Welcome to the new iNET Property web site. To put things in perspective, I first started Internet marketing back in 1994 and when I launched my first real estate web site in 1995, the Internet was not exactly a household word. In fact, only 36% of households had computers in 1997, and only about half of those even had Internet access. Today, many households have multiple computers and just about everyone is on the Internet. In the old days (I’m not that old) setting yourself apart from other real estate web sites was easy because there weren’t that many of us. These days, real estate web sites are a dime a dozen and many Internet savvy Realtors have more than one web site. So, how can you tell the difference between a good real estate site and a bad one? What features does a good real estate web site have? In today’s post I’ll answer these questions and over the coming weeks, I’ll go into detail on our web site technology, what’s going on behind the scenes and what else to look for in a good real estate company besides their web site.
First of all, I’d like to make a very important point – a nice web presence is worthless if you can’t back it up. There isn’t a web site in the world that can replace experienced real estate brokers and efficient back-office systems. Our brokers have years of experience in real estate and we provide them with the software and support systems they need to help buyers and sellers compete in an ever changing real estate market.
What to look for in a real estate web site:
- Usability – Is it easy to find what you are looking for? Does the navigation make sense? These are important questions about any web site, especially a real estate site that you may be visiting on a regular basis. We’ve designed our site with logical navigation, plenty of white space and easy to read formatting.
- Property Search – Can you search for all the MLS listings in the area you are interested in? Some real estate sites restrict your search to their in-house listings only. Our IDX (more on IDX in future posts) powered web site enables you to search all listsings, no matter who the listing company is. And, we don’t require registration to search. *If you want to receive email updates, we’ll need your email address :0)
- Education – Is there educational type content on the site? Is it current? This is important, especially given our ever changing marketplace. Our brokers are required to maintain strict educational requirements and we pride ourselves on our efficiency in sharing this important information through our web site. Are you learning something right now? Good, because we plan to post our broker’s educational updates on this blog!
- Contact Information – Can you reach somebody? Many brokers who are good at web sites unfortunately are not as good at communication. There is nothing worse than getting an email property update with the perfect house and not being able to reach your agent for a showing. Multiple contact options are posted throughout our web site and we also ask that you provide us with your preferred method of contact: email, phone, text, smoke signal, etc. If your primary agent is not available, we have on-call backups ready to assist.
- Content – Did you find the information you are looking for and is it up to date? This is where many web sites miss the boat because they don’t keep their sites updated and their content gets stale. We utilize Web 2.0 technologies (more on Web 2.0 in future posts) to provide you with quality updated content in a variety of formats – RSS news feeds, YouTube Videos, etc. and we also distribute via various social media networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr and Twitter. This Blog is another good example of how we keep our web site updated.
There is certainly more to the real estate web than I have shared with you today, but that’s part of our strategy – come back often for more information and to watch us grow!
