Involving agents and consumers before a product is released seems a natural thing to do but we certainly have not seen that in previous user interface tweaks. So in that light it is itself a fantastic improvement and an indicator that the company might finally listening.

I have spent a few hours with the BETA version and overall the impression is fairly good. Now since this is a beta  I am not going to comment on the problems or issues on the site. Yes there are still quite a few challenges ahead for the team as it’s public release looms but that is what a beta programme is all about. Finding and fixing those issues.

So lets take a glass is half full look at it now and leave the critques to the public release.  I am sure Peter Ricci will be looking at doing a full indepth review when it goes live but here is a much shorter “teaser” of things to come.

In general the look and feel of the site has not changed that much. As far as the interface goes it is more of an improvement rather than a full redesign.

The map and quick search options take more of a central role on the home page and don’t get drowned out as they do on the current version.

The look and styling is much more contemporary and not quite so old and tired looking. We are talking about small things like rounded corners on boxes, colours and shading… small things but they do make a difference. The whole design seems focussed on improving the buyer or browsers experience.

Searching is better both from the home page and the refinement tools and there is no search box on every page, even individual property pages.  Search results don’t seem to be limited to just 200 properties which is about time and you now have an option to “exclude properties under offer/contract” as well as the traditional “Include surrounding suburbs”

I did notice that there is now no links to the Realestate.com.au blogs that have sat idle without an update for 12 to 18 months.

The ads are still there (honestly, who really thought they would be removed?) but I can say they are far less distracting and I believe there may even be less. Well thats the impression anyway. I cant really comment on the search results pages themselves as they do not display correctly for me at all no matter what browser I use. The property pages themselves come up fine and this is where I believe some of the best improvements are.

The design is primarily a two column design rather than the current three column design. The persistent left hand menu is now gone which means that the content takes up much more across the width of the page. Also because there is now room for the extra photo thumbnails to sit up beside the main photo they don’t eat into the centre column leaving in less space for the property description.

All in all this requires far less scrolling and is a much more functional and useable. Photos open in a new page rather than popup over the top of the property page.

The local voices information is located in a much better postion off to the right hand side rather in the main content area. this means that each column is closer to the same length making better effecient use of the page and again less scrolling.

Open houses can now be downloaded as an ical file which allows you to easily add in a click or two the details of the open house right into your calendar either on your smartphone or your desktop.

Not all changes are limited to the front end though. One of the big problems that has been a problem for a handful of agents is when a suburb name is used twice in the same state.  One example of this is the Suburb of West End which is in Brisbane and Townsville. Searching for west end will always return properties in both suburbs. That is now fixed.

I believe buyers will like the new recommendation engine and the ability to compare properties in side by side comparison system.

The new design team are using the UserVoice feedback system to collect feedback from and interact with the beta testers. I have used the is system a few times from a users perspective and it is really slick allowing users to vote on current support issues and even create their own.

It’s interesting to see that feedback they are getting from consumers using this system. Here is a quick collection (not all of them by a longshot) of some of the more popular suggested ideas that would be of most interest to readers.

Popular ideas as suggested by beta testers

• Map Pins need to change colour when you’ve click on them
• Too many ads
• Show rental prices in an area I am looking to buy
• Should be an exclude auctions option when doing a search
• List the agents underquoting . Show their estimate and the acutal sale price.

Popular ideas as suggested by Realestate.com.au

• Allow me to search by a keyword
• Make it so that I can remove proeprties from my search that I dont want to see again
• The new site seems a lot quicker and I like the new design
• Show me the properties I like on the home page

Other ideas suggested by Realestate.com.au not getting many votes so far at least

• Display the number of days a property has been listed on the site.
• I like the new site but I would like to see better images

The ideas raised by the realestate.com.au are of particular interest because the give a few clues to what the team are considering integrating and in the case of the post about liking the new design, thats just trolling for compliments they can use in their marketing.

The overall improvements are very much needed but there are quite alot of bugs to sort out between now and the launch which is due in April sometime. I am glad to say that the new version will for the most part at least be a positive step forward. There will always be those that preferred the old model but they should be in the minority and I for one am looking forward to the new release.

Certainly they could have done more, and I am not a fan of everything that they have changed but with the number one site in the space you have to be mindful of the “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” rule. Many users did not even notice some of the more recent upgrades to the site have  they have been that minor. You are going to miss this one though.  Whilst it sort of looks the same… it is well and truly different.

If anybody else has had access to the test site then please share your opinions of what you think of the site so far keeping in mind it is still in BETA and bugs are to be expected.  Remember the glass is half full on this one for now :)

1. There is absolutely nothing in this world like Facebook for connecting with all your old friends. The most successful people in real estate truly understand that networking is one of the real key’s to this industry and setting up a Facebook profile is drop dead easy thing to do to take advantage of it. Most of your old friends probably did not even know you were in real estate anyway. In sales the BIGGER YOUR SPHERE OF INFLUENCE THE BETTER.
2. Facebook and Twitter are truly opt-in marketing. There can be no chance that you can ever have provisions of the the privacy act thrown at you as they chose to follow you and they still WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU.
3. Testimonials are like gold for real estate agents and Linkedin allows you to write and receive business testimonials from other members. Testimonials that you approve become part of your profile for everyone to see. WHO DOES NOT WANT ANYMORE TESTIMONIALS?
4. Ensure your following the right people on Twitter as it is simply the best barometer on the real estate industry. Everyday you will get the latest training tips, strategies, news and commentary and all in just 140 characters each. On Twitter follow few and follow quality and YOU WILL BE REWARDED. Try to follow too many and it all just turns into noise.
5. Networking with others in and associated with our industry is just as important as networking with potential clients. When you are looking to contact someone you have never met Linkedin shows you who in your network already knows them and how. Linked in allows you to BUILD RELATIONSHIPS AND CONNECTIONS INSIDE THE INDUSTRY.
6. Twitter Search is a fantastic way to keep abreast of just what people are saying about your company, your brand or a recent advertising campaign. You get to see exactly what consumers are TELLING THEIR FRIENDS ABOUT YOU.
7. If they find it interesting or worth sharing,  your friends and followers will spread your news for you when they retweet, comment or like something that you post. The power of social networking is INCREDIBLE WHEN IT GOES VIRAL.
8. Tweets are now integrated live into the Google Search Engine Results Pages. Facebook Fan Pages and Twitter Lists are now in the Google Index which makes setting up a Twitter Account and Facebook Profile the EASIEST SEO ON THE PLANET.
9. If you dont like someone or they are posting or tweeting rubbish… you can just DELETE THEM!
10. Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin are 100% FREE…  at least for now.

“aTV will provide the demonstration of key functions in the property management industry.”

The premise with aTV has been built around 100 questions the legislation and software can not teach or answer for a property manager.

Watch Video

aTV plan to keep the videos very short and intend to present a lot more insights along the way.

Membership to the apmasphere site is free & aTV is the latest in their long list of FREE resources for property managers to help them with their careers.

As a member, I’ve found that apmasphere provide an invaluable resource for Property Managers & Principals, with some of the industries best Property Managers & Property Management trainers providing guidance, thoughts and ideas on how to overcome many of the daily issues Property Management departments & Principals face.

Apmasphere has in excess of 1,000 members & provides some of the most up-to-date information available for Property Managers. Their forum acts like a brains trust for ideas on the ‘How To’ of Property Management and approaches questions on economics, structure and growth.

If you haven’t joined in as yet, you may want to head over to see what you’re missing out on. It’s a great online learning platform.

There were 4 recurring issues which arose during this process and should be avoided by any new real estate application or real estate portal. These include; creating your own unique xml specification, requiring 3rd parties to sign confidentiality agreements, providing inadequate documentation and lastly, failure to provide upload confirmation reports.

• Unique XML Specification – This has been a common mistake by new portals as they think they need to have their own unique xml feed specification. Although REA do not permit it, it is common knowledge that the REAXML is industry standard which is used/accepted by many existing portals (names withheld). Like any other developer we can set up an REAXML to a new portal in around 5 minutes. However, if a portal has their own unique XML then it could take days to write the XML and then days to test it.

• Confidentiality Agreements – I’m bewildered why I’m required to sign a confidentiality agreement when all we are doing is sending an XML to a third party website. I can understand signing a Terms & Conditions for uploading agreement, but anything else is just a speed bump in the process to getting an XML in place.

• Inadequate Documentation – Those portals who have their own XML specification need adequate and UP-TO-DATE documentation so developers can efficiently create the XML. Some portals do have excellent documentation while others have shocking documentation which is often out-of-date. IMPORTANT – Make sure your XML documentation is structured so it is easy to navigate and is up-to-date.

• Upload Confirmation Reports – This is probably the most important aspect of running an efficient export/import system. These reports are sent back to the bulk loader after each XML has been parsed by the 3rd party portal. The reports highlight which properties have been added, updated or removed along with which properties had errors and what they are. Once again, REA have an excellent report system where they tell you the exact error for why a property was not added. As a further benefit, they also send a daily email to the real estate agency summing up the properties parsed for the day.

In my opinion the worst portals to export to are those controlled by the Real Estate Institutes. For some reason they believe having their own XML specification provides greater value to members. Most smaller portals accept the REAXML but only a few provide adequate upload confirmation reports which makes it hard to monitor the flow of properties.

For any new real applications it is important to reduce the barriers which allow them to receive property listings. There is no reason to “reinvent the wheel”, simply follow industry standard and use a system which is common practice.

Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach are holding ‘The Edge’ on Saturday 17^th April 2010 at the Gold Coast Convention Centre.

Brett Clements from PropVid sent me the ‘Hot Off The Press’ promo video yesterday.

Now for such a big event I’m sure that there has already been a lot of promotion done by the Gold Coast Network in the lead up till now & it looks like there is going to be a whole lot more promotion done between now and ‘The Edge’.

But I thought I might throw my 2 cents worth in & share some ideas on how Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach could leverage Social Media & the web more effectively to help spread the word.

Here’s ‘The Edge’ video promo.

The video went live on the PlatinumHD.tv site a few days ago & was uploaded onto YouTube 3 days ago. Whilst I think the video is really powerful there are a couple of things that could be changed to improve its conversion.

Changes to the Video: Within the video I’d have the agents website address GoldCoastNetwork.com.au appearing underneath the Ray White Broadbeach, Ray White Commercial Broadbeach, Ray White Mermaid Beach slide (which appears at the 2 minute mark within the video).

Also, towards the end of the video a slide appears saying “Spaces Limited Book Now”

Whilst I think it’s great to include a call to action. It’s important to define what you want people to do. Are they wanting vendors to book their property in now for the auction? Or do they want buyers to book their seat now? Or both?

On the web there is no room for confusion. It’s important that people watching the video know how to Book Now.

Improve Online Conversion: One suggestion could be that if you include the agency website address within the video, then on the home page of the Ray White website they could embed ‘The Edge’ promo video into the top right hand corner (probably cutting out the end of the surf life saving flag or surfer image) and then have a button underneath to say Click Here to Book Now for ‘The Edge’.

I would then send them to a long copy sales page that features some of the benefits of why they should be involved in ‘The Edge’ and provide an opt-in section which identifies if they are a buyer or a seller.

This will allow Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach to leverage the traffic that they already get to their website from Google and their other marketing, plus improve conversion from the people who view their professionally produced ‘The Edge’ promo video.

Obviously, with only 6 weeks to go till ‘The Edge’, to allow for the 4 week cut-through marketing campaign that they mention in the video, all sellers would need to be contacted straight away to include their listing in ‘The Edge’ marketing campaign.

I can imagine that the agency will need to have all properties listed by 20^th March, but due to the size of the promotion & the incredible exposure there’s a possibility that they could include a few extra listings within a few days after this cut-off date. But, that’s obviously up to them.

Here’s a few other suggestions…

YouTube: One of the first things I noticed is that the video could also be optimised a lot better on YouTube. The wording used in the description & tagging has no chance of being found on Google by someone searching for real estate on the Gold Coast & I’m not sure that having it uploaded under the Entertainment category is going to help either?

Blogging: They should integrate a WordPress blog within their company website. This will not only help to market ‘The Edge’ but it will help with their SEO.

They should write a daily blog post about some of the build up towards ‘The Edge’ and ask all the staff to tweet or share each article with their followers on Twitter & their friends on Facebook.

When sharing the articles on these sites they could also ask people to click the like button when uploading onto Facebook and ask the followers to ‘Please RT’ their tweets on Twitter.

When posting daily updates on the blog it’s important to leave the comments section open on the articles because this may get people asking questions about how to be involved & could provide an additional lead generation strategy.

This could also provide an opportunity to set a deadline for the last day before properties will be allowed to be submitted & could create an extra sense of urgency for potential sellers and/or could encourage friends to tell friends to contact the agency so they don’t miss out on ‘The Edge’.

To protect the integrity of the event, Ray White Broadbeach-Mermaid Beach are the administrators of the blog so they have control to monitor comments too.

Facebook: I also noticed that Ray White Broadbeach-Mermaid Beach have a personal profile on Facebook. Whilst they currently have 67 friends, they should really have this as a Fan Page, because Facebook has a limit and once you get to 5,000 friends you have to change to a Fan Page.

Any company thinking about creating a presence on Facebook should start off with a Fan Page. They are better for business.

Celebrities, etc should also create a Fan Page. eg. One of my friends on facebook, Jack Canfield sent me an email the other day to ask me to join him at his fan page because he had reached his limit of friends.

Jack now has the task of getting all 5,000 of his friends that he has built up on his personal Facebook profile to go over & connect with him on his new Facebook Fan Page.

( Update: I found their company Facebook Fan Page – See Update at bottom of this article )

Twitter: With regards to Twitter I can’t seem to locate a company profile for them. At this point there appears to be no Twitter account linked to their site & no blog within their site.

Whilst ‘The Edge’ is an amazing concept, there are so many different things that Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach could do to make this the most incredible real estate event ever through Social Media.

(Update: I found their company Twitter account as well see Update at bottom of this article. I searched both facebook and Twitter for Ray White Broadbeach and Ray White Mermaid Beach. I finally found them under the Gold Coast Network.)

Print Media: Having seen the magnitude of the print media campaign from last years event, Ray White Broadbeach-Mermaid Beach should be advertising something like,

“For the daily inside scoop on ‘The Edge’ become a Fan on Facebook and/or follow us on Twitter” within their campaign.

This could help them to build a huge network of people connected to their company who live within their service.

It’s never too late: Even though ‘The Edge’ is only 6 weeks away, when you think about the real-time nature of Web 2.0, there is still a lot of time available for Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach to leverage the power of the internet & use this impressive Video Production from PropVid to generate the most amazing impression within their marketplace.

2 last things: A geo-targeted Pay Per Click campaign on Google could help overcome some SEO issues, plus a targeted Facebook Ads Campaign would help drive targeted traffic to their video campaign and/or their Facebook Fan Page.

The amount of ‘Free’ online PR that could be generated around ‘The Edge’ could be massive.

If Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach get this right, ‘The Edge’ could become so much bigger than they could have ever imagined.

And, if you tallied up every strategy that I’ve mentioned, they could make a huge difference to their whole campaign for around $500 – $1,000 plus time spent writing a daily update on their blog about ‘The Edge’.

PS: There’s a few more ideas I have about what they could do on realestate.com.au and other strategies, but at this point I just wanted to paint the picture of what is really possible, if a real estate agency embraces Social Media and uses the power of the internet the right way.

Please feel welcome to share your thoughts & ideas.

UPDATE: After writing this article I noticed that Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach do in fact have a Facebook Fan Page under ‘Gold Coast Network‘ and a Twitter account at Twitter.com/raywhitebroad with their username as ‘Gold Coast Network’. It’s great to see that they have established a fan page and a Twitter account.

At the time of posting this update, they have 97 fans on Facebook and 23 followers on Twitter, but unfortunately all the company seem to be posting is there sold listings & providing a link to the Open Homes that they have on each weekend.

Their Gold Coast Network Fan Page could become so much more engaging and simply because of its name, Gold Coast Network, it has the potential to become one of the biggest real estate fan pages on Facebook if they shared some other information about what’s happening on the Gold Coast as well.

This is because our human brain can only handle around 150 meaningful relationships – that is, you know how the 150 people fit into your life, and they know how they fit into yours.

Apparently, this is a “direct function of the relative neocortex size” meaning the brain can only process a certain amount of information on stable friendships. This includes all close friends, family, colleagues and acquaintances, as well as past colleagues, school friends and people you might want to reacquaint with should you meet them again.

For some, his theory has become a “Law”. 150, that’s it.

We see the 150 number cropping up throughout history. In his original 1992 paper, Dunbar showed how early non-human primates grouped into clusters of 148. Later, neolithic farming villages tended to contain no more than 150 people (the ‘DoomsDay’ Book showed this too), and the basic size of Roman armies topped off at 150. Property managements max out at 150 per manager don’t they? Realestate.com.au account managers look after no more than 150 accounts. [So you see, it must be law!]

Dunbar further showed that for a group to have cohesion, it should have no more than 150 members. Companies or groups that grow beyond that size need to be physically broken up into smaller units in order to retain cohesion with that organisation.

Think about your own lives and its implications.

How many people do you have a meaningful stable relationship with at the moment (in real estate, technology and beyond)? Even for those with hundreds and thousands of ‘Facebook friends’ and ‘Twitter followers’, how many do you think they/we actively engage with? What does this mean for client relationship management (CRM) activities and software? For those real estate professionals with thousands of contacts that receive their regular blasted enewsletters, ebrochures and the like, what sort of meaningful interaction is going on?

Lots of business can be done by being the local real estate expert forged through solid, meaningful and trusted long term relationships. Maybe in our rush for technology, we over complicate matters, and rush to seek short cuts to contact loads of people, shotgun style? Should we just be happy with our 150 ‘meaningful relationships’ and make the most out of these contacts?

Disclosure: our company has 150 clients. Now I know why…

For More:

Dunbar, Robin. (1992) Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates, Journal of Human Evolution 22: 469-493.

Dunbar, Robin (1998). Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language. Harvard University Press

Gladwell, Malcolm (2000) ‘The Tipping Point’ . (Dunbar’s Law forms a central part of Gladwell’s argument and probably first made him famous)

Why? Because not doing so will slowly end their dominance and when the decline occurs it will be so fast that no maneuvering will make a difference.

Some may argue that Google Real Estate has not made a difference as yet, but these people live in complete denial and it will only be a matter of time before visitor numbers begin declining and Google Real Estate begins its upward March.

Remember, Google only has to get comparative data to make a difference. Google also have a far greater capacity to let people know about it than all other real estate portals in the world combined.

Recently a number of videos have been produced that well and truly show how serious Google is about maps and real estate.

Finding a house on Google Real Estate Maps

Here is one to showcase real estate listings throughout Australia

Here is one on how to refine your real estate search on Google Real Estate.

Real Estate API’s
Realestate.com.au and domain.com.au must open their databases up to the general public to create a whole new wave of web and mobile applications.

I have been pushing API’s with these portals for over 2 years and yet we still have nothing. Maybe Realestate.com.au’s big announcement will include an API?

What can an API do?
As an example any website would be able to carry listings through this API, so community websites, industry websites, councils, agents, even business2.com.au would be able to carry listings, sales data etc. Portals do not need agents permission as agents have signed away all rights to the data when they join these sites.

Signing up should be simple and approval rapid and it should be accompanied by rapidly evolving documentation and examples.

Boon for portals
One other thing we will see is innovation across the board, even things we have not even thought of will take us by surprise, but the biggest boon will be for the portals. It will extend their listings and sales data reach and allow that data to be ingrained across 10’s of thousands of websites across Australia and the world.

Versions
There should be two versions of the API, the free version which carries 3rd parties adverts from the portals and is a little limited and then a paid version that carries no advertising and allows the user to do whatever they want with the data!

Flow on
The flow on effect of this will flow across the industries to jobs, cars and classifieds.

Will this happen?
Don’t hold your breath, large organisations are slow at moving on these opportunities, usually waiting until it is too late. We are fast approaching a time where I think realestate.com.au and domain.com.au will start going backwards unless they really innovate with API’s.

One only has to look at the music industry and the movie industry to see how stubborn incumbents completely ruin their own industries by not embracing and innovating.

In Part 1 of this series, I covered how to get the best coverage for your agency within the Find An Agent Section settings and in Part 2 I discussed an important internet marketing strategy where you can improve the number of visits you can get to your listings.

In that article I also covered 3 simple internet marketing concepts, the first of which was ‘The Image Catches Their Eye’ which leads me to…

You Lost Me At ‘Hello’

Have you ever seen that part in the movie Jerry Maguire where Renee Zellweger says to Tom Cruise “You had me at Hello?” If not, here’s a quick snippet from the movie.

Well, with this phrase in mind, I can not stress how important it is to grab a buyer or sellers attention over the web, especially on realestate.com.au.

Ultimately, you want to aim to ‘Have them at hello too’ which means that they will continue to keep reading about your listing.

The ‘Hello’ part is so important over the web, because with a woman you have somewhere between 2 – 4 seconds to grab their attention, whereas for a male, it’s 5 – 7 seconds, yet unbelievably there are still a number of agents who are committing the cardinal sin on realestate.com.au.

What’s the cardinal sin on realestate.com.au?

I find it astounding in today’s world of digital photography, that some agents are still uploading their listings onto realestate.com.au without any images of the property at all.

What’s more, realestate.com.au don’t allow listings to be uploaded to their site unless their is an image & some agents actually go out of their way to upload a generic image instead, just to get the listing up onto the realestate.com.au site.

Some agents must be in such a hurry to get the property uploaded onto the web on a Friday afternoon, before the receptionist goes home, that they upload the listing without photos, without considering the damaging consequences.

Maybe the owner is super keen to have the property uploaded before the weekend, but uploading any listing onto realestate.com.au without photos of the property is a huge mistake.

The image is such a big attention grabber and having no image could actually put the ideal buyer off.

Plus, lots of potential sellers subscribe to email alerts and if they see a property that is poorly marketed by an agent then they could easily be put off from listing with that agent.

It’s the biggest database in Australian real estate – Use it.

REA has the biggest real estate database within Australia & they have hundreds of thousands of people who have subscribed to receive email alerts when new listings come onto the market within their chosen criteria.

Realestate.com.au include the first email notification via their email alert service at no extra cost to the agent. It’s part of the subscription fees & is a very affective part of an agent’s marketing strategy for matching properties to suitable buyers.

Now, if an agent uploads a listing without the property photos & wants to access the REA’s database to re-send the property details out with photos now uploaded, they have to pay (normally hundreds of dollars) to send out one of REA’s e-Brochures.

Even though you could always pay to re-send the property out to REA’s database via the e-Brochure in an attempt to try to rectify the initial mistake, you’ll never get a second chance to create that great first impression.

No matter what the circumstances, an agent should ‘never’ upload a listing onto realestate.com.au without photos of the property.

Quick Tip: To get the greatest exposure for your listing as it is emailed out as an email alert to the REA database, make sure you set your price guides within the admin section as far apart as you feel that you comfortably can without misrepresenting the price.

This will allow you to broaden your marketing out to potential buyers in a lower price range who may end up deciding to increase their spending range and/or market to buyers in a higher price bracket that may consider reducing the amount they want to spend on a property.

But, make sure you reset the price range within the system within the first week after the first email alert has been sent, as by this time you’ll probably have direct feedback from buyers and you should have an even better indication of the properties real price point in the market.

Obviously, use your common sense, sending an $800,000 listing to buyers with $300,000 to spend isn’t going to win you any friends.

Do you remember dial-up internet & how time consuming it was to sit there waiting for a website to appear on the computer screen or heaven forbid, trying to watch a video?

Well, if you ever had any doubts about the importance that video will play in the world of real estate marketing you may want to sit up and take notice of what Google are about to embark upon.

Amir Kurtovic wrote “Google have announced plans to bring an ultra-high speed fiber network to a few select cities or communities. What is ultra-high speed, exactly? According to Google, it’s about 100 times faster than what most American’s have today. One gigabit per second to be exact.”

“We’ll offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people,” says the statement.

As internet speed increases, marketing property over the web is going to become more about providing an engaging experience and real estate agents should start looking at ways that they can market more like the way project marketing companies currently do.

Lots of project marketing companies are using 3d Rendering & Flythrough Animations like those offered by netstarter.com.au to bring a project to life prior to a complex even being built.

And a couple of weeks ago, I noticed Australian real estate marketing & video company imageination announced on Twitter, “We will be rolling out 3D floor plans as part of our service offering to agents in the next few weeks. More to come.”

Going forward, broadband speeds will progressively keep increasing and to make the most out of the web, real estate agents should look at having a video on the home page of their website to engage their website visitors and help build more trust online.

By engaging consumers with market update videos or property videos, 3D floorplans, virtual tours, etc means that more time is spent on a site, which also helps to make a website more sticky and increases the chances of conversion.

Finally, the responsibility for providing a better online experience can’t just be left in the hands of agents & video companies.

I believe that the major portals will need to look at how they can provide a more engaging experience for the end user.

One of the most important changes that the major portals should be addressing is making property videos easier to see, rather than having them sit towards the bottom of the pile on a property listing page.

With Google talking about One gigabit per second download speed, the internet is going to become an even more engaging experience than we could have ever imagined.