Archive for the ‘Website Features’ Category

We have a new home – a brand-new website that we built to make the property search an awesome experience for your clients. Please browse our site, and let us know what you think of our new digs!

We’re obsessed with the idea of taking the stress out of listing your stock. Changing stress to success makes up happy – and we’re sure that it pleases you too.

But we’re as passionate about pushing the boundaries … ensuring that we’ll be better tomorrow than we are today. We’re constantly working to help accommodate all the information you need to create the best listings possible; information that is intuitively presented and prettily packaged.

Our first goal is to make it easier for buyers and tenants to find their perfect homes and start talking to you – the agents. Our second goal is to deliver consistently outstanding service. Because we really love it when you’re happy.

We’re inspired by property. But we’re also inspired by our people and the quality of service that we offer.

In the words of the late Steve Jobs, “here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the square pegs in round holes”. Our people mostly fall into these categories. They keep it interesting. But they’re also at the top of their game: qualified and experienced specialists who are passionate about what they do. So, our site is functional and practical. But it’s also beautiful and fun.

We can’t be the portal of choice if our quality is sloppy, and so we strive to publish awesome content. And that’s why we demand the highest standards from you. We want our browsers to fall in love with their new homes at first sight – while viewing it online, in their slippers if that’s their regular browsing attire. But we can only do this with your help.

Visit privateproperty.co.za now!

And if you think we’ve missed something, our team is waiting to talk to you – call 087 375 1000 or email support@privateproperty.co.za.

• A Billboard features an agency’s branding and a short slogan
• The slogan can be changed every month
• When a browser clicks on  a Billboard, he will be redirected to the agents’ page on the new Private Property website
• The agents’ page shows all properties and agents
• Billboard stats are tracked to show return on investment
• A Billboard features at the top of the first page of searched suburbs and is not repeated on subsequent pages
• Billboards can be purchased for single suburbs(eg Umhlanga Rocks) but not for higher-level areas (eg, Umhlanga, which contains multiple single suburbs)
• Higher-level areas (eg, Umglanga)  do not feature Billboards – instead, such pages feature an Area Specialist section on the right-hand side of the page, which shows all the banners in that area
• If one agent owns Billboards for every single suburb that makes up a higher-level area, then that agent’s Billboard will appear instead of the Area Specialist feature

Have you checked out our new site yet? You really should!

It contains a bunch of nifty features that we’ve built to help you gain visibility and move more stock, faster:

• A world-first “listing score”
• A “featured listing” component
• A “featured agent” system

Want to ensure that your listings appear most prominently? Check out how the listing score works …

Click to enlarge image

We’ve built a brand-new website to help you better showcase your listings. We had fun building our new “home” and hope that you find it fun and easy-to-use. See how we’re celebrating our housewarming!

Be seen first, be seen often!

Our Featured Listing product is an easy-to-use ranking-beater for when you as an estate agent really need to highlight a property.

Privateproperty.co.za is unique in the property advertising landscape for one key reason: we score listings based on quality of content. This browser-centric approach promotes your great-quality stock to our hundreds of thousands of potential buyers. Our ranking system rewards listings for having enhanced visuals like virtual tours and videos, and for those tough-to-find but valuable pieces of information like rates or floor area.

But we know that sometimes even the best content isn’t enough – you want to make sure your listing is seen first and seen often. Featured Listing does exactly this. It’s a shortcut to the top of the list results. This means you now have a way to really show off your extra-special properties.

You can use a Premium Listing slot to feature any of your properties at any time. If you don’t have the time to do the stocking then we’ll automatically stock your slot with your best quality listing, thereby ensuring that you always get the maximum value from the marketing budget that you entrust to us.

To find out more, or to book a Featured Listing slot, please contact Raakhee.

Privateproperty.co.za has a new home – a brand-new website that we built to better showcase you and your listings, to make it even easier to sell and lease your stock.

Like any move, there are still stacks of boxes to unpack and a few unfinished areas but we’re working hard to get settled in. In the meantime, please browse our site, and let us know what you think of our new digs.

Privateproperty.co.za’s all-new website – just for you

Boost your exposure!

As always we’re offering you unbeatable exposure through virtual tours and quality images, and now we’re also offering a world-first: a reality ranking. You’ll also still have email and SMS alerts sent to interested browsers and receive a heads-up on the number of views and leads that your listings attract.

You simply can’t afford to miss out on this great exposure! With more than a million unique browsers, there’s bound to be a buyer or tenant out there for you.

Leads

Our focus is on generating quality leads for you. So, to entice more browsers to our new site, we’ve imbued it with some great qualities … here are the attractions for your potential buyers and tenants for you properties:

1. We’re hoping to inspire people who are looking for a new home. It’s more than just an investment, it’s a lifestyle choice. Great imagery, convenient features and beautiful properties make house hunting an enjoyable experience.”
2. People buy and sell property. We’re introducing our browsers to the people behind the properties that they love. You – our preferred professional agents – and also our slightly zany team. We are working hard to put a face to every name.
3. Virtual tours, videos, street maps and an industry-first “reality score” all help browsers to pick the perfect place. Using our all-new site, they can fall in love with their new home while sitting in their favourite chair, feet up, feeling like they’re already there.

We’d love your feedback!

I love this time of the year!

This is the time that we all take to THINK long and hard about our personal and business goals for the year ahead. This is the time when we PLAN our strategy and the time when we are most energised with new hope and some new year’s resolutions!

I’m especially excited about 2013! We spent the most part of 2012 restructuring our business in preparation for the new year. Never before have we been in a better position to INNOVATE and this year you will see stuff from us that will set us apart from the rest as the preferred Portal of Choice for property shoppers and our customers alike!

So what is it we will be doing?

New Privateproperty.co.za website launch

You could never accuse us at Privateproperty.co.za of being followers. We’re always looked to INNOVATE and this is a characteristic that is seriously needed in an ever-changing and fast-moving environment like the Internet. This year we will again lead the industry into a new era of property search. The new Privateproperty.co.za site will be something the industry has never seen before and will again redefine the way people interact with a property website! The goal is for a property shopper to have a far more personal relationship with the website.  We are also very serious about reputation management of our estate agent customers and will therefore also work toward building a trust relationship between the buyer and our agent customers. The website launch is imminent!

Service and more service

We really want you as our customers to LOVE the service we offer. To this end we will be dedicating a telesales Account Executive to you to assist with any query you may have. These people are your “go to” guys with regards new product releases and certain technical assistance. Aside from having a dedicated Account Executive we also have a super-efficient support team that is ready to take your call if you need us. Barrie has explained their role more effectively.

New product releases

2013 will be the year for new innovative online marketing products. We have listened to our customers and applied our minds to find products that will assist in mandate acquisition and lead generation, and will also brand your business better. Some of these products include:

1)      Featured Listing slots – Launched at the end of 2012, this product is showing great lead results. Make sure you use this opportunity to BOOST the performance of your selected properties.

2)      Virtual Tour bundles – One of our greatest products is still the Virtual Tour. It enhances the quality of your listing and can be used as an incentive for a seller to give you the sole mandate. We have decided to make these Virtual Tours available to you in greater quantities by building a few different bundled product options. These options include:

• 1 Virtual Tour for R500 (ordered when needed)
• 12 Virtual Tours for R3 500 (bought as a bundle per month)
• Unlimited Virtual Tours for R5 000 (bought as a bundle per month)

These bundles will be available from February. For more information please mail raakheep@privateproperty.co.za  and we will make sure that your Account Executive provides you with the information needed.

3)      Area Banners – This is a great branding opportunity that will help with mandate acquisition and also help you attract better agents! This product will launch in the coming months and promises to be a huge success.

As the migration of property search continues to move online so too will we continue to innovate and find better ways for you to capture this ever growing market. January 2013 WILL be our biggest ever month with regards lead generation with and expected 600 000 leads being generated on the portal. With Privateproperty.co.za you can rest assured that if anyone is looking for a property, they WILL find it with us.

I wish you happy selling!

I can’t help but reflect on the recent furore in the media around the FNB / ANC advertising campaign, and to commend FNB for having capitalised extensively on a provocative campaign that has had everyone talking. Originally though, they were the bank that coined the phrase “How can we help you?” This has become something of a cliché these days, with one of their competitors running an “Ask once” campaign.

So, one asks, what is on the cards from Privateproperty.co.za with respect to service in 2013?

In 2012, I spent many hours looking at how the support centre was positioned to offer our customers a level of service that would be something to be proud of. We ended the year by changing our voice prompt on our national call centre number to direct all enquiries to one of our eight operators, removing the “choose a queue” feature. This has resulted in our call volumes going up, but we believe people want to be able to talk to someone as soon as possible and it has been a great step in the right direction.

We are following up in 2013 with many more significant improvements to the ways in which we want to engage customers. Currently I am implementing a system that allows customers the opportunity to troubleshoot a database of FAQs and business rules that will ensure everyone understands how our systems work. This is currently being implemented and will be visible on the website during the course of February, along with a concise list of how to engage the customer support centre in the most effective way depending on the issue you need addressed.

Watch this space – as this is only the beginning of the enhancements we will be making during the course of the year. It is going to be an exciting year for the property industry and we are here to make the experience a highly engaging one for all of us.

An exciting new release during October was our Featured Listing product. We have gone back to the KISS principle on this one (Keep It Simple Stupid), stripping out all the rules and complications. This is an easy-to-use ranking-beater for when you really need to highlight a property.

Privateproperty.co.za is unique in the property advertising landscape for one key reason: we score listings based on quality of content. This browser-centric approach attempts to surface great quality property content to the hundreds of thousands of buyers on the site. Our ranking system rewards listings for having enhanced visuals like virtual tours and videos, and for those tough-to-find but valuable pieces of information like rates or floor area. But we know that sometimes even the best content isn’t enough, you want to make sure your listing is seen first and seen often. Featured Listing is exactly that, a shortcut to the top of the list results. This means for those extra special properties you now have a way to really show them off.

Not only have we added a great new advertising product but we have also given you a simple to use interface to manage which of your listings get featured. A Featured Listing is actually a premium slot on our system, which means that you can use that slot to feature any of your properties at any time. If you don’t have the time to do the stocking then we’ll automatically stock the slot with your best quality listing ensuring you always get the maximum marketing value.

Be seen first, be seen often.

With the economy being what it is and the property markets being what they are,
it is more important than ever to invest wisely when marketing your mandates.
Is it really wise, then, to spend the majority of your budget on print,
when investing online will give you so much more exposure?

Spreading your advertising spend online guarantees you exposure to more than a million viewers. If you spend on print, remember that most people who buy property are Internet-proficient and 80% of them will go online at some point in their search anyway.

If your sellers need convincing, this video details the many benefits of listing online. It is branded with your details and free if you are on a premium package.

When listing online, remember that the various portals attract different users. Between SA’s two dominant sites, there is a 20% overlap in browsers (people who use both sites). So, to reach more than a million unique browsers, invest in more than one site.

An advantage of advertising with a paid-for portal is the inherent credibility of such sites. A large portion of the revenue generated goes into researching and developing features that create a trusted environment in which to browse and transact, and viewers are aware that a vetted and moderated transaction is more likely to be safer than a free one.

ADDED VALUE

Most portals enable buyers to receive free tailored SMS and email alerts when new properties are loaded. This means that potential buyers don’t have to wait for the weekend  newspaper in order to view your ads.

privateproperty.co.za was the first portal in South Africa to offer virtual tours. This tool enables buyers to “view” a potential purchase before going out to physically see it – saving you time and ensuring that you can build relationships with the most interested buyers.

By advertising with privateproperty.co.za, you’ll also have access to an iPad app that allows you to show properties to prospective buyers over a cup of coffee, again saving you time, but also engendering a feeling of trust between you and your clients as you get to know their likes and dislikes.

Another industry-leading app enables anyone with an iPhone to locate privateproperty.co.za-listed properties when driving through a neighbourhood.

After going online, it’s easy to figure out where the bulk of your leads come from, as they land directly in your inbox. Monitor your online leads for a few weeks and you’ll see just how your marketing budget, instead of being an unquantifiable expense, can impact directly on your bottom-line.