All websites are based around a content management system (CMS) which is the platform that your real estate website is structured/built-on and which allows you to update website content. In real estate, basically all products offered by real estate web development companies are built from the software company’s own in-house CMS. A CMS they have spent years building and one they will not easily change and never hand the IP over to their clients.

From my experience the average real estate website costs around $6,000 to produce and then requires a monthly hosting and support charge of around $150 per month. If you decide you’d like to end your relationship with this company then your $6,000 is a sunk cost. Lets assume you stay 2 years with that software company then the actual cost of your solution is $400 per month. So you’re leasing (at a ridiculous price) a website from the software company indefinitely and at the end of the lease you receive nothing.

It does not stop there, as the web development company will find other ways to bleed money from you. If you require any type of change to the site then the company will quote what ever fee they feel fit (and some of the fees i’ve heard have been outrageous). As a site owner you either pay this fee or go without the site enhancement. As you can imagine this type of arrangement is very counter-productive for your online solution, as you can’t tweak SEO (or have specialist 3rd companies complete this), you can’t install 3rd party software on your site, and your likely to avoid enhancements because of the excessive cost involved.

So what are the alternatives? Unfortunately because of the technology involved in powering a real estate website and also maintaining the data exports means there are not too many solutions. However, there are a few companies in Australia who offer alternatives to an in-house CMS.

One alternative is to have the software development company build your own CMS. This way you own the IP of the CMS and have the ability to move your site if the relationship ever ends. In most cases your site will be build from a popular frameworks (eg .NET, PHP, ColdFusion) so finding another developer will not be an issue. The only downside to this solution is that it will be costly to build your own CMS system, in the proximity of $20,000 to $70,000.

There is one solution which is cost effective and will provide you with freedom and choice. That is to use an open source CMS which is free to use on a General Public License. These open source CMS are usually owned by a not for profit organization of web developers and designers, who’s goal is to share code amongst a worldwide community of developers in an effort to provide a free and powerful CMS for websites. PHP is an open source language and a few CMS build upon PHP include Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, CakePHP and Codeigniter.

Pro’s from using an Open Source CMS over an in-house CMS:

1. It’s FREE – Open source CMS are free so you never have to pay for the core software which your website is built on. You then never need to pay for an upgrade to the open source CMS.
2. You own your site – Because open source CMS are free means your website will work on any server located anywhere. This means once your site is build and you decide to end your relationship with your development company you can easily copy your website and install it on another server.
3. Far Superior – Open source CMS systems have 100’s of developers and designers Worldwide who contribute code and ideas to the system. On a monthly basis the organisation running the CMS will decide on what pieces of code are to be added in the next update. In-house CMS usually have 1 to 2 developers who work full time on improving the software.
4. Open source CMS are upgraded every 2 to 3 months – The best ideas from the 100’s of developers who have contributed code will be added to the CMS core, tested by the organisation and deployed in the next update. This means you can continually update your CMS with a stronger more powerful and feature rich CMS.
5. Less bugs – All of the 100’s developers who have contributed by adding code to the core CMS will then thoroughly test the updated Beta version of the CMS and quickly find any bugs it includes. Once again an in-house CMS might have 1 – 2 people testing it before it goes to market.
6. Endless Supply of Functionality – The way an open-source CMS works is that the CMS provides the core structure for the website. You then install plugins,  add-ons and widgets which provide additional functionality which the core CMS does not include.
7. Endless supply of developers and designers – If you end your relationship with your web developer then you can easily find 1000’s of developers and designers who can take over managing your website.
8. Freedom to Update – You or 3rd parties can have access to update the files for your site, meaning you can source cheap enhancements to your site through your existing developer or other developers.
9. Choices for pre designed Themes – If you have a budget and require a website for less than $100 (with no ongoing fees) then this is possible through an open source CMS. Check out Woo Themes a CMS theme selling site.

My advice for next time you’re looking around for a new real estate website is to make sure you’re first question is…….Do you use an in-house CMS? If they answer yes then hangup, if they answer no ask…..Do I own the IP for our site and if we end our relationship am I free to take our website at no cost?

If they answer yes to the last question then you’re onto a winner and you are truly undertaking an investment when you purchase a new website.

My arrival in Bondi Beach a year later was greeted with phone books stacked outside of my apartment block only to see weeks later the stack still standing, until eventually they were tossed in the bin. Today the splurge of these books in multiple formats continues to amaze me.

Now in the USA, San Francisco may be the first city to make a move to ban these books altogether. Let’s examine their reasoning. According to greenbiz.com local councils across the USA spend approximately $54 million a year to dispose of the books and another $9 million to recycle them. If this is true then their is not only an environmental reason but also an economical reason and when you combine these two you know action will eventually be taken.

In Australia there is a powerful lobby behind keeping unsolicited mail running with the usual line about how they are the lifeblood of small businesses, however with enough notice I am sure they can find better ways to get their message out and local online directories seem to an area that could cover this.

I have also spoken about how digital television could also reshape the advertising markets with local TV ads being delivered for specific area making it very affordable and another reason why James Packer is a thicky for getting rid of his interests in Nine.

The Yellow Pages in the USA have an opt out website where you can opt out of receiving them. I tried this in Australia and it took forever on a phone to finally opt out, yet I still kept receiving them – hardly self regulation at its best.

According to statistics “nearly 70% of adults in the United States ‘rarely or never’ use the phone book, and instead opt to use the Web-based search tools. I would guess the stats would be nearly exactly the same in Australia.

So now we have three very big reasons why the Yellow Pages cannot survive. Environmental and Economical for both the governments associated with real costs and businesses who are moving away from advertising in droves. Yellow Pages staff have posted some information here that cannot be backed up by any facts and figures, I am sure they have done their own internal polling of usage, and I am equally sure that will never see the light of day. Their big problem is they were slow to move in on the online world and now they are not even remotely as successful online as they should be. So they will cling to the past in the hope that they can wring some more dollars out of the few businesses that still enjoy some success from their services.

I can assure you a ban will not be effective for one company, that would not be fair, but unsolicited mail of any kind is on life support systems and agents are going to have to find better and more innovative ways to get their messages across.

If you are into mass mail marketing or letterbox drops, my opinion is that you should start now. Create a local market report that gets sent out to your local community and trial it for one year, where all in the community can read the report, go online and register to receive the same by electronic means. Annually you should also create a report across the board with a years worth of stats that looks cool, has a calendar attached and can be stuck on a fridge.

Subtle marketing works so much better than most of the in your face ‘I am awesome’ trash anyway.

Fully Integrated Solution
A full integrated solution basically means that your real estate website is also your blog and users of your website can both browse property listings read up on local issues, property news, taxation and get property advice. Some agents are also giving outside authors (lawyers, surveyors, builders etc) certain privileges to post directly to the agents website further enhancing the user experience and of course the authors profile).

To me, if given an option the fully integrated solution is the only true option for agencies – as you only need to promote one website and chances are, your real estate website already has a decent audience.

External Blog
This is a blog (website) which exists externally from your main website. It is not the most desirable entity, but if you are an individual agent that wants to make a name for yourself outside of your agency, then this is a decent solution. For real estate agencies that want to have a blog, talk to your developer about getting a fully integrated solution. There are a number of great platforms available to you from Drupal, Expression Engine, Movable Type, Text Pattern, WordPress and Joomla.

All of these have large development communities and are pretty simple for your developers to setup. If you want to dip your feet in – you can also get a free website at www.wordpress.com (different to the software www.wordpress.org). This is probably best for the individual agent and best of all – you can one day upgrade to wordpress.org for your own self hosted solution.

New Agency Website
If you are getting a new website talk to your developer about getting a fully integrated solution, they should have no issues doing this (unless they don’t want to) and make sure you choose a platform that best suits your needs from one of these great solutions - Drupal, Expression Engine, Movable Type, Text Pattern, WordPress and Joomla.

If your web developer does not have the tools to do this – or informs you they are rolling something out in the future (almost always means never) then you may need to look for a new developer.

The great thing about all of these solutions about is that they are open and portable, so if your developer sucks you will never have any trouble finding a new one.

Be Mindful
One thing to be very wary of is companies that have their own in house CMS systems, some are half decent, most are deplorable and they nearly always end in tears (if you ever want to leave). Thankfully most developers have left those days behind them, but you still will find a few handing onto the old business model. To them it is more about trapping you into a solution, so you can never leave.

Flexible
All of the platforms mentioned here can do everything that any other CMS can do for your real estate website. All of them have tools that can easily add extra features and they all have large development communities to share ideas and code. So don’t be afraid to jump in.

It is pointless, however, to replicate the same images and deliver the same message in all collateral. Taking a still photograph of a room, and then slowly panning across the same room is just that.

Pointless.

We run the risk of (a) Insulting the audiences attention and (b) Boring them senseless. Cinematography and photography have unique qualities; you can’t shoot a panoramic ‘stitch’ of a city skyline in low light on video without going to awesome lengths in post production.

In the same instance, a still photograph cannot record the sound of a city street. Just like we need different copy for print and online ads, we need to think differently about how we apply this media in the new medium.

Watching somebody use an ipad for the first time is an enlightening experience; it is not just down to the tactile nature of these screens but the very vibrance of the display.

And these screens are only going to get better; Apple calls it Retina. By developing pixels 78 micrometers wide for the iphone4, Apple engineers were able to pack four times the number of pixels into the same screen size. (http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/retina-display.html)

With richer more tactile displays, there’s a need for a much richer experience.

I believe the focus now needs to turn to what form this content takes on, and how best Agents and Agencies can use it. In the world outside real estate, every TV ‘ad’ is driven by a Creative; an idea to shoot too. This idea compliments the print campaign. The message is the same. The approach, radically different. Today, we have new companions (tactile, smart, mobile devices). And on the horizon, there’s 3D.

As suppliers, we need to think outside the square and not just dish up the same old, same old stills and pans and dolly moves.

We need to think about creating richer, more immersive experiences. As Clients, Agencies and Agents need to demand we start bringing these creatives to the table. As the hardware changes around us, the creative has to evolve.

Guest Author: Brett Clements from Platinum HD

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For new subscribers to Business2 – here are the previous stages.

Diagnosing your online position (warts and all) – Stage One

Constructing your perfect online real estate media platform – Stage Two

Without a doubt from my experiences real estate agents have little to no – understanding about what exactly defines an online business. Today, they remain a tangled online entity boasting a website with very little traffic and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – the lights are on and nobody is home. Direct online communications are next to non – existent simply because they are reliant on consumers finding them, as against actually delivering then driving online customer communications. Easy to fix so long as you are prepared to lock – up this online market.

Not only are you providing purchasers the best online service – more importantly offering vendors a stand-out real estate media platform. One that you created and paid for (I say this because real estate agents struggle using their own monies to invest in technology) hopefully your online platform model of choice will now  exceed your competitors too! Stop following the market – time to lead it.

Allow me to elaborate on that –  have you read – “Digital Marketing – Strategies for Online Success”? A great and easy read by Godfrey Parkin – a must for your online library (it’s now in mine).

“There is little point in building a website or fine – tuning your e -marketing tactics unless your strategy is right in the first place. To build a competitive strategy to capture the loyalty of your online consumers requires re – thinking your vision for your business from the ground up. It also requires an intimate understanding of what this online environment is all about, from the perspective of your business, from your competitors’ point of view, and particularly in the eyes of your target customers as individuals. Without those insights, you cannot begin to put together a digital strategy that has any hope of succeeding.”

So let’s best sum up where your real estate agency presently sits.

“The answer is that most businesses have an increasingly fuzzy vision of what their future should be, so their tendency is to clutch tightly to the past. As the world around them changes faster and faster, the future becomes even more blurred and uncertain. Without a bright light to head toward, they feel safer not to move away from their fundamentals and put their efforts into shoring up their defences. Those companies that do stumble forward usually head in the direction that they have always followed, tactically groping their way through fog, turning to dodge obstacles and grasping at opportunities reactively as they fly by. Without a vision, they have no idea where they are headed. Without a vision, they cannot put together an effective strategy.” Sound familiar?

“So why, are the brilliant examples of how it should be done so few and far between?” I’m not suggesting that our online strategy is such an example – rather this is what we do – with success.

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We have five non – negotiable online services that we adhere to on a daily basis. It is imperative that your online platform must strive to deliver so that you can claim this all very important point of difference over your competitors.

1. The largest online database within your demographic area – be proud that your online media platform connects to more buyers and vendors. Our proof is that we display on our homepage our subscriber sales to our online business which presently sits at $952,234,220.

2. Without using Google AdWords – use intelligent Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) methods where your agency appears at number one position organically on all Google keyword searches within your demographic areas.

3. Write a weekly e – newsletter, send out daily email alerts, provide weekly data on the sales that have been recorded within your demographic area. Each week send out your upcoming open for inspection lists. Provide subscribers the ability to choose exactly which online communication they want to receive. Keep branding your business online.

4. Get a blog going – move with the times. Each comment adds another page to your website as well as on Google which drives your SEO. TAG keywords that appear within your e – newsletter as we try to add at least – 100 new pages to our website on a weekly basis. When you sell or lease a property keep the link live as the more live links on a website the greater SEO. We are over 3,000 pages and rapidly chasing down 4,000 pages.

5. Be relevant – not irrelevant. Use technologies don’t refuse it. Religiously translate your enquiries and open for inspection lists to connect to your online model. There will come a time (and it is happening now) where vendors and purchasers are restricting online communications from agents – where research has identified no more than five (three is the average) and that includes property portals.

When a successful online agency advises a vendor let’s launch an online campaign with a two week marketing strategy before having to commit to a much more expensive print campaign – guess who will win every time?

As Godfrey Parkin said“there’s a very simple, powerful, burning light that all of us need to keep in focus: properly used, the internet frees customers and marketers from the constraints of time and space, which in turn unleashes personal communication and experience – sharing on a scale unprecedented in history.”

Our online communications are very up close and personal – how are yours? When you start digging at your online foundations make sure you use a developer that really knows what they are doing they are few and far between.

Stage Two – (for those who missed Stage One)

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A common theme within the real estate industry is when an agent speaks with a vendor who just completed a new home where they always say “we would do many things different with our next home” – the same too applies with agent websites.

Agents struggle to upgrade their own websites yet they boast the latest mobile phone technologies. Telephones are not the solution for generating market activity enquiries. Unless your online media platform is switched on and intelligently activated those telephone enquiries will diminish. In this new century agents/agencies are judged on what their respective online platform delivers where more importantly this involves the businesses driving the communication not vice versa. How many names, telephone numbers, email addresses do you presently have in “your” electronic database?

“You can run – but you can’t hide.” Don’t hide rather start seeking, delivering and then exceeding your online expectations. Move your business to the future given online technologies with aligned marketing strategies are moving at such a frenetic pace that even the most savvy of online real estate businesses are struggling to keep – up. The savvy real estate businesses are the first point of contact for new listings to prospective purchasers which are delivered via an email alert – your personal viewing invitation. Invite the call and invoke – The Law of Reciprocity.

We launched our online media platform back on September 15, 2000. Call it what you want just that at the end of the day we were actually chasing something that was yet to be recognised nor properly discovered for that matter. Five years later, Google entered the online world and the rest is history where today, it’s all about climbing that Google search engine optimisation (SEO) ladder. For all your individual demographic markets one has to explore so that you can then fast track your online SEO position. Just like market positions which are all about growing (not declining) so in which direction is your online strategy headed – better still, do you actually have one?

In life, we are all consumers where not a single day goes by that we don’t buy product(s). When you are buying something you are drawn to product presentation. Change hats – as a real estate agent ask yourself how you are presenting and communicating your properties on your real estate media platform. Are you tracking your online traffic on a daily and weekly basis – your property website as compared to the paid portals? Don’t rely on external forces rather concentrate on your internal deliveries to consumers. When you get the mix right your website must be the (primary) source and the property portals (back – up) secondary for your online communications. Drive your business not others that you invest with. Your online message to consumers has to be your number one priority.
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Online guarantees a market – print suggests a circulation market. Just because you buy a newspaper does not suggest that you want to buy a property – the smartest online real estate agencies work from within not without. I take Unique Browsers (UB’s) well over circulation figures any day – given that UB’s are consumer activated who specifically go to your website in search of information. When consumers are not chasing your website then something is alarmingly amiss?

With Stage 2 – I want to focus on the four key ingredients that I believe assure you of the perfect building process for your online media platform. Much like building a home these four points are what I consider the “bricks and mortar”. You need to build on your foundations first.

• 1. Technology
• 2. Database
• 3. Communication
• 4. Future

All four are actually intertwined although the key processes are the identification, application and integration is to ensure that you are applying best practice for your real estate media platform. When the right technology is applied you can effectively contact your database and communicate your business activity online to your key demographic markets.

TECHNOLOGY

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One word keeps resonating – WordPress which launched to the public on November 2005 a state – of – the – art publishing platform that is free. When I look at the leading websites globally they are all using WordPress. We have been running WordPress for just over twelve months now – and I am one of their greatest fans – the perfect online publisher. WordPress also, provides a fantastic database function that administers our daily database email alerts and also, the flight centre for our subscriber weekly newsletter.

In conjunction with WordPress we run Agentpoint which manages our website individual property presentations for all our listings (the back-end). The dashboard (control centre) required absolutely no training for our staff – a vital ingredient for business owners that struggle to understand online. The transition period to a smart online business must apply the Kiss Theory: Keep it Simple Stupid. If you understand it – you use it. If you don’t understand it you don’t use it!

DATABASE

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The Achilles heel for most real estate businesses – agents own vendors not buyers. If a business is running multiple databases it is terminally ill, where in all probability no one is singing from the one hymn book. Your business is simply a one agency platform that is collectively united or a divorced communication process. United we stand – divided your business will fall. The leading real estate online businesses are running the one (and only) database platform.

COMMUNICATION

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Remember the Telstra advertisement “Why didn’t you call?” Verbal communication is important – email alerts supersede memory loss provided you are managing your database correctly. Database entry = communication. For the cost of a postage stamp (not including an envelope) you can send out thousands of email alerts. Calibrate your business so that you can communicate with your online subscribers. Activate don’t detonate your online communication platform.

FUTURE

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When was the last time you used the White Pages (print edition) to look up a telephone number? Consumers use search engines for over ninety per cent (and growing daily) of their respective enquiries. We still use print with online where the global financial crisis offered an amazing Litmus Test – that being significant declines in vendor paid advertising (VPA). As a consequence we moved our business to online – (refer points 1, 2 and 3) and outperformed all of our competitors ($63,000,000 – June 2009 month sales.)

Which takes me to point 4 – you can’t expect to remain relevant unless you embrace, adapt and activate your real estate media platform.

Online is a magnificent tool – just you have to work on it. We all know what happens when the tools (of trade) go down – your competitors build something bigger and better. Otherwise known (as work in progress) where online today, is very progressive, aggressive and obsessive. Just look at what Google did to Microsoft (whom had many years start on them).

Sit back – take three breathes, and design your perfect online strategy for 2010 and beyond.

All I ask is that where is your online business today – not tomorrow? Today, it happens and tomorrow it follows. (Hmm, I should claim that quote.)

In real estate terms this simply means that if you tamper with your branding and advertising, even a little, fewer potential buyers will be attracted to your listings because there’s less chance that they’ll remember which brand your property is listed under, and there’s less chance they’ll be able to find the listing online.

Regardless of which product or service a company provides, smart, cut through and (most of all) consistent marketing is absolutely critical.

It’s no accident that some of the world’s best businesses not only have the best brands, but the most consistent and doggedly defended brands. It’s a rule that applies to the professional services sector as much as consumer goods. Think for a minute about which bank you use. I can guarantee that every letter, monthly statement or any marketing materials that you receive from your bank will be perfectly branded and reproduced to a very high, and highly consistent, standard.

Can you imagine an employee of a bank or a law firm sending you a letter (full of spelling mistakes) on photocopied paper instead of a perfect, original letterhead? It just wouldn’t happen, wouldn’t be allowed to happen, and for good reason.

Employees of banks, solicitors and law firms, just as much as retail outlets and consumer goods manufacturers, wouldn’t dream of taking their company’s brand into their own hands and changing it in any way, and this makes me wonder why so many real estate agents do!

I see a lot of real estate agents making the mistake of trying to differentiate themselves or, worse still, their listings from their brand. This is usually by just tweaking the layout and design of a press ad, a sign board or an online listing, changing a font here or an icon there, moving the logo. It might not seem like much, but it will eventually inflict a death by a thousand cuts to your brand and, therefore, your business and ultimately your own income stream.

The power of your brand is your best friend. Every agent should embrace the brand that they’re working under and leverage it to its full potential, not strive to differentiate from it.

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H4 Hgader – 1st Level Header for Posts – Should never be ALL CAPS!

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H5 Header – 2nd Level Header for Posts

Only these headings are to be used in posts. The others are reserved for Logo (h1), page titles (h2), and sidebar titles (h3). This is for SEO purposes.

Blockquote

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List

• Item One
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Links

Link One
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Table

Lists

Unordered List Navigation – Should NEVER be in a Post

REMOVED CUZ IT WAS FUTZING STUFF UP

Definition List

Definition list

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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet

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Ordered List Short Items

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2. Aliquam tincidunt mauris eu risus.
3. Vestibulum auctor dapibus neque.

Unordered List Long Items

• Morbi in sem quis dui placerat ornare. Pellentesque odio nisi, euismod in, pharetra a, ultricies in, diam. Sed arcu. Cras consequat.
• Praesent dapibus, neque id cursus faucibus, tortor neque egestas augue, eu vulputate magna eros eu erat. Aliquam erat volutpat. Nam dui mi, tincidunt quis, accumsan porttitor, facilisis luctus, metus.
• Phasellus ultrices nulla quis nibh. Quisque a lectus. Donec consectetuer ligula vulputate sem tristique cursus. Nam nulla quam, gravida non, commodo a, sodales sit amet, nisi.
• Pellentesque fermentum dolor. Aliquam quam lectus, facilisis auctor, ultrices ut, elementum vulputate, nunc.

Kitchen Sink – Header Level 1 is an H4 tag for Posts

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Header Level 2 is a H5 tag for Posts

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Real Estate Agents obtain business through a variety of ways. Buyers who become sellers, referrals and street smart prospecting are all a part of tapping into the consumer stream and most likely potential business has arrived from your marketing dollars. Given that the majority of (potential) consumers will view your website then it should be a priority to regularly update and manage it effectively to maximise the return to your overall marketing investment.

A website is a reflection of the business it represents. A well designed, regularly updated website will be a tangible asset to your business, an effective pipeline to productivity and gain. Equally, a poorly maintained, out of date site will be a bottleneck that turns consumers away; and, a liability to your business and the money invested in ongoing marketing and advertising.

Statistics released on 18th March 2008 by the Internet Measurement Company Nielsen Online showed that the amount of time Australians are spending on the internet, “Has for the first time ever, surpassed the time spent watching television”.

Your website can present valuable interactive aspects that cannot be offered via print, television or radio.

Even when it comes to offline advertising, your website should still be utilised effectively as a virtual shop front to your business, one that is an efficient, purpose driven site, an online entrance point for potential consumers and one that will efficiently guide them to where they need to be, that is your businesses services, products and resources, a site that assists in the path of conversion from potential consumer to customer.

Given the above you can quickly ascertain how your marketing dollars will fair when operating an up to date, well managed website as opposed to one that’s not.

There are many different aspects to consider with the development of a successful website including up to date presentation and technology, automation, search engine optimisation, user friendly navigation and quality up to date content and resources that attract visitors. These are just a few of the many points to be considered with your web development professional. Below are a few points to consider from a management perspective:

*Note that some of these points may not be applicable to Franchise operated websites and systems

- View your website as its own department and manage it effectively. Understand your website can be an asset or a liability, a pipeline or a bottleneck for your business. It needs to be developed and managed with a focus over time to maintain a positive consumer impression.

- Gain regular, quality feedback from your website visitors. I cannot emphasize this enough. They are the ones who will swiftly choose to stay or leave your site, this is where you will either gain or lose a consumer so you had better know what the majority of them think. Feedback can be obtained by having an interactive submission form on your website with a few questions and tick boxes regarding the visitor’s experience (or) a simple feedback request form for salespeople when talking to consumers; you might be surprised at just how much feedback you receive. This feedback is valuable but only if you take the action and implement change.

- If you haven’t already, make it a priority to invest some time into resourcing a good web development consultant and work towards building a positive long term commercial partnership with them. Although it’s not imperative, try to source a developer that understands the culture of the real estate industry or is open to learning. A good web consultant should be positive about your business and the industry in general. They should also be up to date with most web based platforms and systems. Some developers will prefer certain platforms or systems and should have the facts as to their preference.

- Request an evaluation by your developer for your web and internet parameters. You will start to gain a very quick picture as to whether it’s time to bite to bullet and go for a full redesign or at the very least a priority list of tasks large or small to be implemented over time. Your site should not just contain property for sale/rent and a few testimonials, it should be a hub of up to date information and resources that are high on the list for users who are searching.

- When it comes to web based knowledge accept the fact that it’s not your speciality but it is imperative that you do gain a basic understanding of e-commerce and web based business. Although you don’t directly make a product sale online you do market property on the web and this is the starting point of a potential sale. The world is moving swiftly towards web based interaction and if you don’t keep up you will be left behind.

- Understand that a website will never fully arrive. It should never be a set and forget system. Even in a recent upgrade situation there are ongoing improvements that can be implemented over time to make sure your site is providing a positive experience for visitors and delivering the best possible return for this department.

- Include web upgrades and development tasks into your annual budget. You do not want your website to be placed in the too hard basket; it should be one of the tasks you give priority to.

When I think of Apple Computers, I think of really pretty toys for people who insist on being different. For years it was the print publishing industry that worshipped Steve Jobs and anything his company Apple released. Die hard Apple fans have always had a bit of a chip on their shoulders. But Apple does one thing better than anybody else – and they look good doing it!

Style
Apple has style, its website and print material always shows the ‘cool’ factor and you get a sense of what their market is all about. There a number of things we can learn from Apple Computers. More importantly Apple’s excellent IPod Handheld Music Player.

IPod
The IPod is a revelation – a tiny music player that has no moveable parts, works like a charm and stores 1000′s of music tracks that can be played through its earphones, wirelessly on your stereo or in your car. And the IPod just looks so damn cool. But the greatest feature is its ease of use.

The IPod is not the best player out there, it does not play all types of music and has some pretty lame limitations on what you can play and where. The best player on the market is the Creative Zen Touch, plays music, has a huge hard drive, better battery life, plays a variety of music files…..but, it is not as cool.

So why is it that the Apple IPod has over 60% of the market? Two things:
One - It is cool, it looks great, it feels fantastic and people get jealous.
Two - It is so simple to use, I have even seen Grandma’s using them. It is the simplicity of how it all works that makes it a clear winner.

What can we learn from this:
Your website can be cool – it can look great, but it must be easy to use, it must give the users the information they want in a practical manner. Never try to be too cool, never try to make your website a learning curve for its visitors.

Your Menu – Navigation
This is where so many agents websites fall down. They try to be different by creating a site a new user has to learn. In my experience you have got 15 seconds once your page loads to win a new visitor over. If they are confused, if they do not understand what to do you will lose them. These people may also one day be your vendors.

Smart Menu’s
A smart menu is something a user will be comfortable with. Use terms they understand – ‘For Sale’ or ‘For Lease’ are givens. You may also include ‘call to actions’ such as ‘click here to…’ do this that or the other. Never use Macromedia Flash in your navigation unless you have a backup menu for users who do not have this installed.

Property Pages
Lay Out your pages nice and neatly, displaying groups of information cleanly and efficiently. Sarah Lorden Real Estate do this nicely. They do not overwhelm the user with information but cleanly display the property details. Too many agents just throw too much information at users of their site, confusing them.

You too can be cool
Be cool by all means but place functionality ahead of style in all situations. Website designers (I have worked with many) generally are functional poor, they just don’t understand user requirements as well as they should and believe me the do not like any criticism although they are great at handing it out.

User Groups
The best way to find out how good your site is – is to get a focus group together and sit behind them whilst they navigate your site, every question they throw at you – think of a way your website’s functionality could be improved to stop this question being asked again.

Sites with Style + Functionality
Let these companies pend millions on research and steal their style!

Apple Computers
Dell Computers
Adobe
IBM
Nike

Summing Up
Apple draws its strength by incorporing style and simplicity in everything it does, It is not the best computer and software company on the planet, but it does not need to be. What it does – it does well. Get a website that places your brand in the elite category, but go for simplicity and functionality.