Keller Williams, the world’s largest real estate franchise by agent count, ranks first in the U.S. in units and sales volume. The state-of-the-art firm  helps agents connect effectively with home sellers and buyers on its website and mobile apps. “At Keller Williams, we are deeply customer-centric in everything we do. Our team is fully dedicated to creating the best website and mobile apps to meet user needs,” says Ray Maldonado.

Ray, Senior Engineering Manager at Keller Williams—leads a Manual and Automated Quality Team, primarily focused on mobile native and web apps. For Ray’s team, delivering an exceptional user experience is non-negotiable.

Before Sauce Labs, Keller Williams struggled to launch consistent digital experiences across every important browser, device, or platform, impacting customers' ability to access their services whenever and wherever needed. 

When Ray joined Keller Williams, the organization just launched a new development process requiring a comprehensive, automated testing solution. For Ray and his team, easy access to a wide range of devices was essential to support several different platforms and frameworks, along with the flexibility to scale continuous quality practices as they grew. 

Previously, Keller Williams relied heavily on manual testing, conducting 24 releases annually with bi-weekly regression cycles. This inefficient process required developers to locate physical devices to run tedious, time-consuming tests. "I recall when we had to track down each developer to see who had access to testing devices, which only a few engineers could use," said Ray. The process was both costly and inefficient.

The team recognized the need for a seamless, automated cross-browser testing solution to support the new development platform. The team aims to ensure consistent user experiences across all devices and platforms, making apps accessible for home buyers, home sellers, and real estate agents while preventing frustration from app bugs or failures. Additionally, creating a better process for the developers and testers behind the code contributes to a higher-quality digital experience for everyone.

Keller Williams’ team of automation engineers uses Sauce Labs to enhance quality assurance for ongoing releases. Over the past three years, Keller Williams has transitioned from manual to fully automated testing, supporting their goals of releasing faster, improving user experience and driving more customer adoption. 

Sauce Labs' cross-browser capabilities provide Keller Williams access to the latest browsers, OSes, and devices, including emulators and simulators for testing earlier in the development lifecycle. “With Sauce Labs, we can test all of the platform combinations we know are being used by agents and homeowners in the market,” said Ray. Additionally, Ray’s team now has the flexibility and extensibility to integrate with any language, framework, or technology they want to leverage with their development platform (Java, Node, Appium, Python, etc.). 

To enhance efficiency, Ray and his team use Sauce Labs Debugging, which provides logs, screenshots, and test videos, to simplify issue detection and prioritization of critical bugs. Keller Williams also tests Real Devices hosted in the cloud, ensuring issues can be replicated in environments similar to actual users. Lastly, Keller Williams operates in a regulated market, so they rely on Sauce Connect for secure connections to private  applications, housed behind a corporate firewall, allowing for maximum security, alignment with compliance standards, and ensuring protection of all sensitive testing data. 

Ray’s team has built confidence in their testing processes, meeting high-security standards and ensuring confidence that they are in compliance and protected with every test suite run. 

With Sauce Labs, Keller Williams accelerated its release cycles by 60-70% through streamlined infrastructure, automated and secure testing, as well as scalable quality practices. Sauce Labs enables Keller Williams to reduce manual testing by running continuous pipelines daily and facilitating feedback between developers and testers. Keller Williams has become highly agile, adapting quickly to feedback and requests—something that was challenging before implementing Sauce Labs. 

As a result, Keller Williams can:

With a comprehensive quality strategy in place, Ray’s team is set up for success. This is proven by Keller Williams’ primary mobile app, which has 7.7 million downloads, 250,000 weekly active users and ranks among the top real estate applications in the Apple Apps Store, holding a 4.8 star rating across 63,000 reviews.

Finding the perfect home shouldn’t be overshadowed by a clunky app that “fails to return accurate data or [constantly crashes].” And in a world in desperate need of a smile or two, a negative experience is something Keller Williams “simply won’t allow to happen. We want every person to find their dream home effortlessly,” continues Ray.

Keller Williams actively listens to feedback from users to enhance their technology. Their core tenets focus on aligning skilled personnel engineers, effective processes, and advanced technology to provide optimal experiences for real estate agents, home sellers, and home buyers. Keller Williams aims to improve its mobile and web app adoption and release new features more frequently.