Technology
Keep a familiar navigational style similar to current portals however utilise the latest web 2 technology to improve functionality without sacrificing usability. Don’t try and reinvent the wheel, just make it better and go faster.

Bandwidth and storage is cheap these days so the site would feature high resolution photos and full screen slideshows.

Data
Create an upload centre offering multiple ways for an agent to upload their to the portal properties including an api, xml feed, and even the option to scrape the agents site as a last resort. Individual agents would be encouraged to petition their data pushers to connect to the system.

The portal would create an industry schema for the transfer of real estate property data. The schema would be openly offered to anybody who wished to use it and other industry players would be invited to assist with its improvement.

Sharing with Consumers
There is so many options to share data on the web these days. I would create plugins for use with all range of social networking sites and internet tools. Things like Plugins for Myspace and for Facebook, Widgets for Google Desktop, Google Maps content, Gadgets for Windows Vista and Customisable RSS feeds so the public can plugin to whatever hardware or software they want.

Sharing with other Websites
Create an API so other websites can plugin content to their own sites. As an example a webmaster running a community portal can copy and paste some code and now serve up properties from my portal. These plugins will still show advertising from the site.

Extra Features
You will not be able to pay to be ranked higher. You will not have to pay to get any extra service. What is available for one shall be available for all except for maybe beta testing of upcoming features. Third party companies would be encouraged to provide extra services to agencies capitalising on the data with the only proviso that it enhanced the solution to the agent rather than detracted from it.

Enforcement
Agencies will be given no warning before penalties are applied for cheating the system. No preferential treatment shall be given to any office no matter their size, listing numbers or franchise affiliation. If duplicate properties are detected then the agency shall first get a warning with further detections resulting in an escalation of penalties resulting in a total ban. Far too many infringer’s are let off because the represent the best part of $200 per week in income.

Revenue
The model would revolve around charging companies who wanted to advertise to the visitors to the site rather than charging the data providers. Agents would not be charged unless they wanted to pay for specific advertising on the site. An agent could pay for ads on the index pages promoting themselves to sellers. They could not promote themselves on specific properties. The ads will be minimal and aesthetically fit into the design of the portal.

The ad system would allow advertisers to geo target their advertising down to the level of suburb and advertisers will be charged only a on successful per click basis. A building and pest inspector, solicitor or financier working in just the Hamilton area of Brisbane could have his adverts shown just on property for sale in the suburb or district. A company could also equally choose to target to whole regions or states as well.

The advertising module would provide the flexibility so that advertisers could self subscribe to the advertising with monthly budgets and automatic charging of credit cards. The advertising would allow for the use of fixed size images or text.

Rollout
Negotiations would be held with all the major data providers to provide agency data, but there will be no salespeople on the ground trying to flog advertising or subscriptions. A minimal operations team with virtually no salesperson ensures costs are kept at a minimum. Minimal staff requires virtually no executives or sales team salaries, bonuses and ancillary costs. No regional managers, state managers and national managers. No cars, travel, telephone, accommodation and expense accounts. No convention sponsorships or industry panels to fund.

The rollout process until launch would remain very tight lipped with no fanciful claims setting expectations too high and providing ammunition for competitors to feed upon.

Initial and ongoing promotion would never involve costly traditional media. No newspaper advertising billboards, tv shows, tv adverts or anything similar. Viral marketing techniques would be built into the system encouraging visitors to pass on and share the website and specific properties with friends via emails and social networking tagging such as del.ico.us, digg, stumbleupon, google bookmarks and others.

Free advertising coupons (lets say for $50 worth of advertising) would be provided to potential advertisers on a limited basis. Only so many would be released with every successful person able to invite 5 or 10 other people to also get a free coupon.

Privacy
All agents would acknowledge that their properties would be promoted though numerous means (as already mentioned) including gadgets, plugins, rss feeds etc etc but at no time would agents data be resold to third parties.

Testing
Everything would be tested, tested tested, and trialled with focus groups before releasing. Nobody wants to release another Myhome that whilst being a vastly superior site on a technology level, it was a site that visitors hated with a passion.

Now here is the big question! Would such a portal work in the current landscape? How much would it cost to create?

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.

So here is what I think is important when building a national portal that agents could embrace.

1. Listings come first. A user visits a real estate portal to view property information. They do not visit a portal to have pop-up pop-overs or ads all over the place. Build a site for visitors first. Make is easy to get the data they want.

2. Make it simple for a user to contact an agent, form to email at the top of the page, contact numbers clearly displayed. Why do some portals have these forms hidden away?

3. One type of listing only: Each agency gets the same priority as other agents, none of this platinum, premium, super platinum, super duper titanium type membership packages. The difference between you and your competition is in the presentation of the property, the photography, the tours, the text content, the videos, the sound commentary, this is what sets you apart from the others, not getting more visits to a listing because you are at the top. This is just money making gone mad and gives agencies no benefit except for a bigger bill………….. and anyway if all agents in the same area are on these super plans who benefits?

Note: If I am buying a property in St Kilda – Do I only look at the first few? They might get more page views but this does not mean they sell any quicker than others?

4. 3rd Party Advertising: Yes, portals have every right to have advertising alongside listings – but in my mind only if it is complimentary. The Mortgage Calculator can be sponsored, an Insurance Calculator can be sponsored, but lets get one things straight – the property data comes first. The rest of the ads are just pure money making on the back of your listing – someone please show some initiative and build an advertising system that does not annoy the user.

5. Create an Open Standard for Measuring Visitor Numbers: Only the big end of town can afford Nielson Netratings and Hitwise etc. I would like to see an open standard for measurement. A code that we can all put into our site. There was one many years ago but it was purchased by one of the big measurement companies and then shut down – how nice!

Nielson Netratings rates all the most popular real estate sites in Australia – but only about 15 sites are measured, so Joe Bloggs real estate could have 1 visitor (from his mum) and say he has one of the top 20 real estate sites in Australia, yes it may be reasonably accurate for the top 2 or 3 but it is useless data for the rest.

6. Yes you are FREE now, but what are the ongoing costs once we start paying, do you have a set price rise per annum? CPI or 2% seems fair to all concerned. Agents should have it in writing from the beginning, if they are going to make you popular (and then allow you to make millions from 3rd party advertisers alongside their listings) then they deserve this in writing from the beginning.

7. RSS. Full RSS Features for members of a site to be able create their own unique feeds of listings and have them delivered directly to their browser/vista desktop or Outlook 2007.

These are just some floating ideas – tell us what else you think is important, how else can these portals get closer to providing a positive solution for agents and consumers? I wonder if the Real Estate Institutes had asked these questions from the beginning on behalf of agents instead of supporting one or another portal simply because they gave them money – if things would be a little different now…..

I may be a small voice, but I think I have some experience with these things. If I were given a job of building a portal for success and money was no object, here is what I would do.

1. Free for Agents FOREVER . Agents are the only reason any portal would have a chance to be successful. Agents = content (listings) , content = consumers, consumers = advertisers. This is how Google do it and it is the model for the 21st Century.

2. Clean User Interface: Create a clean professional interface that caters for users of your site, and helps them find what they are looking for in as fewer steps as possible.

3. Include Resizable Mapping: Include a great mapping system for property searches. Mapping will be the king of searching for just about anything in the future. But make sure it takes up the majority of a users screen – in other words it can be resized to fit any size!

4. Allow imports from all XML Providers and listen to them for feedback. Send XML providers back information to place in their systems, such as property views, email enquiries. As more and more portals and websites become available XML providers are going to be in high demand. Hubonline, MyDesktop, Console, Portplus and others need to be become partners of these sites. Realestate.com.au provide great service to their providers as do Domain and Homehound, and just about all major franchises have their own system.

5. RSS Ready: Make sure that you site is fully RSS compliant. Allow users to subscribe to just about any listing type, from any area.

6. Consumer Rating System: Give them tools that mean something to them. Allow them feedback and possibly ratings systems that can be seen by agents only. Maybe a rating system (1 – 5 stars) that tells the agent whether the information provided was informative, the images were helpful and allow them to provide feedback to agents. Lifting the standards of listings is something realestate.com.au has done successfully over the years but it still needs to go further.

7. Advertising: Make advertising complimentary, allow small business advertisers to be able to advertise on the sites in specific areas. Builders, bricklayers etc should be given the opportunity to advertise in selected suburbs for a fee.

8. Media Centre PC’s: Create tools for consumers to be able to subscribe to and have data sent to their Media Centre PC’s so they can sit down in their living rooms and view the latest listings.

9. Open up your database. Create tools for developers to display your listings (with specific guidelines) on their websites, web logs etc. Create plugins for Firefox, IE7 etc

10. Non Compete Clause: Make a clause that locks in a deal with agents that they are all going to be treated equally in search results, no silver, gold or platinum deals that just squeeze extra dollars out of agents. WOW! if you go to a gold membership (only an extra $220.00 per month) you get a logo next to your listings!

Building something like this is not rocket science, but it does take time, I would have a team of maybe 5 developers and 1 interface designer. I would then focus on testing for about 3 months. If someone could build something like this (less than $500,000) then I think it would be a great start for a successful portal.

Then comes the hard part, getting it out there!!!! $$$$$ But I can tell you, $30 million dollars would cover it (Sensis and justlisted)