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A real estate broker, Gary, came to us asking if we could solve a problem. He realized it was important to attract customers to his listings through the Internet, but adding a new property to his web site could take several hours of a specially trained person's time. As a consequence, his web site listed only a few of the brokerage's properties and was continually out of date. Gary asked if we could build a web site that could be updated in a few minutes by the individual agents who knew absolutely nothing about making web pages. Furthermore, he didn't want them to have to learn about making web pages. Yes, we could. The initial cost for such a web site would be prohibitive, however, much more than a single brokerage could afford. But we agreed to create a computer program that would generate the web site he wanted if we could use the program for other real estate brokerages as well. Gary agreed and we created the Real Estate Web Application. People can sit for hours looking at properties in those free "Homes for Sale" booklets you find in grocery stores. So our approach is to present properties in a similar fashion on the Internet, with added features. Each property can have multiple, color photos. One property can be in several categories, making it easier for the buyer to locate the property they are interested in. With embedded email, it's easy for the customer to contact the real estate agency. Another area of importance is encouraging repeat visits. A new listings section allows visitors to quickly view recent additions to the online booklet. This is particularly valuable to professional real estate investors. Sellers expect an agency to promote their property. They want to see it advertised. Getting their listing up on the Internet quickly is not only reassuring to the seller, but it can be an important differentiating factor when sellers are choosing an agency. Sellers, when looking for a real estate agency, are quite likely to search for one on the Internet and will do so more often as time goes by. It is important that a real estate agency place high in the search engines. We have spent considerable time and effort making sure that the Real Estate Web Application is search engine friendly. We have tested, and our sites consistently rank high in search engines. A primarily technical concern was keeping the Real Estate Web Application current. We didn't want agencies to contend with installing a program on their computers or installing updates. This would not only be a bother to the real estate agency but it would be an expense for us as well. The solution was to have the program exist solely on our Internet servers and have agents access the program using a modern web browser. An added benefit to this approach has been that our support people can easily provide personal, one-on-one help. Both the agent and the support person can view the same forms at the same time through the Internet even though they are hundreds of miles apart. We recommend that you take a look at some of our customers' web sites to see what we are talking about. We think you will find them easy to browse and an all around enjoyable experience. Then take a look at our online manual to see how easily it is all accomplished. |
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