Week in Review on the Real Estate Web

Here’s some of the stuff that caught my eye this week:

A Real Estate Deal, Seen From 2 Sides

The New York Times published this article consisting of two fictional letters. One from a buyer to a seller and the seller’s response. The piece was written after the author had spoken to a number of real estate professionals. The content of the letters echoes a lot of the conversations happening online about why to buy and how to market/position a home for sale. Read it at the NYT site.

Real Estate and the Meatball Sundae

The Real Estate Zebra strikes by interpreting one of Seth Godin’s wonderful metaphors for real estate. The point seems to be that all the fun and exciting toys we all like to play with (Twitter, Flip video cameras, blogs, social media sites etc etc etc) probably shouldn’t just be slapped on to existing business structures and models. I’d love to hear more about this line of thinking. Maybe I’ll tap into it some next week. For now though, read up at the Real Estate Zebra.

Level playing fields in Real Estate Internet Marketing?

Bill Lublin, over at agentgenius.com, talks about MLS rules and level playing fields (and why those of you who bother reading blogs about marketing and all that probably don’t need/want level playing fields). Which brings us to…

The Dept. of Justice vs Nat. Assoc. Realtors settlement

This one is well outside my knowledge base (aka: I am not a lawyer). That said, lots to read about it: Inman News wrote the first piece I read on it, Jay Thompson gives a good roundup of reaction, Greg Swann gives a strong “who cares?” and Sellsius frames the decision in light of Zillow.

Silly MLS IDX Rules

Andrew Mattie posts at Geekestate a great list of odd MLS IDX rules. Sort of reminds one of those collections full of quirky laws on state and municipal books.

And it is the weekend after all…

From one of my favorite real estate blogs: Bad MLS Photo of the Day. We get a quick lesson in composition.

Google Maps + Data = PolicyMap

Joel Burslem gives the rundown on PolicyMap:

PolicyMap says they’re pulling all that data from a number of sources including the U.S. Census, Claritas, the FBI, the IRS as well as information from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act and Boxwood Means (a real estate research firm), among others. It compiles all that data and then scrubs it to ensure that it is reliable and accurate.

Read more about it at “PolicyMap Maps A Metric Crapload of Data” including how it might be useful for real estate.

Twitter Toy Review: Twitter Vision

Ok, so a warning to you: If you think Twitter is a waste of time, this twitter toy will prove it. If you are prone to Twitter dependency do not, under any circumstance go and look at Twittervision.

What is Twittervision?

Take a map, hook it up to the live feed of everything coming through Twitter. Show all the tweets on the map. In real-ish time. Don’t like a flat map? Use their 3D view which takes a globe and revolves it to the location of the tweeter.

Is there any business use for Twittervision?

The short answer is: Nope.

The long answer is:

• Buzz monitoring.
• Putting breaking “news” in geographical context.
• Gaining inspiration from random sources.
• Reading small chunks of foreign languages.

If you want to know more about business uses for Twitter (strong emphasis on real estate Twitter usage but there’s something there for everyone I think) go to the Twitter for Real Estate or Business page.

Recent Website Launches

There is a backlog of website launches from Union Street Media so I will be batching them together each week to avoid “site launch” overload. This week we’ll cover some launches from earlier this summer:

Mount Ascutney Hospital, a community hospital in the birthplace of Vermont. Including custom website design, content management system and Google Maps integration.

Gardner and Gardner Real Estate, specializing in northern Vermont real estate. Including custom website design, integrated MLS search (advanced and quicksearch), featured listings, one-click searches, and user tools (save search, new listing notification, favorite properties).

Lomenzo Properties, redefining the Cape Cod real estate experience. Including featured listings, integrated MLS search, one-click search, user tools and integrated real estate blog.

Omega Real Estate, focusing on the needs of empty nesters including ADA compliant homes. Including one click searches, integrated MLS search and user tools.

Using Web Traffic Analysis to Know More About Your Customers

All the numbers and charts from your analytics package are the equivalent of watching customers walk into a retail store, browse around and hopefully buy something. While many business owners who are new to analytics focus heavily on the number of people coming in the door (site visits), not as many focus on what they do when they get in the door.

To stretch this metaphor a bit more, retail stores often have someone on staff that is tasked specifically with setting up the store so that people can find things they are looking for, discover things they weren’t looking for but might like and conduct a transaction. These staff members watch the store in person or via video to understand traffic patterns.

For your site, your web analytics is what you have to observe traffic. And making changes to the structure of your site (either by rearranging, adding or removing content) can improve the entire user experience.

An article from the Wall Street Journal published last month describes how several online retailers are using this customer experience data to improve their sales. Sometimes making small discoveries (like using the number zero in a coupon code can cause user failure because they don’t know if it’s the letter O or a zero) that have dramatic impact.

According to the article “trade group Shop.org and Forrester found that online retailers are allocating 21% of their total 2008 marketing budgets to online customer retention.” Another great data point from the study: “32% of Web shoppers have been online for seven years.” These folks have high expectations.

So dig a little deeper, get beyond the total number of visits coming to your site and start asking questions about what they do when they get there. Put that information in context, make a decision about how you can improve life for your online customer based on that information and move forward.

Joan Heaton Architects

Union Street Media is proud to launch Joan Heaton Architects, a Vermont residential architecture firm specializing in green building and sustainable design. The website makes use of our custom design and content management system.

Mobile Social Networking

eMarketer recently released a report on marketing to social networks that have a mobile component (like that little m.myspace.com or what-have-you). This appears to be in line with other reports on mobile usage and where the audience goes there go the marketers. Here’s a pullquote from Debra Aho Williamson, one of the report’s authors:

It goes beyond simply linking people with digital content by adding the immediacy of sharing with friends—a very powerful marketing proposition.

So here we have the mashup of two pretty exciting opportunites: social network marketing and mobile technology. Since people like to be “social” spontaneously, combining a pervasive technology like mobile phones/internet devices is like combining peanut butter and chocolate, or whatever you like to combine.

Action? John du Pre Gauntt, another of the report’s authors has this to say:

Marketers are trying to determine which digital marketing techniques and ad units are relevant for the mobile social networking environment.

What tools and techniques are you using or researching?

Sometimes technology works, sometimes it’s at odds with the world.

Scott Nellé, one of our developers, just shot this over to me via Adium. It just goes to show that the best laid plans…

Enjoy.

Google Street View: 0

Plastic Bag: 1

Are you taking full advantage of your USM website’s software?

Some of you may know that my Mother, Peggy Smith, is one of our clients. She recently redesigned her site and purchased the software upgrade with email notification. Over dinner one evening she mentioned she was sending her buyers new listings through the MLS web site rather than her own. It occurred to me that she could use her site’s own email notification software and benefit from the built-in branding it provides.

I then realized she’s probably not alone; the user registration is, after all, geared towards the site visitor. However, it could just as easily be used to the agent’s advantage for new leads that come from other sources.

My Advice:

When you get a new lead, ask for the appropriate search criteria and an email address. That is all you need to create a new account!
Read more

Mobile usage from Pew

A lot of useful demographic info on the use of mobile phones by Americans. Including insight along ethnicity, age and socio-economic factors.

Here’s the chart on what sort of data services people are using:

One of the insightful bits of sleuthing our friends at the Pew Research Center did was to examine “internet usage away from home or work.” They asked both two questions: the first was a “how often do you” style question and then the remaining was a more specific “in the past 12 months, have you” style question. Combining these results they discovered “that nearly two-thirds (64%) of internet users have gone online away from home or work, which could include wired access at libraries or in hotel rooms.”

They also asked about specific technologies used away from home: PDAs, wireless laptops, cell phones to tease out how many used wireless technology (as opposed to logging into a public terminal at a library, for example). Here’s what they come up with (emphasis mine): “41% of all Americans who have logged on wirelessly away from home” have done so with a PDA, wireless laptop or cell phone.

What sort of actions could you take to improve your business based on this information?

keep looking »