Personally, I don’t buy any of the reasons given by Metrolist. As marketing Director Melissa Olson says, ”At some point, we have to start taking a look at our current offering and how many vendors really make sense in our marketplace.” Politically correct? Yup. But the truth? I doubt it. They cut ties because Zillow now owns Diverse Solutions, and are worried about the data usage behind the scenes.

At least Laurel Abbott at Santa Barbara was honest about their decision:

The (Diverse Solutions IDX) product is actually a fine product, it’s just that they sold to Zillow…Zillow is not a friend to organized real estate, so we’ve voted not to support (the company). There were concerns of misuse of our data. (The Zillow website) is grossly inaccurate. (The site overinflates) what our (for-sale) numbers are (and) includes information from properties that have sold months ago. It’s not an accurate site

MLS’s around the country are obviously fearful that Zillow will somehow use IDX data to their advantage to make the MLS even more obsolete to their members.

I’ve heard rumblings for a few months that some MLS’s were considering this move (I’ve heard Sacramento may be considering making this move as well), but I didn’t think any would actually go through with it. I’ll admit — I was certainly proven wrong in this case.

To current clients of Diverse Solutions in Colorado and Santa Barbara – this is going to be a huge pain in the a** to have to switch vendors within the allotted time (a month or two I believe). In some cases, those agents could have spent dozens of hours customizing links, pages, email alerts, etc — and an MLS committee decides to wipe all their work out overnight just because they don’t like Zillow as a company? That seems heavy handed to me.

To me, these decisions take me back to the questions “What is the core competency of an MLS?” and “What is the value add they bring to their members?”

If it’s data? If it’s deciding what the best IDX vendors are for their members?

Then they are going to obsolete within a few years.

What do you think? Is this trend going to continue in 2012, or will MLS’ come to their senses?

They are a relatively new company but it’s founder, Eric Bramlett, has given the company an impressive vision.  I thought it was pretty clear that they understand what agents really want out of their websites.  Loads of leads and great branding.  Not to mention control over their own website.

My new site is under development and I won’t reveal yet what vendor I want with but I thought Displet should be on everybody’s radar so I interviewed Eric Bramlett about his company.  Here it is:

Q. – What are the advantages of the Displet platform?

A. – What sets Displet apart is is customization features & its lead capture. We’ve developed the most customizable RETS/IDX solution, short of a ground up build, which typically cost $10k plus (and often much more.) We give you control of 100% of the CSS, 80% of the HTML, and we allow you to insert approved Javascript libraries. Basically, you can get the look and feel of a full custom, for much less. You’ll still have to pay a developer (unless you are one) to build off of our platform, but you get to piggyback off the work we’ve already done building out the RETS/IDX features, including our lead capture features. Our lead capture features include our property suggestion tool, phone number nag, light window login, Facebook registration, and a ton more. I could literally talk about them for hours. Oh, we also love and support WordPress. While we integrate with any website, you see a ton of WordPress freebies from us.

Q. – Your website says that you can integrate your solution into an existing site.  Please expand on that.

A. – While we love WordPress, we’ve also integrated with Drupal, Joomla, and hard coded sites. We’re super developer friendly, so coders can user our API to do some really cool stuff. Quick searches, stats widgets, an almost infinite number of landing page queries, featured listings, etc… We specialize in RETS/IDX and we’ve opened up our work to outside developers through our API, effectively.

Q. – Most people know about IDX but please explain what RETS is and how that plays into your solution.

A. – IDX is the agreement between brokers that allows you to advertise other listings on your site. It’s also what they called the old FTP feed. RETS is the Real Estate Transaction Standard. It’s the new technology that we use to get the data from your board. The old FTP sucks and the new RETS feed is pretty cool.

Q. – Please talk about the fact that your system allows agents to customize the Title Tag and meta description in listing details pages.  Why is that important?

A. – There is a lot of longtail traffic to be had for direct address match queries & mls number search queries. A page’s title tag is arguably the strongest SEO signal you can send to Google, and the meta description is effectively your call to action to get someone to click on your organic link. So, we think it’s very important to give agents the strongest tools they can use to organically rank for high traffic queries, and then get browsers to click on their link.

Q.  What other SEO advantages does Displet offer?

A. -  You can optimize your property details pages to the Nth degree, since you have control of 100% of the HTML on those pages. We also provide some cool WordPress plugins to help your neighborhood and property details pages get indexed and rank.

Q. – How much of the front end look and feel can be customized?

A. – If you (or your developer) is a javascript ninja, then you could build a completely unrecognizable search from our system. Without Javascript, you can do quite a bit w/ advanced CSS and the HTML control we give you.

Q. – What do you offer in terms of lead management, drip campaigns, and CMS?

A. – Our property suggestion tool automatically creates saved searches based on a user’s browsing history. So, you’ll send out relevant properties to pretty much every user that registers on your site, without doing any work. It’s pretty cool when you get a reply email from someone you’ve never talked with, thanking you for all of the listings, and asking for an appointment.

Historically, we’ve focused on lead conversion, rather than CMS features, so we integrated with third party CMSs like Realtiva, Highrise, Heap, & RealtyJuggler (who all have drip mailers.) However, we’re banging out some pretty sweet CMS features right now. I’m really excited to put them in action.

Q. – I know you offer listings results in both list and map format.  Does either one see a higher conversion rate than the other?

A. – They’re fairly even. We see the biggest difference in conversion rates based on when you request registration. People all have opinions on the subject, but the numbers say to require/request registration on the first property detail view.

Q. – Please talk about your many WordPress plugins and what they offer. 

A. – We offer a DispletSearch plugin that allows you to easily insert quick search widgets into any sidebar, and that allow you to create more elaborate “advanced searches” that aren’t live searches – they’re the old school “enter your criteria and then click next” that seem to convert well in some markets. Our DispletReader plugin allows you to add featured listings to a sidebar and to create really cool landing pages with very specific queries. If you want to build out a landing page for “waterfront modern style foreclosures from $1m – $2m” you could do it. DispletReader has 5 different display views, if I remember correctly. We have another plugin in alpha called DispletPost that allows you to automatically create blog posts based on different search criteria.

Q. – Is there anything else you would like to share with our audience?

A. – It’s a good time for agents right now! When we started the project, the playing field for RETS/IDX was pretty weak, and the real estate market was down. It looks like the real estate market is quickly swinging back up and the RETS/IDX technology companies have started bringing their A games!

Over the past few years speaking to agents all over the country, I often get asked how to build a local blog that consistently generates leads over time (and hint: it’s not easy nor is it fast). Rather than continue to field those questions one off, why not just build a local real estate blog from scratch — publicly? This is an idea I’ve been brewing in the back of my mind ever since I ran across the Million Dollar Blog Project. And then the comment thread on Daniel Beer’s a Brutally Honest Case Study turned the idea into a real initiative. If you so desire, you can follow along and build a site yourself. Of course, to do it yourself you’ll need the design and development skills (or money for them) — but we’ll get into all that later. First, let’s be clear what we are setting out to accomplish.

The Goal

Build a real estate website from the ground up, sourcing input from the tech-savvy Geek Estate community, with the following goals:

• Maximize lead generation (signups, blog or IDX)
• Maximize lead conversion (phone calls, requests for showings, specific property requests, track closings from site long-term)
• Maximize time on site, page views/visit
• Minimize bounce rate

How it Will Work

Let me start by saying I don’t want to finalize any details of Geek Build 2012 without the help of the Geek Estate community. There are some amazing talented individuals that follow this blog regularly, and I certainly want your feedback. After all, this project is owned by the entire community — not just me.

I’ve spoken about the Geek Build 2012 project with several individuals, including Daniel Bacon, as a result of the discussion on Daniel Beer’s post – and here’s what we’re thinking makes the most sense:

• There will be between 2-5 actual local real estate sites built (or rebuilt).
• Sites will be built on top of WordPress.org.
• Everything from the branding to the domain name to the title tags to the design to the IDX solution to the calls to action to the the wireframe to the content strategy will be discussed publicly and all decisions will be voted on by the Geek Estate community.
• There will be a steering committee that will make final decisions after reviewing all the feedback from the community. It will consist of several experienced technologists and at least two active real estate agents/brokers who make their primary living from selling real estate.
• The development and design will be crowd sourced to the Geek Estate community (a few tech-savvy passionate participants, and who ever else is willing and able to help), and participants will be expected to pick up the cost of design or development that they cannot do themselves (or cannot be shared across all sites).

What We Need

• Participants – so far, Daniel Bacon is the only confirmed participant who will be building a website. The details regarding what is required of a participant are not totally final — but unless you are able to handle both design and code yourself, there will likely be some cost to participating.
• Coders/Designers – in a perfect world, we’d have one PHP/CSS person and one designer to volunteer some of their time to help on this project. Whether or not the right person is out there and willing to help? I’m not sure.
• Steering Committee Members – if you’re interested in serving on the steering committee, shoot me an email with your qualifications and include a note as to why you want to participate.

**It’s probably goes without saying, but all participants, volunteers, and steering members will get proper recognition throughout this project – you’ll be in the spotlight

Want to get Involved

Leave a comment here, or email me at drew at esmexecdesigns dot com with the subject “Geek Build 2012″.

Look forward to hearing from you…this is going to be a very fun, collaborative process that we’ll undertake together over the coming weeks and months.

More updates to come soon!

How to make your customers fall in love with your website

In the court of online real estate, your customers are judge and jury, but the testimony that you hear will take place out of earshot. The rules are unwritten but they are set in stone. Give your customers a really good reason to trust you, like you and feel like you can serve their needs and they will toss aside their inhibitions, along with their reluctance to part with their business. That’s because they want you, the right website and the right business, the right broker to make their decisions easy. Not guilty by irrational reasoning. (i.e. crazy in like) Your customers hear every message you send – intentional or not. Your attitude is nearly everything. Customers want you to show a certain degree of eagerness, but not desperation. They want you to believe in yourself and demonstrate why they should believe in you too. They want you to be fun but also someone they can lean on for help. They want to trust you.

The web version of chocolate and roses in the world of online real estate is:

1. Build your site to answer your customer’s questions.
2. Know your niche and be the customer’s expert on it.
3. Get to know your customers and what their pain points are.
4. Make searching on your site an intuitive engaging experience.
5. Translate what you offer into solving customer pain.
6. Build your site from the users perspective.
7. Make it easy to gather and share what they came for.
8. Use photo and video visuals liberally.
9. Create interesting non-pitchy content and give it away.
10. Always deliver on what you’ve promised.
11. Provide absolutely impeccable service always.
12. Optimize for SEO, rinse and repeat.

At the end of the day, what we’re working to cultivate is trust in an environment lacking human interaction. These are a just few of the ways that you can cultivate that trust, forge new relationships and enhance existing ones. Falling in love is just the first step; you have to deliver even after the bloom is off the rose.

No one disputes the need for IDX on a successful real estate website. With that said, what are the absolute BEST IDX platforms for real estate agents and brokers on the market today?

Diverse Solutions dsSearchAgent

vs

rewIDX

vs

Displet

vs

Real Geeks

vs

IDX Broker

vs

iHomeFinder

What do you use? What do you think? Does it work? Do your client like it? What’s your conversion rate? Are there any other providers that deserve to be on this list that I missed? Do any of these providers deserve to be axed from the list?

Would love your feedback as to what works and what doesn’t in the land of IDX.

Best

Here are two of the best in my mind.

MSQRealty.com

What’s not to like? My prediction — this will be the best site in the entire industry within 6 months. I’ve seen some of the new stuff Dominic has been working on the last few weeks (such as new “building” pages) — and they are wicked cool.

Disclosure: Dominic Morrocco, a partner with M Squared, and I are good friends, and he is a client of Virtual Results where I used to work.

SueAdler.com

I simply LOVE the design of this site, and the focus on the commute information to Manhattan. Further, if you use BoomTown – check out the integrated BoomTown search experience into her primary site.

Disclosure: This is a site by Virtual Results, my former employer.

Worst

What do you think? Do I dare call out some bad ones? In the name of radical honesty, I will call out a few subpar (to put it nicely) sites I’ve come across…

Crye-Leike

In all honestly, I’m just beyond confused as a user as to what they want me to do when I get to the home page. It’s too cluttered with irrelevant information. So..instead of try to figure it out, I’d just go back to Google and look for another site with a simpler user interface.

Z57 and Advanced Access

Any of the thousands of sites built by Z57 (like this one) or Advanced Access (like this one) could be on this list.

Your Thoughts

Note that I’ve seen a lot of agent and broker websites, but no where near all of them. These were the sites I liked the most, and least.

What are your favorites? And what horrible sites have you seen lately in dire need of an overhaul?

The real estate industry is buzzing about Edina Realty and ARG pulling their listings from syndicators.  The announcement, one strong view, and a different response.

Most of the arguments about syndication are ignoring the elephant in the room.

Real estate brokers and syndication sites are battling for SEO.

9 out of 10 home buyers today are online.  The first business to grab a consumer’s attention is likely to get that consumer’s business, or generate revenue through the online traffic.  Buyers and sellers create income for whichever business has the most-accessible presence online.

All real estate companies are in competition.

Brokerages, individual agents, vendors, and syndicators collaborate in many useful and productive ways, but we are all in competition for the consumer’s dollar.  Brokers owe a high level of professional representation to our clients, while maintaining a competitive and sustainable business model at the same time.  When we disregard the competitive nature of our business, we lose focus in our decision making.

When you give away your listing, you give away SEO.

Unique content online is king for SEO.  Own a unique piece of online real estate, and you own the traffic and revenue that come along with it.  The more times you duplicate and syndicate that content, the more diluted it becomes, and the less-valuable your share of it becomes, in terms of SEO.  An individual listing is a unique and valuable piece of online property.

Who is #1 when buyers search for [Your City] real estate or homes for sale?

Is it a national syndication site?  Quite possibly.  When buyers search for your listing, “123 Main St ,City State”, they also probably find the syndicator first.  Why?  Because you gave it to them.  Thousands of real estate brokers give their SEO to that site every day.  Brokers create thousands of links to syndication sites’ listings, and effectively encourage their clients/consumers to do the same.

Is diluting your listing’s SEO good for your client?

Who is best to receive the inquiry from a buyer?  Better yet, who would the buyer want to receive his/her inquiry?  Trulia doesn’t know where Seattle homes are in the neighborhoods of Inverness or Arroyo.  Realtor.com can’t find Newport Shores or Surrey Downs, because it doesn’t list homes for sale in Bellevue in those neighborhoods (yes, I am pushing my own SEO right now).  A local agent would know, but they’ve all given their rights to that traffic away through SEO dilution.  It doesn’t matter who is “best”.  All that matters is who is “seen”.

Listings create consumer traffic.  Consumer traffic creates revenue. 

It’s true that these large sites currently have far more national traffic than most brokers’ local sites.  That traffic comes from brokers’ listings. Listings are the holy grail of online real estate.  Consumers certainly like maps and research features, but in the end their #1 goal is to find a home.  Without listings, a website is just an informational resource, without a solution to the home buyer’s ultimate need.  [Zillow has an amazing real estate website.  It used to generated its revenue through beverage advertising.  Until real estate brokers' listings and corresponding agent ads grew the revenue significantly, this company was not in a position to have the big, successful IPO they they had last year.]

Who should consumers find when they search for homes in your neighborhood?

That’s debatable, and really outside the SEO topic.  Most real estate brokers know dozens of local associates that they respect for their knowledge of the local market.  Unfortunately for them, they all point their web traffic to a national aggregator who may or may not.  Collectively, they’ve told the consumer to ask a syndication site.

Real Estate SEO will determine the direction of our industry in the long-term.

The companies that are successful selling real estate online will continue to gain greater power and influence over consumers, brokers, and even legislation that affects the real estate industry.  As a handful of companies gain larger shares of the market, more brokers are taking notice, but far too few are focusing on the source of that power.

SEO is your real estate online.  It is much like real estate in the physical world. 

Those who own the best real estate have usually worked hard for it, paid well for it, and will protect it fiercely.  The more they acquire, the more powerful they become.  Those who disregard its value and allow their real estate SEO to be acquired by others will see their influence wane and, over time, fail in their efforts.

In the end, brokers will decide on their own what is in the best interest of their clients, and their business.  The answer is not as cut-and-dry as many might assume.  Page views, traffic, experience, local knowledge, and a host of other factors will determine what is best for each individual’s clients.

Bottom Line:  Buyers will search.  They will find listings.  If they’re not at the syndication source, they’ll find them at the broker source.  The key is not in pointing as many people as possible to just any web site.  The key is pointing the right people to the right listing source.

You want to know how agents and brokers are really making money from social media?

It’s not from the engagement. It’s not from the connections they gain.

It’s from SEO.

Most of those making money with social media are doing it by floating their SEO efforts (which means more traffic/conversions). I obviously don’t have access to the hard numbers, but I know someone like Jay Thompson is making money from the SEO juice his site, PhoenixRealEstateGuy, has gained as a result of his social media activity over the past 5+ years. How does that happen? A number of ways. For starters, posts like this link to his site constantly because he’s one of the most well known real estate brokers in the country in the social media world. Secondly, he’s met LOTS of people via social media. And anyone that knows search engine optimization knows the way to win is to know LOTS of other individuals who own websites (and can link back to you). Well, Jay knows a ton of them. Anytime I think of or hear “Phoenix”? I — thousands across the country and world – think of Jay. That’s worth it’s weight in gold when it comes to SEO. Why? Because anytime a conversation about Phoenix comes up, there is a good chance I’m going to link to Jay. Oh yea — and all those conference mentions he gets? They don’t hurt either.

You likely already know getting a site to rank well is hard work if you’re going after even a somewhat competitive keyword. But to succeed on the web, we all know you have to spend time or money on it. You should already know the cost of neglecting SEO. It goes without saying that SEO is certainly a long way from dead. It’s just shifted away from strictly links, links, links as Facebook Likes, Tweets, and Google +1′s are transforming into the more common voting mechanisms of the web. It’s hard to measure precisely, but I think it’s fair to say anyone with a strong social media presence knows their social media efforts are massively helping their own SEO efforts.

Don’t get me wrong. Yes, certainly use social media to increase engagement with your current sphere and find new contacts to increase your sphere of influence, but the real money is made by leveraging your social media to improve your own SEO.

What do you think? Agree or disagree?

**Photo via MarkVitorillo

It was getting close to Inman Connect NY, and I could feel the urgency in a text message from Matt Beall, ”did you get my email regarding the social media case study for Inman?”

I’m sure somewhere—in the ether that is my inbox—sat an email from Mr. Beall. Knee deep in a Hawaii Life interface redesign, however, my Gmail account was left unmanaged and overflowing its 200G limit.

Since integrating social media into our real estate search in September 2011, I hadn’t really thought about the project. Social (from a business standpoint) was not driving sales, and my mind was on other things that were—specifically a recent surge in mobile traffic led by the iPad.

With Inman looming on the horizon, however, it was time to do a little digging into our social integration project. A text message to Yax, Hawaii Life’s lead programmer, and a few minutes later the Facebook insights installation was complete.

A quick test drive of the Insights interface (Facebook could learn a thing or 2 from Google Analytics) and I was off. 332,828 Facebook impressions in the month of December. Wait…what? 332K impress…ions? Could that be right? It was.

Still, with over 1.2 million impressions in the 4 months since launching the Facebook comment box and other social media buttons, it had resulted in zero trackable sales. But that doesn’t mean that the integration into search wasn’t working, just not how we expected.

Instead of generating leads that turned directly into sales, social media created a platform that allowed other people to share our brand.

Using Social Media to Build Brand

You can learn how Hawaii Life is using social media to build its brand in 2 ways:

1) Short & Sweet - The slides for the Inman presentation in PDF format, sexified by Winny (Creative D / Co-founder):

Case Study – How to (Effectively) Integrate Social Media into Property Search

2) Detailed – The entire report which was used to create the presentation:

Integrating Social Media into Real Estate Search

If you have questions, comment below. I’m sure there will be several. There were at Inman after Matt gave his talk, which I believe (without being bias) was one of the better presentations at the conference.

One says that it is smart to build smaller niche community sites that will help to further brand you in neighborhoods you are interested in.  They can also be used to push traffic to your main site or to convert leads right on the smaller community sites.

The opposite camp would argue that it is not smart to spend valuable resources (time, money, and link juice) on any secondary sites.  Also, if not done carefully, this strategy can appear spammy and can even create brand confusion for consumers.

Both arguments make sense to me.  I am curious as to what all you tech savvy real state people out there reading this post think is best so please share in the comments section.  I thought this could make for an interesting discussion.