked "NCR" on the region list and arrived on a search page that's as equally tidy as the homepage.  Selected "Apartments/Condominium/Townhouses", which revealed new options underneath ("For Sale", "For Rent", etc.).  Clicked "For rent", then another set of options came out for searchers to select more specs, like the floor size, price, and number of rooms.  Easy and simple, so far so good.  I do wish though that the "NCR" dropdown list had a list of cities to further narrow down the search.  But it's not really a biggie since there's a search bar for whatever else you need to whittle down the results list.

Another feature I like is the "Show cheapest first", which speaks to the cheapskate in me (and I know my grandma has one, too).  I don't get the distinction between "Private" and "Company" though; browsing through the ads didn't make it any clearer.  Still, that didn't prove to be a deterrent in finding a promising ad or two, with just enough details, to keep me interested.

Yet another big plus for me is the lack of banner ads in-between search results.  There are Google Ads at the bottom of each results page.  That, to me, is a good design call because that way, the clean, organized look that greeted searchers on the homepage is maintained and the results list not cluttered unnecessarily by confusing ads.

Despite a few minor limitations, AyosDito.ph looks very useful and -- as their tagline goes -- easy and simple, which is really what's important for searchers.