Glenn Batten | Business2

PropertyScope – Real Estate Agents & Salespeople Get Rated!

by Glenn Batten, on 24th August, 2010 • 27 Comments

PropertyScope – Real Estate Agents & Salespeople Get Rated!

Over the past few years there has been a huge increase in the number of social websites allowing visitors to publicly rank local businesses. I am sure everybody has seen google show those yellow stars on occassional search result pages. Websites like Twitter and Facebook allow people to comment on their experiences with you but those comments are pushed down in the timeline with every additional post and therefore the lasting effect in each single bad comment posted is fairly short. But these review sites have a much longer lasting effect.

Then there are the websites that are just about the reviews themselves. On Business2 we have discussed a few of those over the years but there are always new ones popping up all the time. Some of the more popular ones include Google’s Place Pages, Truelocal.com.au and ProductReview.com.au. The one thing all of these have in common is that real estate agents are just a fraction of the businesses that are reviewed.

Recently a new website called PropertyScope has cropped up that has the sole purpose of providing reviews on real estate agencies and real estate salespeople. Already some agencies are attracting poor reviews as are salespeople like Shane Howley, David Beauregard and Chantel Penny who probably have no idea of the comments and review that have been put up for anybody to see who searches their name.

I am totally in favour of open transparency but there has been a few things that have always bugged me about these online review sites.

Competitors voting

These sites are always open to your competitor or their immediate family and close friends voting you down and them up. This was highlighed particularly well to me recently. I created the Australian Real Estate Software and Solutions directory and a few months back I integrated a voting system allowing real estate agents to vote on these service companies.

Voting wise everything was going well till a voting war started out in a couple of the more popular categories whereby individuals from well known suppliers would rate 10 for their own company and 1 for every other company in that category. They did not even try to hide their votes by spreading them out or varying the votes. It was either a 10 or it was a 1. The 10′s (along with their IP’s) indicated exactly who they represented.

Whilst the majority did not partake everyone suffered with low ratings. I have since deleted all the “dud” votes and changed the voting security on the site and all votes coming from non registered visitors are now moderated and anything dodgy gets tossed.

Monitoring voting irregularities is not easy with even just 100 or so entries but there are already 1000′s of salespeople and agents already listed on the site and potentially many more to come. I hope PropertyScope have increased the security settings of their ratings plugin to as high as possible to ensure the integrity of the voting process as that really is the key.

The opinions of the minority are not always representative of the majority

You can’t sell every property nor can you totally satisfy every owner or every buyer. Generally once you have a significant amount of genuine votes the trends will sort themselves out fairly accurately but when you only have a limited number of responses making statements like ”On average, this agent: underquotes to buyers by 16%” as is currently displayed on one of those profiles is potentially misleading and damaging to the salespersons’s reputation.

I believe that PropertyScope should be careful how they display this sort of data and make generalised claims.

No right of reply

Some of these review sites have no right of reply or the ability to provide perspective on the comments. One of the best examples of this is ebay where sellers can reply to a bad rating. Similarly bad ratings can be withdrawn should cooler heads prevail and or the seller rectify the problem which triggered the bad rating.

PropertyScope does not seem to have any of these balancing features in place which is a shame.

Whether PropertyScope is successful or not remains to be seen but I think agents need to quickly realise that public viewable reviews of their performance is here to stay. Proactive agents will harness this and use it to their advantage whilst the others are try to deal with reactively and sit back and pray that some good reviews will be posted instead of bad ones.

Online Reputation Management is really turning into a new skill set that agents have to develop themselves or contract out because just a handful of bad reviews spread across just a few websites could tarnish an agents reputation overnight.

Google Rich Snippets

Google has created a service called Google Rich Snippets which takes public review results like and returns them in the search results. They always show at the very top of the search results and boy do they stand out. PropertyScope has set their rankings system up with Google Rich Snippets in place so very soon when you search for your agency or the names of your salespeople it could show something like this

(preview created using the Rich Snippets Testing Tool)

27 Comments »

Client and Customer Feedback – Are You Really Satisfied?

by Glenn Batten, on 12th July, 2010 • 16 Comments

Client and Customer Feedback – Are You Really Satisfied?

I think every real estate agent finds out in their first week in the industry that client testimonials are gold. Client feedback goes well beyond the occasional testimonial and the better agencies invest in detailed client surveys so they can take a real measure of their performance.

Till now most real estate agents have really been restricted to paper surveys (complete with reply paid envelope) or investing significant time with the online survey companies to make a fit our industry. Speaking for ourselves we have been surveying landlords, prospective sellers, sellers and buyers for over a decade and literally have boxes of completed surveys. Some of the emarketing solutions also provide you a rudimentary survey ability but it really is quite basic.

Feedback is absolutely essential if you want to be fine tuning your business to suit your clients and customers. In our office each buyer and seller feedback survey is read out in full and discussed at each of sales meeting but the real deeper analysis is quite time consuming so it is done at much longer intervals.

For a little while now I have been toying with the idea of migrating our paper surveys over to one of the many great survey solutions available on the web but that would require a significant investment in time as you have to setup the survey from scratch. These companies give you amazing building blocks but you really have to construct the building yourself to get the most out of it.

I am glad I waited though as a new online solution has been released specifically for Australian Real Estate Agents called RealSatisfied (www.realsatisfied.com.au). They surveys are fully setup for our industry and are ready to go. In fact once the account is setup and you have uploaded your logo your first survey could be sent out within a minute.

The service itself is very polished and professional. Late on Friday afternoon I signed up and sent out surveys to our our landlords. Within 30 minutes the first survey was back and by the time 24 hours ticked over 10% had returned the survey. By Sunday night we are close to a 20% return rate and I expect those numbers to be much higher again by mid week.

Part of the RealSatisifed Dashboard for each user.

In addition to the full details of all survey the system also asks each person to submit a testimonial and so far we have found about a third of all respondents have chosen to provide a testimonial. This alone is marketing gold but the best part is the system gives far more statistics and analysis. Each salesperson can (optional) have a dashboard providing a selection of quick performance stats and then burrow down to find full details and responses.

In just two days the results have been very impressive!

There are currently 6 types of Surveys

Vendor
Purcahser
Landlord Placement
Tenant Placement
Landlord Loyalty
Tenant Loyalty

Over the next week we will change over our buyer and seller surveys to the RealSatisifed system but I expect a similar sort of results and I expect the statistics to only get better as you are able to track changes over time at different intervals. This allows you to set performance targets and track changes in that performance over time.

RealSatisfied, Is it perfect? – Of course not!

It is still an off the shelf solution and it wont be an absolutely perfect fit for you but honestly what is? There are things I would slightly change or tweak but none of them is a game breaker. There are surveys we have done for nearly a decade that the system does not do, at least for the moment. These includes surveys for Appraisals, Lost Appraisals/listings and a few other scenarios. So whilst it’s not perfect, it’s pretty damn good~

There is the typical 30 day free trial period in which you can give it a good flogging to work out if it’s for you. The cost works out at a base price of $39 per month (includes one account) and then $9 per additional team member.

If you do paper surveys this is going to save you substantially in time and money and provide you and your clients a far better experience. If you are not surveying your clients then you should and this is simply the easiest purpose built way to get it done. The bonus of course is that your return rate for testimonials will probably skyrocket.

On the RealSatisfied website you can have the surveys sent to you as though you were a client and you can also take a tour of a back end in a demo account to check out the reports.

16 Comments »

New Realestate.com.au Statistics on the way

by Glenn Batten, on 25th June, 2010 • 23 Comments

New Realestate.com.au Statistics on the way

The new web design from Realestate.com.au was built from the ground up. Of course when you do such a major rewrite of the code you have the opportunity to massively improve certain aspects of the site by wiping the slate clean and starting again.

The web analytics for the portal has been beefed up and we are about to have a lot more data to look at. With the old versions we effectively had page views and enquiries.

One of the most noticeable impacts the new site had was on the number of property views to each property. Overnight property views dropped by around 30 to 40% across the board. This was in part due to the new user interface which allowed visitors to see more of each property without browsing on the details page. Without access to page times and other data there is no way for an outsider to know exactly how much this played in the number of page drops but account managers have been using that excuse when copping flak about the drop in activity from clients.

Mark Twain once said “Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable”

So the new weapon against agents expectations and justification of the ever increasing cost is the term “Engagement”. Better get use to it!

So accordingly to REA property views are no longer relevant and will no longer be used because “measuring by property views is too limited in light of the new richer ways consumers can interact with your listings and your brand”. The measurement and benchmarking of agents in the future will be based on “total engagement” numbers.

With the focus on engagements rather than property views it means we are not going to be able to quite so easily compare against statistics to last year or even to other portals.

So what do we know now?

There are 21 new sets of statistics across four categories as follows:

Views

Property Details Pages
Property Carousel Views
Property Map Fly-outs

Engagement

Property Photo Views
Map Interactions
Floor Plan Views
Virtual Tour Views
Property Video Views
Street-View Views

Saving and Sharing

Saved to MyRealestate
Notes in MyRealestate
Print Page
Send to a Friend
Share on Social Media

Enquiry

Emails to Agent
Agent Details Views
Click-throughs to Agent Website
Inspection Times Reveals
Inspection Times Saved
Auction Times Saved
Property Directions

I have also been provided with a snapshot of real data that provides some interesting early perspective. This sample is well over 100,000 property views so it should give a great indication of what to expect when it gets rolled out to everyone.

For every 1 property view there is 7.4 property photo views in the engagement category.
Property Carousel views are 11.5% of property page views but only 1.5% of property photo views
Map engagements run around 2.6% against property detail page views and from this data it shows floorplans were far more popular at 3.6% Remember, most properties have a map, but very few have a floorplan so to me this highlights the importance of a floorplan.
Street view engagement were the least popular at 1.6% of property page views
Saving and Sharing was very very low and all 5 types combined only added up to 2.5% of property page views.
Enquiry statistics were even lower totaling around 1.04% of property page views. This was made up with a little under half of those numbers by email (0.45%) followed by inspection times (0.20%) and property directions (0.15%).

I think the level of detail is admirable and it will be interesting to watch how those number relate to our own agency. Right now the markets in different parts of Australia are completley different so there should be some major differences between agencies in each state so the numbers quoted above may have little or no relationship to what you might see for your own account.

23 Comments »

They are at it Again! – Realestate.com.au Price Rises 01/08/2010

by Glenn Batten, on 16th June, 2010 • 29 Comments

They are at it Again! – Realestate.com.au Price Rises 01/08/2010

The new realestate.com.au website rolled out in April this year. Reception by the industry was pretty mixed and there was certainly many people at either end of the spectrum.

There was a bunch of issues at launch but most were sorted out fairly quickly. There is however a big problem that still plagues the portal today and that relates to the email updates and ebrochures.

I personally have a range of email alerts set for different combinations of streets but I keep getting emails for all properties right across the suburb for each alert no matter where they are located. This means I am getting 4 or 5 alerts for the same property but I am yet to receive a single ebrochure to match any of those alerts.

Now in the members administration dashboard we have our first notice that the prices are on the rise again starting from the 1st of August. No details have emerged yet on just what the price rise will apply to and what the rises will be.

So do you believe that realestate.com.au can warrant a price rise right now given the massive drop in property views?

After getting a fantastic result when asking for agents to send in their traffic results for their accounts I was able to compare rural, suburban and metro agents right across Australia in all states and not a single agent received higher property views from the day of the change over. In fact many reported Domain and Realestateview providing more enquries than realestate.com.au for the first time ever.

The new design itself also quickly revealed itself as another way to extract a greater “share of wallet”. A term that seems to be trotted out with more and more regularity. The old Guaranteed Top Spot was pushed off to the side and now more than one property can access this upgrade. Of course this caused a few hiccups and agents had to be compensated for the change of position. The top dog now at the top of the results list is the Premier Property option which is a brand spanking new uber-expensive add-on.

So with the new site not being as popular as realestate.com.au would have hoped for, more and more add on products to compete with, continuing email and ebrochure problems and reduced property views this new round of price rises will no doubt be a painful pill for many to swallow.

Will we all just pay the increase because we have to?

Will the emergence of a possible Industry owned portal allow agents to consider opting out of realestate.com.au?

or Will no serious challengers arrive and despite their cost realestate.com.au continue to provide the best ROI?

29 Comments »

CBA Combine Realestate.com.au Data into iPhone Augmented Reality Solution

by Glenn Batten, on 6th May, 2010 • 6 Comments

CBA Combine Realestate.com.au Data into iPhone Augmented Reality Solution

Move the phone around to locate a property

Augmented Reality is when you combine a live view with a computer generated view in real time. The concept itself will not really be all the new to anybody because you have seen it in the movies and video games for years.

The processing power of handsets has risen dramatically and 1ghz is the current sweet spot. That processing power allows modern smartphones to offer augmented reality in the palm of your hand and real estate is one of those ideal applications for the technology.

The Commonwealth Bank has released what they are claiming as Australia’s first Augmented Reality using data from Realestate.com.au and RPData.com.au.

I am not one to post whole press releases so you can read it in full here although be warned it makes the same tired old claims befitting any technology launch. In one sentence they squeeze “taken to a new level” and a “revolution” with the following paragraph:

“The new iPhone application will take property search to a new level, revolutionising the way home buyers search for a home allowing them to make smarter property decisions with virtual reality insight in to any Australian home anywhere, anytime.”

One of these days somebody will put out a release thats says, “hey what we are about to launch is not new, some others beat us to it but we reckon its cool and that our version is heaps better and we hope you like it”.

We first discussed Augmented Reality back in June last year when the Layar program was released which is now available for Android and the iPhone. Layar allowed third parties to easily creating an AR solution by providing “layers” of data that could be accessed through the program. Using Layar there have been other AR solutions serving up Australian real estate but because of their data sources they have only ever offered a fraction of the available properties.

Property found! Click on the screen for more information

The CBA’s solution will be the first dedicated application for the task and this means it can bring a functionality to the handset that a Layar solution cannot. Of course access to the realestate.com.au listing data to drive the site means it only rival for sheer coverage is realestate.com.au’s own mobile site.

The application will initially be a strictly an iPhone application however an Android application is apparently on the banks radar for future development. I thought the use of the term quite entertaining because when you use an AR application it is very much like sweeping the area with your own personal radar to discover whats out there. In this case property information.

Smartphones use an internal gps and digital compass to know exactly where it is in the world at any given time. It can even tell which way it is tilted and where it is facing. It’s this ”awareness” of it’s exact location in 3 dimensional space that makes makes Augmented Reality possible.

The application will allow you to point your phone at any existing property currently for sale and it will overlay information on the property over the top such as price, bedrooms, bathrooms, car accommodation, photos and land size.

You can even use the application to search for property surrounding you location. Fire up the application and move your phone around and property for sale will flash up on the screen.

You will be able to access last sales information on all properties but it will be limited to a price range only unless it has been sold recently when the accurate sales details will be available. Consumers will of course be able to get the exact past sales details on any property for a fee thanks to the RPData connection.

View full property and information and photos in a few clicks

The program will be available in the Apple App Store sometime in June as they wait for Apple’s official approval.

I would have thought that this sort of solution would have been a better fit for realestate.com.au themselves but the Commonwealth Bank is obviously trying to leverage home loan leads by being right their in the consumers face during the research phase as they look for property.

As you would expect users can click to call a lender or complete a form to get a call from back from the Commonwealth Bank. The application will pull data live from the Realestate.com.au mobile site so I can only assume that it will still add to realestate.com.au property views which they certainly need right now.

Of course when a company release a media release before its actually available it gets a little hard to give a full and proper opinion but it looks the goods from the screenshots and the iPhone certainly has the power to pull it off. All you iPhone users will have to let me know what you think when it launches because I will have to wait till they get around to an Android version.

I reckon the application will be a hit with real estate agents and may get some of the realestate.com.au junkies away from their computer and back out into the community.