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!

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.

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.

Objectives:

• To improve the experience buyers and sellers have on my website with something much more powerful and compelling.  I will measure this using the bounce rate, which is currently at 71%.
• To improve my conversion rate to sale.  I am currently at just over 1%.
• To implement a state of the art lead management and drip email system to better manage my buyer agents and hold them accountable.
• To reduce my current cost per lead of PPC campaigns with a high converting site and IDX solution.  I am currently roughly at 9% on paid traffic.  I do not have the data for organic traffic.

Current Assesment and Possible Solutions:

Website Front End:

• This is what clearly needs the most work.  On the home page the first thing that I think needs to be done is to take the main space just under the nav bar that is currently hosting my latest blog post and turn that entire space into a nicely designed quick search form to search listings.  This on it’s own should create considerably more lead conversions.  The main blog post would then be relocated under the popular neighborhood search area.
• I think I need to remove the big orange “find a home” button in the header and replace it with my team’s phone number for easy reference.
• I also need to remove the quick post section on the home page given that I have not tweeted anything in about a year.
• IDX – I am thinking of making a change.  What is the highest converting, most user friendly, system out there right now?  As a bonus, it would be great for it to also be an index-able IDX.  I am currently considering staying with Diverse Solutions or switching over to Real Geeks or REW.  Am I missing any good options?  I am even open to a custom IDX if you have any good suggestions.
• What else needs to be done in your view?  I am sure I am missing something….

Lead Management and CRM:

As you know, finding a strong real estate specific CRM is a challenge.  I am currently just working off the Diverse Solutions back end system.  While it has served me well, I think it is time for a more advanced solution.

I want a system that can do as much of the following as possible:

• Allow me to run reports on my agent’s lead follow up to see who is and who is not doing their job.
• How long is it taking each agent to respond to leads?
• What leads have not been called in 30, 60, 90, or any amount of days I choose?
• Lead preference reports such as who is looking for a 3 bedroom home under $500,000 in Carlsbad so I can alert them all of a strong new listing.
• Favorite property alerts when one is chosen.
• Drip email integration and the ability to see who is opening what email and when.
• The ability to assign every lead that comes through to a lender as well as an agent.  The lender should be able to produce their own drip email as well.
• And of course all of the traditional features such as listing alerts, round robin or manually assigned leads, and auto responders that any of us would expect.

What system do I go with to achieve as many of these goals as possible?

I have seriously considered customizing my own CRM on Propertybase.  I am also under the impression that Real Geeks and REW both offer strong solutions.  It is just so darn hard to find an all inclusive package that excels in all aspects.  I will probably have to compromise something, but what is the best solution or combination or systems to get as much of what I want? (Top Producer is not an option).

Open to constructive criticism and suggestions.  I will absolutely be making some major changes based on the discussion and my continuing research.  I will update you all later in the year to report back how it all went.

+

Wow, the Zillow acquisition of Diverse Solutions for $7.8 million in cash and stock is big big news for this industry. I’ve got a unique perspective on this announcement for a few reasons:

1. At Virtual Results, we work extremely closely with Diverse Solutions. Their dsIDXpress comes standard with every Predesigned Website that Works (dsSearchAgent is optional), and on most of our customs.
2. I worked for Zillow for almost 5 years & worked with Diverse Solutions as an API partner starting back in 2007 (& 2008).
3. I happen to be close friends with a few people at Diverse Solutions

It goes without saying that I want to congratulate all those involved. I have many friends at both organizations, so I’m obviously happy to see them join forces. But, what does it mean for everyone involved you are likely wondering?

Zillow

First, this gives Zillow relationships with the roughly 200 MLS’ that Diverse Solutions currently works with. It’s a much easier process to work with one data provider like Diverse Solutions than working with 200 different MLS’ individually. We all know listings quality continues to be a pain in the rear for all real estate portals — one interesting product that will certainly come as a result of this acquisition is a seamless listing syndication program for all Diverse Solutions clients that’s hooked straight to MLS data.

Second, there is certainly revenue growth here for Zillow — the deal gives Zillow the ability to sell Diverse Solutions products to their sizable advertiser base, as both a package deal with Zillow Premiere Agent subscriptions as well as a standalone IDX product.

Third, Zillow gets one step closer to being able to offer agents and brokers everything they need to power their respective online marketing efforts.

Diverse Solutions

There is certainly no question this is a massive win for the team at Diverse Solutions. Being backed by the largest real estate site on the web gives them increased engineering resources, sales and marketing, and just general long term strategic security that they didn’t have before.

Diverse Solutions Clients

I expect Diverse Solutions to get a significant bump in terms of development resources, which should mean better products for clients of Diverse. The holy grail of listing management is for an agent/broker to maintain their listings in one place, and have that seamlessly feed into their entire online marketing; this takes Diverse Solutions clients’ one step closer to that (once a seamless syndication product is integrated).

MLS

The MLS data agreements that Diverse currently has in place will all be honored, so I really don’t think this should be much of an issue for MLS’.

Rob picked up on the hostile interpretation of the acquisition – which is the possibility of a “ZDX” that COULD come at some point down the line. “ZDX” (or whatever you want to call it) would be an IDX experience for agent and broker websites powered by Zillow listings rather than IDX data. So, I guess MLS’ might have something to worry about after all. But, this certainly won’t happen for awhile — if at all.

Now, Zillow just needs an integrated website product and a CRM to be able to give agents and brokers a one stop shop of products to power their entire internet marketing efforts

What do you think of this acquisition?

In this article, I list 5 of the Top Apps currently available for adding MLS Search into your Facebook page.

The MLS App – The MLS App has been around for a while now. Jimmy Mackin has produced a beautiful appliance that allows  Agents to add a sleek looking MLS Search to their Facebook Page.

RECake – This company does not provide an installable App through Facebook, but does provide a custom IDX service for adding MLS Search to Facebook, as well as a mobile search app.

IDXPro – An IDX MLS Search Widget that’s meant to be embedded into any website. They offer an App that Agents can instantly install into their Facebook Page. Sophisticated lead capture and Google Map Search, over 400 MLS Boards.

IDX-Buzz – The only solution that I’ve seen that supports multiple languages. IDX Buzz is available in 13 different languages. Users can also share listings on Facebook.

AgentIgnite – Not really a widget, but more of a Real Estate website that embeds within the Facebook platform. I just heard about them the other day from Tech Savvy Agent. Offers sophisticated lead capture capabilities and can function as it’s own stand-alone website.

If I neglected to mention anyone else who has a Facebook App for MLS Search, please feel free to add your own contributions.

My good friends over at Diverse Solutions released a brand new site design about a week ago (I’m been behind with this blog post). Having just recently gone through our own site redesign for Virtual Results, I know full well the amount of work that goes into redesigning your own corporate site — and a lot of that work is content. Their new site is full of a bunch of fantastic content about their 4 core products – dsSearchAgent, dsIDXpress, dsAgentReach, and dsSearchAgent Mobile (part of dsSearchAgent). I’m thinking Ricardo was pretty busy for awhile pulling this all together

The big news is that their new dsSearchAgent Mobile product (which I blogged about a few months ago) came out of BETA. I’d encourage you to go try their demo; it’s a really slick interface for mobile visitors to your website that they put hundreds of hours of time into building. Have questions? Leave them here in the comments, or you can speak to the staff at Diverse directly.

Google announced that they will begin delivering advertising inside map imagery. They will also begin limiting the number of times a free map can be displayed. This causes big potential headaches for IDX providers and Brokerages alike.

First, many MLS’s don’t allow advertising to be displayed in or around their IDX data. Literally overnight, thousands may find their solution out of compliance as a result causing a mad dash to either upgrade to Google Maps Premier API or find another solution like Bing Maps or Map Quest.

Second, brokers might find themselves inadvertently providing free advertising space for their competitors inside their own listings. Software vendors were notified that they have 90 days before ads begin appearing sometime in July.

While it’s probably not a game changer for the bigger players who can afford the $10,000 a year Google Premier starting fees, this will definitely leave a lot of people scratching their head wondering what to do next.

Trulia, YAHOO!, Zillow and others would claim that their ad treatments are no different from the standard industry practices of “cooperation and compensation” and IDX display, where someone other than the listing broker works with a buyer and where competing brokers advertise the listing broker’s properties. However, as noted above, closer examination suggests that consumers often are not aware that their inquiries are being directed to someone other than the listing agent. And the user experiences on these sites often actively disadvantage the listing agents. Moreover, the IDX infrastructure is specifically designed to help brokers provide permission for their counterparts to advertise their listings (with prominent attribution for the listing broker). Many publishers would be hard pressed to argue that the listing brokers have knowingly granted permission for third-parties to advertise and capture leads on their listings, and the treatments on Trulia, YAHOO!, and Zillow are in no way comparable to typical IDX display rules.

In my mind, there is no question that IDX results in the same confusion regarding who the listing agent is that Z/T/YRE has. Ask Jay Thompson or Kris Berg how many phone calls they field from buyers who find their websites as a result of address searches for a particular property they are interested in and have no clue that they are not calling the listing agent. The answer is “a lot”.

In any case, I don’t know why this is such an issue. Last I checked, the goal of listing agents was to sell their listings — no? Why does it matter who the buyer contacts once they find the home? In many cases, it’s NOT in a buyer’s best interests to contact the listing agent in any case. A listing agent has a vested interest in selling them THAT home. A buyer’s agent has a vested interest in selling the buyer a home that’s right for them. At least, in theory.

Would buyer’s agent rather not pay for leads? Sure. But is that reasonable to expect? No. Finding business comes down to time or money. You can either invest the time yourself over an extended period of time to build your network & book of business, or you can pay money to other’s who already have significant reach to bypass or speed up finding clients. It’s a pretty simple equation.