Latest brokerage website trends
I got the chance to participate, in part, in the planning session for a
sophisticated new brokerage website today. Here are the objectives:
1) The cookie-cutter IDX site is dead... the new broker website should look, at least, like Trulia - with listings maps, Web 2.0 features like Q&A to facilitate consumer/agent interaction, and lots of useful data like heat maps and automated valuation models.
2) The brokerage's blog network will be integrated into the website so that every time a blogger posts an article, its excerpt gets uploaded onto a kind of "virtual" feedreader. The blogging agents will provide qualitative, real time data interpretation complementary to the quantitative listings, comparable and other data... and they will blog independently under their own domain names, not under the broker's blog.
3) Recruitment is more important to the broker than lead generation referral fees. The brokerage wants its agents to see tangible results from the leads its sophisticated web/blogsite will generate. The brokerage wants to "track" the lead to demonstrate the power of its website to its agents, not to charge a referral fee. This is admirable. We concluded that significant number of leads would be nurtured at the website as users register and chart their home buying process, but also admitted that many of the leads will "escape" tracking and make direct contact with the brokerage's bloggers. The blogger would miss valuable data garnered during the incubation period if they didn't know about its existence.
The takeaway:
1) Two years after Trulia launched, the most progressive brokerages realize how simple it is to replicate the utility and features of cutting edge real estate listings site. Frankly, it's easy and not that expensive to be website-competitive... but most brokers can't build them. Their excuses - ignorance ("I have no idea how to do this"), paralysis ("Why change the system?") and inertia ("We have no time").
2) Blogging and blog networks are still new, but there is a huge first mover advantage for developing a blogger corps. Brokers should just figure out that blogging agents are going to be the best marketers of their franchise, and in turn, make them more successful.
3) The best brokerages make themselves relevant to their constituents, the agents. They add value by providing tools that work to close deals - blogging, Trulia-strength interactive sites for their consumer client - and don't "subtract" value with referral fees and other nickel and diming.
1) The cookie-cutter IDX site is dead... the new broker website should look, at least, like Trulia - with listings maps, Web 2.0 features like Q&A to facilitate consumer/agent interaction, and lots of useful data like heat maps and automated valuation models.
2) The brokerage's blog network will be integrated into the website so that every time a blogger posts an article, its excerpt gets uploaded onto a kind of "virtual" feedreader. The blogging agents will provide qualitative, real time data interpretation complementary to the quantitative listings, comparable and other data... and they will blog independently under their own domain names, not under the broker's blog.
3) Recruitment is more important to the broker than lead generation referral fees. The brokerage wants its agents to see tangible results from the leads its sophisticated web/blogsite will generate. The brokerage wants to "track" the lead to demonstrate the power of its website to its agents, not to charge a referral fee. This is admirable. We concluded that significant number of leads would be nurtured at the website as users register and chart their home buying process, but also admitted that many of the leads will "escape" tracking and make direct contact with the brokerage's bloggers. The blogger would miss valuable data garnered during the incubation period if they didn't know about its existence.
The takeaway:
1) Two years after Trulia launched, the most progressive brokerages realize how simple it is to replicate the utility and features of cutting edge real estate listings site. Frankly, it's easy and not that expensive to be website-competitive... but most brokers can't build them. Their excuses - ignorance ("I have no idea how to do this"), paralysis ("Why change the system?") and inertia ("We have no time").
2) Blogging and blog networks are still new, but there is a huge first mover advantage for developing a blogger corps. Brokers should just figure out that blogging agents are going to be the best marketers of their franchise, and in turn, make them more successful.
3) The best brokerages make themselves relevant to their constituents, the agents. They add value by providing tools that work to close deals - blogging, Trulia-strength interactive sites for their consumer client - and don't "subtract" value with referral fees and other nickel and diming.
Though I do not use my mortgage law blog as a way of lead generation, it is true that it acts that way. It is the model for what you noticed as "escaping" tracking in that people who read my blog simply pick up the phone to get to me, and I have no way to relating how they found me other that to ask during the call.
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The brokerage's blog objective (#2) would be a good candidate for a Drupal.org CMS platform. Almost all functionality is available thru the core Drupal v5.5 technology - with lego-like modules available to handle special requirement needs.
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You hit all the features of a great brokerage website. What would a brokerage pay for something like this? Also, you did not mention a strong SEM (Search Engine Marketing) campaign. I would think this would be pretty important.
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Nice post. Brokerage websites need to evolve from being listing oriented. What if online trading firms only posted stocks prices, without any analytics, charts, etc...? This is basically where real estate websites have been stuck for decades. Heatmaps, data-mashups etc.., will be a step up. Zillow and Trulia have made moderate improvements on this model. However, the team with the best data to mash-up wins. Usually, large local brokerage firms own the best data e.g. customer data. That's something that is commodity rust proof.
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Good, cutting edge agents understand that they are the source of business. Agents selling out to the brokerage website are not acting in their own best interests.
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Good, cutting edge agents understand that they are the source of business. Agents selling out to the brokerage website are not acting in their own best interests.
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Some brokers get it, but they are still few and far between. But then again, most agents don't get it either. They have a template website or a blog, and then link directly to their corporate site or builders sites, etc giving consumers a perfect escape vent to leave their site and go elsewhere.
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