The ARE-TEC Blog: All Things IDX, Website, and Techno-geek

Things have been busy at Casa de ARE-TEC. We’ve been expanding into new MLSes near weekly, and I’m negotiating into new ones as quickly as possible. In the process of ramping up sales, I’ve been talking with agents all over the country and there’s a common theme.  It appears December is the month to reflect on the prior year, plan for adjustments for the upcoming year, set goals, set budgets.

There’s not many that can afford to spend frivolously in this market and economy. Now, more than ever, you’ve got to squeeze every last cent of value out of your purchases. As an agent myself, I’m right there with ya.

So here’s what I’m doing:

In my area, the luxury market has completely dropped out. High end homes aren’t selling. But – the investors are back. Not the I-bought-a-video-and-now-I’m-going-to-buy-a-duplex-with-no-money-down “investors”, but the real ones, the ones who stopped buying when our prices skyrocketed a few years ago.

And they’re buying the bargains, which around here, means they’re buying bank-owned homes. So I need to target the bargain hunters by showing them what’s available.

BUT – “bank-owned” is not a field in my MLS that I can search on, though we’re required to disclose that in the description. Which means it could say lender-owned, or REO, or bank-owned somewhere in the listing, either in the public description or in the agent-only comments. But I can’t search on that easily. However…

My IDX has a full text search, which I can make into an RSS feed. Which means I can do a text search for those “bank owned” type phrases, and make a feed of them. And with that, I can make a whole new website that automatically updates with listings that are only bank-owned homes. And since it’s just an RSS feed in disguise, people can subscribe to listing updates anyway they want to – via email, text message, through a feed reader, whatever they like.

And I never have to update it. It updates automatically, from my IDX. Sweet, no?

With the right tools, I can adjust to any market, and target the people who are ready to buy and sell in whatever market I’m in. And that’s an incredible value for my dollar.

HEY.  ---> Look here...

See that?  That's our rockstar of a client, and the first from San Antonio.  Which means:

ARE-TEC is pleased to announce that our IDX solution is now available to all members of SABOR - the San Antonio Board of Realtors. 

It takes a lot of time and energy to start a business and grow it into something sucessful.  You all know that from developing own businesses as agents.  So we hope you won't mind if we take a minute to share our successes and growth.

I know Matt is still working on the rest of his site, tweaking his design and content and whatnot.  He's also got a blog here at AR.  But the MLS search for San Antonio on his site?  Ready to go.  I'm so excited for him, I can't wait to see his final version and to help him figure out how best to integrate our MLS search and widgets into his site. 

This is going to be fun.

So.  Who wants to be next?

I firmly believe that if you show your web visitors the right information at the right time, they'll love you for it. But in order to do that, you need to understand a little bit about how people behave online, what they see and do.

There was a study done a while back, the Lincoln Study, by Jared Spool, where they gaged user's confidence and success in finding something online, to try to figure out why some sites consistently are good at helping people find their target content and some just aren't. Among other interesting discoveries, they found that when users were successful in finding the target content, the description words of that content appeared on the page 72% of the time. And when users were unsuccessful in finding the target content, the descriptive words only appeared an average of 6% of the time on the page.

Which means...

Users like to see words describing their goal on a site, it helps them have more confidence that the thing they're looking for is indeed there to be found. It's called a scent trail.

In practice, that goes like this: If someone is looking for townhomes in Tucson, and they search Google for "townhomes in Tucson" and just happen to click on that page in my site from the search engine results page, then that page needs to - very prominently - repeat the words "Townhomes in Tucson." We're not trying to be subtle or fancy here. We're trying to be clear and clean and highly usable.

Which means that if I create a page on my site just for people looking at townhomes, then I need to very carefully optimize for those kinds of words, and then I need to restate those words plainly on the page.

Remember - a web page should do one of two things: it either provides the content that someone is looking for, or it provides links to that content. Otherwise, users stop looking and click away.

Last week at this time, I was still at NARlando, packing up the Expo and getting ready to head home. The opportunity to talk with hundreds of folks about their business and their ideas was incredible.

However. It wasn’t completely without frustration.

I am still completely flummoxed by the number of people who have an MLS search on their site and yet don’t generate business from it. There were people who stopped by the booth who were paying astronomical amounts of money per month for an IDX, that couldn’t trace a single piece of business back to it. Why would you ever pay for something that never gets you business? As a working agent, this makes no sense to me.

I had a long discussion with a gentleman from Denver, and we agreed on a basic premise. People on our websites want one of two things: information or listings. The vast majority aren’t looking for an agent, they’re looking to consume our knowledge and they’re looking for the local inventory.

So if I can make that user happy by blending those two things well, in a manner that makes sense, by showing them the right information and the right opportunities at the right time, then the chances of that person becoming my client just got better. I’ll be exploring that idea a bit further here, I think. It’s not difficult if you have the right tools.

I know there’s a lot of stuff to catch you attention at the NAR Expo this year – some of the exhibitors have mind blowing displays – Lowes built an entire kitchen in there, it’s crazy.  But over at humble booth #2157 sits ARE-TEC.  Right now, it looks like this, but we’ll add the computers and monitors and displays and whatnot tomorrow before the floor opens at 4pm.

Yes, we have schwag.  Yes, we have a drawing for an Amazon gift certificate. Yes, we’ll show you our IDX solution, the listing galleries, the automatic graph stuff, the quick search, all of it.

But beyond that, while we’re on the Expo floor, our time is yours.  There’s a combined 20 years of software and web development experience at this booth.  There’s a pretty successful real estate blogger willing to discuss your web presence and blog, your strategy, your challenges and questions, and to revel in your successes and plans for the future.  There’s an awesome software guy who knows websites and databases and web hosting like no one’s business.

We’re yours.  Pick our brains.  For free.  Head to #2157 on the Expo floor and say hello!

Oh – we’ve also got a few spots left for agents in markets that we’re not yet in, a special pricing package for a very limited few who want a spectacular IDX at an insane price, in return for helping us into your marketplace.  It’s a sweet deal.

See you there!

Something that caught my eye when Listing Router was introduced, a comment by ActiveBob in his whiteboard explanation:

There are thousands and thousands of searchers every day that come to ActiveRain and leave after viewing one page.

This is typical for search engine traffic.  That’s called a ‘bounce,’ in internet lingo: a short, one-page-no-click visit.  Part of the point of Listing Router (in my humble opinion) is to try and capitalize on those bounces – to take those visitors who would have clicked away and give them the opportunity to go to a site that might interest them – to send them to your site with listings.

So now you’ve got to deal with the same problem.  Bouncing users.  Especially as you’re paying for those visitors – a bouncing user is wasted money.  So how do you measure bouncing users on your site? 

How do you know if Listing Router is working?

You need a system to measure and monitor the traffic sent to your IDX site from ActiveRain.  Because if you’re going to spend the money, you better know if it is working for you or not.

Depending on your IDX site, that may or may not be difficult.  Some sites only give very basic user analytics, if any, and then you’ve got to decide if you’ll continue to use that site or not.

One of the best free ways to better understand the users at your site, if they bounce or not, and how they found you is to create an account at Google Analytics and install a snippet of code on your site.  That will tell you exactly how much traffic you’re getting from ActiveRain, how often those users click away immediately, and how many spend some time clicking around on your site.

Another simpler, but still good and free solution, is to use GetClicky, which will also help you learn where the traffic to your IDX is coming from and how long they stay on your site.

And then, once you know what the users who clicked over from ActiveRain are doing, you can try to improve those visits by improving your site.  Maybe you send those users to a different page, or configure the existing search differently.  Maybe you start using a different IDX, or maybe you send people to a list of search results instead of to the page where they enter their criteria.  And now you can measure the results of those changes, using your web analytics.

Measure the traffic and behavior of the users who click over from Listing Router, so you’ll know if the money you’re spending is worthwhile. 

In case you missed them:

• Part 1: Consider the user first
• Part 2: Picking a strategy
• Part 3: You've Got Visitors! Now what?

Good news! You’re getting some hits from the Listing Router! So… now what?

You’re paying for those hits, you do have a plan, right?

What are you going to do with those visitors that will make the money you just spent worthwhile?

Let me ask it this way: what do you have on the site that you’re sending your Listing Router clicks to that will benefit your business? Is there anything there that will either make a user love you and return, encourage a user to contact you, or provides something that would make a user not only want to do business with you, but they’ll pick up the phone immediately and ask to be a client?

And if not – why not? Why spend the money to get people there if the site doesn’t do anything for your business?

What’s your plan?

Will you make people register to search for homes, and collect information that way? There are lots of folks who have great success with that method. But even there, you better have a plan for how and when and how often you’ll contact those people, how you’ll keep track and manage them, so that they don’t slip through your fingers.

Will you make some other special value-added offer? A downloadable e-book about your city? A subscription to your home buyer articles from your blog? Links to popular neighborhoods? School district reports?

Decide what you want the user to do that would make the money you spent worthwhile, something that the user would see immediate value in and will want to do on your site, and then make that prominent.

Next time – Measuring and Improving your Results

And if you missed them:

• Part 1: Consider the user first
• Part 2: Picking a strategy
  

I’ve been watching the new Listing Router roll out across ActiveRain, reading the various explanations and reactions from the community. As a successful real estate blogger and proficient user of AdWords (Google’s Pay-Per-Click system), I feel there are a few aspects that I haven’t seen addressed.

If you’re concerned that you’re buying ‘clicks’ that will never be ‘clients,’ you should address these four issues when you set up and use Listing Router.

#1 – Consider the User First

#2 – Decide on a Strategy

Granted, Listing Router is such a new feature that actual traffic volumes sent and received on an individual level is completely unknown. However, assuming there is any respectable traffic to your larger market area…

You’ve got a few options. How many cites do you serve? I can think of 7 in my area. Tucson, sure. But also Oro Valley, Marana, Vail, Sahuarita, Picture Rocks and Corona de Tucson.

Most people’s instinct is to throw their money at the cities that they think will have the highest traffic, but high traffic tends to go hand in hand with high competition. In the real pay-per-click world outside of ActiveRain, high traffic, high competition words are also high cost.

If you only go after the big cities, you may blow through your budget fairly quickly, or you may be competing with so many other agents that your turn in the round-robin-o-clicks comes around infrequently. And if pricing per visitor starts to vary based on volume, as has been hinted, then the smaller cities with cheaper traffic might be the way to go.

But that’s going to depend on the amount of traffic to those smaller cities too. Those smaller cities may not produce the same amount of traffic, but maybe there’ll be less competition, or maybe your site can convert visitors from those cities very well.

How will you decide? Well, in its current form, you have to guess – try one or the other and see what works and what doesn’t work. What you *really* need is data about which cities get how much traffic and how much competition you have.

Next Time – You’ve got visitors! Now what?

I’ve been watching the new Listing Router roll out across ActiveRain, reading the various explanations and reactions from the community. As a successful real estate blogger and proficient user of AdWords (Google’s Pay-Per-Click system), I feel there are a few aspects that I haven’t seen addressed.

If you’re concerned that you’re buying ‘clicks’ that will never be ‘clients,’ you should address these four issues when you set up and use Listing Router.

Let’s start with the big one that I haven’t heard anyone talking about yet: It’s all about the user.

How a web visitor enters and experiences your site will make or break your web business. If someone types in Tucson, AZ, into the Listing Router, and the click goes to me and I send that person to my IDX site that is ugly, or has a huge form, or isn’t already filled out to search Tucson and not some other city, chances are, I just wasted the money on the click. A web visitor is going to give your site about 2 seconds before they decide if it is relevant to what they wanted. So if a user types in Tucson, AZ and gets sent to my site, then that user better know – in 2 seconds or less – that they’re on the right site to search real estate in that city.

Open a web browser and look at the site that you’ll send your Listing Router visitors to. Give it 2 seconds, close the browser. What did you see? Did it look difficult to fill out, like it’d take a lot of time to actually look at listings? Did you know right away what city that the site was for? Did it load quickly or did it take forever?

A huge reason that we blog and are visible online is to attract clients, and clients often start out as visitors to our site. And when web visitors hit a new site, they don’t spend 20 minutes reading every word and carefully perusing it. They give it 2-8 seconds and move on if they don’t think the site is what they’re looking for. If you’re going to start paying for web visitors, first make sure your site is worth visiting, from the user perspective.

Step Two – Picking your battles.

Step Three - Planning for success.

Step Four - Measuring your results.

This question has been flying around lately.

An IDX is a just way of showing listings online. That’s it. IDX is an Internet Data Exchange – the MLS is exchanging data, over the internet, with others.

Most MLS’s are willing to provide a raw data feed – like a big text file - of the MLS listings to people or companies that can write programs to take all that data and put it into a pretty MLS search. Some MLS’s provide a free version that you can put onto your site, which usually involves copying and pasting some code into the right spot on your site. Some don’t provide a free version, but there are almost always one or more separate companies that can provide that function for you.

Many agents and brokers elect to pay a company for a different IDX solution, so that the MLS search on their websites are different or more useful than other agents in their marketplace. And there are lots of companies out there to choose from.

So how do you pick?

Cost Vs Value

Most IDX providers charge some kind of monthly fee. Since it is usually web based software, there are constant revisions and updates, so you pay monthly and always have the latest version. Plus, MLS’s often make small, but frequent changes to the format of their data, so the IDX provider is constantly adjusting to those changes so that your MLS search can be used uninterrupted.

You’ll have to trade off cost with the value that you get. Not all IDX solutions are created equal, and some deliver great value for the cost and some don’t. Some things to consider:

• Does it have an attractive, easy to use interface?
• Can you put it anywhere, multiple times, on your various websites for the same cost?
• Can you make it bigger or smaller, change colors and fonts, to fit the style of your blog or site?
• Is there a smaller search widget that you can embed on a sidebar so your users constantly have access to your search without having to click around?
• How will it feature your listings? Is there a separate special feature for that?
• Does it load quickly on the page?
• Can you easily change what fields your users can search on?
• Can you decide how much information to show them in the search results?
• Does it give you the option of turning on and off forced registration?
• If users register, where does that information go? Is there a lead management system included?
• Can you brand it to your own site?
• Can users save searches? Easily email listings? Talk to you about them?
• Can you ‘seed’ the search with a specific city or subdivision to use on a specific city niche site or blog?

Consider how well an IDX solution does the basics, and then think about all the extra features and the various ways you can use them. Will they help your business in a tangible way or are they just extra flashy fluff?

A good MLS search can boost your user-to-client conversions, because web site visitors appreciate a good, clean, simple, powerful MLS search. If you can answer that need for them, they’ll love you for it. So choose carefully.

And I might be somewhat biased, as my husband has a company that provides IDX solutions, but there are plenty of good ones out there. Ours is designed around the things that were important to me as a full-time busy agent, working most of my business online, so I think it’s pretty cool. But don’t take my word for it. Think about what’s important to you, and find the best fit for you and your website.

And if you’re having trouble comparing and contrasting, send me an email and we can chat. Sometimes, it’s hard to make sure you’re comparing apples to apples.