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 Peyman Aleagha  Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 We all know that location is arguably the most important aspect of real estate. You won’t be buying a home where you can’t get to work, school or the other things important to you and your family. So, if location is so important, then it is only logical to assume that mapping, and lots of it, is going to be a valuable and important feature of your site.
Of course, we do want to use maps in our IDX results displays. Seeing the location of a home in relation to area sites, businesses, schools, and other important locations is critical. It would be hard to have too many map choices on a successful real estate site. The IDX mapping would of course show the homes that come up in the searches. The ability to zoom in and out to orient better is also a big advantage. But, are there other uses for maps on your site that your visitors would appreciate? There are, and they revolve around specialized mapping.
Continue reading: IDX – If Real Estate is Location, Location, Location – Then Map, Map, Map
Peyman Aleagha Wednesday, May 20th, 2009
IDX, or Internet Data Exchange, is an agreed-upon display of listings of brokers who opt in to the agreement. They can then display their listings and those of all member brokers on their site for search. The fields that are displayed are also agreed upon in advance, and a site can display only the fields that are allowed. Here’s a link to the policy at Realtor.org. So, that’s what it is, a property search display of all members’ listings. How can we “doll it up” to make it better for our site visitor?
First, don’t decide before you get into the shoes of your site visitor, a buyer or seller of real estate. Though we generally think first of buyers searching for homes, land or commercial listings, prospective sellers also search to see what’s on the market in their area and compare those listings to their home. But, let’s think here about a buyer who is hoping to locate the perfect home in your area. What are their requirements and desires?
Continue reading: Customizing Your IDX Solution
Peyman Aleagha Wednesday, May 6th, 2009
IDX stands for Internet Data Exchange. It is a system in which the broker members of a local Multiple Listing Service agree to share their listings in a common database for broker use, as well as marketing release within strict guidelines. All participating brokers can display the IDX on their websites according to the guidelines. What is displayed must be the agreed-upon information fields, and no others.
What happens in many MLS’s is the old “hold back information so they’ll call you” mentality. Or, the listing brokers believe that too many fields in the IDX will allow the consumer to avoid contacting a Realtor for more information. When that mentality is in place, the data fields displayed are usually limited, with many not shown that most consumers would consider as necessary.
Continue reading: IDX – Using Protectionism Against the Competition for Leads
Peyman Aleagha Monday, March 2nd, 2009
As real estate professionals who want to make a success of our Internet presence, we should know some of the terminology. But, we should also know how to concentrate our time and efforts on what’s important when it comes to tracking visits to, and activity on, our websites. These two goals go hand-in-hand when it comes to sorting out website traffic statistics. Let’s look at some terms and see how we want to use these site traffic statistics.
Hits – This one has been around since the beginning, and you’ll still hear a great many people say things like “How do I get more hits on my website?” The truth is, you really shouldn’t look at hit count for any meaningful measure of what’s happening on your site.
Continue reading: Hits, Visits, Page Views – What’s Important?
Peyman Aleagha Monday, February 16th, 2009
It’s been written around the Web that 90+% of real estate websites and blogs are not effective at their intended purpose. This is assuming that your goal for your site is the actual direct generation of business. If all you want is a billboard to place your listings and show to your listing clients, then most any site will do, and you really don’t need to get into lead capture as a strategy.
However, that’s a great waste of the potential of a real estate website. Believe it or not, you can generate listing client leads as easily as buyer leads with the right website and tools. The trick is to entice your visitors to give you their contact information, not steal it from them with black-hat techniques. The right content, a great IDX search page, featured listings, and special offerings is the way to go.
Though there are ways to do it, you never want a visitor to your site to automatically get an email because you somehow captured their address without their knowledge or approval. If you are capturing the contact information of a site visitor, it should always be with their full knowledge, and it should happen because they intended to give it to you. Usually, that will not happen with a simple “Please sign our guestbook” popup. Why should they… what’s in it for them.
Continue reading: The Etiquette of Effective Lead Capture
Peyman Aleagha Monday, February 2nd, 2009
It would be difficult to find a real estate professional who doesn’t understand the value of a website, and the need to have some type of MLS search displayed on it. Yet, a great many of them also complain that they get few or no leads from their websites.
First, if you’re not using some type of analytic or statistics software to track your site’s visitors and the pages they view, you may not even know where you need to concentrate for improvement. Once you know what’s going on, you can do what is necessary to make it better.
How many people are visiting your IDX search page? How long do they stay there, as searches usually make it one of the “stickiest” pages on your site? Few of us would deny that we need to improve these statistics. But, how do we do that?
Continue reading: IDX – Make it Prominent & Easy
Peyman Aleagha Monday, January 12th, 2009
The Internet is changing the way that Realtors do business and market themselves to such an extent that some will just not be around in a few short years. Survival of the fittest is the way of the world, and the fittest in real estate will be those agents and brokers who understand the new Internet consumer and how to engage them from first contact through a commission.
The very first contact that most of you with websites or blogs will have with a consumer will usually be their visit to your site to search for listings. And, you will probably never know that they were there. They come anonymously, and they want to stay that way. They want to find homes or land that meets their requirements and, on this first visit, they do not want to be contacted or to talk to you. If you ever want to talk to these people, ever, then pay heed to the TEN COMMANDMENTS OF IDX.
Continue reading: The Ten Commandments of a Successful IDX Solution
Peyman Aleagha Tuesday, November 25th, 2008
Okay, the title is a bit dramatic. You would die without air, but you’ll live through not having IDX. Your business may not though. We’ve all seen the statistics many times. More than 80% of those in the real estate market use the internet to begin their property search. They want one thing when they visit a website, to locate listings, lots of them, and lots of information and images for those listings.
Guess what! They’re not typing in “john smith real estate for sale” either. We’re not talking about YOUR listings. There is a place for them, and they have a definite reason for being on a site. But we’re talking about millions of daily searches for real estate listing information. And, they’re not looking for yours. They’re looking for everything in the Multiple Listing Service.
Continue reading: Is IDX Necessary for Your Website? – Do You Need Air to Breathe?
Peyman Aleagha Tuesday, November 11th, 2008
Websites are not dead. In fact, it’s a mistaken belief that a blog is not a website. It is just another way of organizing, updating and presenting content. A blog can be a part of your website, or it can stand alone and link to it. The key is to understand what a blog is all about, and how it changes the way in which your site visitors perceive you and interact with you.
What are you trying to accomplish with your Internet presence? Many would say that it is to showcase your services, expertise and listings. That’s correct, but it doesn’t go far enough, nor does it really address the importance of the Web to the average Realtor. What should we be trying to accomplish with our web presence?
Continue reading: Blogging As The Killer Real Estate Business Tool
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