With online solutions its possible for an innovation to rapidly move through each level far quicker than the offline world would allow. Look at the use of Facebook and Twitter in our industry. A little over 18 months ago Twitter and Facebook where only being used by the Innovators and the Early Adopters in our industry. That quickly changed and by the end of 2009 it was being picked up by the Early Majority and today we see the start of the Late Majority joining the party.

So it had me thinking whats going to be the big things of 2011 online for real estate agents and early evidence suggests that three big breakouts to hit the Early Majority for 2011 will be Video, Mobile and Single Property Websites.
To breakout to the majority things generally have to change. There is generally and update or a new technology or something that facilitates the change and for my suggestions there is a change that will facilitate that greater adoption.

Video

Video has been used by real estate agencies for a few years. Online video broke through to the majority with the advancement of broadband internet connections to the home and Youtube is now one of the world’s most popular websites. Despite this video has not reached the same popularity in our industry and has remained a niche product only with the Early Adopters.

So whats going to change? Realestate.com.au is about to launch their video product. Domain were first to the punch last year but realestate.com.au are going to be doing it bigger and better and has gathered the resources and man power from around the country under one banner.

This army of video contractors will provide a consistent product across the country but best of all video will be a main feature of the realestate.com.au portal and will finally come of age in our industry. 2011 will have video written all over it and you can smell it in the air. Every article published on Business 2 so far this year includes something about video.

Mobile

Smartphones and Tablets are becoming hugely popular placing internet access into the palms of the people and they are using it to visit our websites. Over the past couple of years some real estate website providers have offered mobile websites to their clients but till now the concentration has been on making the property pages fit a mobile device and not the whole site.

On our website we are currently receiving an average of over 25 unique visitors every day from mobile devices including ipods, ipads, iphones and android devices. By the end of the year I expect that number to triple or even more as these “smarter” phones and web enabled mobiled devices become more and more popular.
What stood out most though was that the majority of visits were to non-property pages. In fact 75% of visitors came from Google to view a non-property page.

If that is how the public are viewing our websites we as agents need to deliver the best experience to them and start offering mobile friendly versions to those arriving with via mobile devices. More and more agents will create 100% mobile optimised sites.

Single Property Websites

I remember creating a standalone property website from scratch for a client many many years and swearing that I would never do it again. Over the past couple of years templated versions have become popular allow agents to create a standalone website in minutes. They have certainly attracted their fair share of Early Adopters in the industry but have struggled to gain a wider acceptance.

TheHomePage.com.au is one of Australia’s newest free portals and the team is thinking outside of the box with many things they are doing. Along the way the team may have found the magical ingredient that will introduce single property websites to a much wider audience and have called it MyPropertyAddress.com.au. With the previous suppliers there was still a significant investment in time uploading and commissioning the website. Whilst it is no longer measured in hours like my original attempt year ago it is still a significant amount of time especially when you are doing multiple property. When you factor in price changes for all of your property the time invested can still be quite significant.

Because TheHomePage.com.au already receive all of your information as a portal (and if you are not sending your properties to them now, I recommend you should) they can make a single property website with literally a couple of clicks.

The result is a professional website with great SEO benefit back to your main website with very little effort. The site will be constantly updated with absolutely no additional time needed at all.

Here are a couple of examples :- http://84teasdaledrivenerang.com and http://224theesplanadeuminabeach.com.

You can probably expect the current manual style operators scrambling to get hold of an xml feed themselves to replicate the sheer simplicity. You might also see other companies who already receive or send xml property feeds try and tap into this type of product and join the fray. For now though thehomepage’s MyPropertyAddress.com.au is the only one that I know of that has the process as simple as possible

These are for my mind the top 3 solutions that are on the horizon of making the biggest impact for agents online. The real question is though, are you going to be the Early Majority, the Late Majority or one of the Laggards.

In their latest press release, Realestate.com.au have just announced some enhancements to their mobile site…

Henry Ruiz, General Manager Consumer Marketing for realestate.com.au indicated the new mobile website features will allow obsessed property hunters to access important property information, at the touch of a button.

“Given the heightened activity in the property market realestate.com.au’s enhanced mobile site means property seekers can now access open for inspection and auction times in chronological order while on the go, so they can maximise the time spent on the property hunt,” he said.

“The site even allows house hunters to save notes on properties to their mobile and then access that information via their myrealestate account from their computer later on,” said Henry.

Since launching the mobile website in early 2009, realestate.com.au has experienced significant growth in traffic, up by 213 per cent⁽²⁾ during a 12 month period.

“We have had a phenomenal response since launching to market last year with a high proportion (73.6 per cent) ⁽³⁾ of our users accessing the mobile website site via an iPhone handset,” said Henry.

“Our data indicates consumers using our mobile site prefer to call an agent directly from their mobile rather than sending an email. In fact 71.3 per cent⁽⁴⁾ clicked to call an agent directly, reinforcing the high level of engagement and immediacy in response wanted by property hunters,” he said.

Other benefits of the mobile site include the new find an agent feature and ability to share property information via popular social networking channels such as Facebook, MySpace, Delicious and Twitter.

It will be interesting to see how popular the enhanced REA mobile website will be with users.

Mobile visitor traffic is only going to keep increasing as more and more people become used to using their phone for browsing the web.

This upgrade also coincides with Commonwealth Bank’s announcement to provide a mobile solution via CBA Combine Realestate.com.au Data into iPhone Augmented Reality Solution as reported here on Business2 last week by Glenn Batten.

The statistics for the Press Release were based upon:-

(1)     20 per cent of people indicated the ability to view properties via a mobile can help manage the mania of inspecting properties without getting stressed. Source: Independent online survey conducted by Longergan Research of 1,028 respondents for realestate.com.au, March 2010

(2)     213 per cent growth in unique visitors during a 12 month period from April 2009 to March 2010 Source: Omniture Site Catalyst

(3)     73.6 per cent of unique visitors to the realestate.com.au mobile site came from iPhone handsets. Source: Omniture Site Catalyst

(4)     This is based on total leads sent to agents by mobile users. 71.3 per cent of unique visitors clicked to call an agent directly via the realestate.com.au mobile website, rather than those who emailed (28.7 per cent) an agent during the month of March. Source: Omniture Site Catalyst

Remember the iconic 1980s movie ‘Wall Street’ in which Michael Douglas walks along a beach watching the sun rise while talking into his mobile phone? The thing was about as big as his head (which was big), yet was the symbol of power, wealth, technology and cool. Looking back at it now, the device forces a smile, just like those beige box-like floppy drive PCs of the same era.

Fast forward nearly a quarter of a century, and the current generation of mobile phones are really pocket PCs, things that might have impressed Flash Gordon or Captain Kirk in earlier eras. We check our emails, surf the web, listen to music, take pictures, download and pay for apps – from anywhere. It slips into our pocket, we own it, it’s ours. With the iPhone, it’s stylish to be a geek, and if you’re a newcomer to all this, welcome to the party.

A year ago, mobile traffic to web sites, and real estate sites in particular, did not rate. Yet already 23% of Australians with mobiles use them to access the internet, even though total internet traffic is estimated to be less than 1% through a mobile device (ABS). Still early days.

Part of this could be the catch up of consumers, part of this could be the lack of mobile-ready websites and the small number of ‘real estate’ apps in the iphone App Store. A recent search of “real estate” apps turned up only 5 Australian ones (plenty of American), among these a couple of multi-office real estate agencies, and among the main portals only Domain are present.

In the States, Zillow.com were reported as saying up to 35% of their weekend traffic comes from mobile devices. Pete Flint, CEO of Trulia.com, claims (more believably) their mobile traffic is in the “5 to 10% range”, while a year ago “it was negligible”. Although iphones account for only 8% of our mobile devices, 50% of mobile traffic is coming from iphone apps. Realestate.com.au, in Australia, reported “exponential growth” to its mobile site in December (150,000 unique visitors), claiming this to be “additional” traffic.

Whatever the claims and stats being bandied about, it would appear that mobile is going to be the trend of 2010. Social media is “…like, so 2009”.

It makes intuitive sense that mobile traffic should figure more this year – the technology is here, you can be walking down that beach watching the sunrise and getting your real estate fix. There are apps being developed where you point your camera phone at a building and can see which properties are for sale, at what price and what has sold recently. Househunting is an activity that still takes us out and about, checking into home opens, trawling suburbs in our cars, walking down streets. With the mobile in our pocket, do we really need anything else?

So get ready for the upsurge of mobile web designers and iphone app developers. (There will be snake oil salesmen among them.) And with that, the question – do we “mobilise” our web site or get an iphone app developed, or both, or neither? The former allows your site to be accessible on most, if not all net-ready mobiles (much more fiddly to have coded than you might think). The latter allows people to download your app, have it in their menu making it easily accessible. Apps are sexy and cool, great PR spin, but are more expensive to develop. And how do you get YOUR app downloaded, especially when (in say a year or two’s time) there are hundreds of Australian real estate apps in the iStore, rather than 5? This is the brave new world we seem to be moving into.

Photo Credit – Jamie Riddell, http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamieriddell/2166586104/

However, maybe, just maybe, someone might be into something here. It is called Layar and it has been developed by an innovative team of Dutch developers at www.sprxmobile.com

How it works

Layar is derived from location based services and works on mobile phones that include a camera, GPS and a compass. Layar is first avaliable for handsets with the Android operating system (the G1 and HTC Magic). It works as follows: Starting up the Layar application automatically activates the camera. The embedded GPS automatically knows the location of the phone and the compass determines in which direction the phone is facing. Each partner provides a set of location coordinates with relevant information which forms a digital layer. By tapping the side of the screen the user easily switches between layers. This makes Layar a new type of browser which combines digital and reality, which offers an augmented view of the world.

Can it work as a standalone tool? I don’t know, but I would say Google, MSN and Yahoo would be very interested in the technology. Maybe the technology could work integrated into a mobile browser or tool. I just love the innovation though. Just imagine the uses for it!

I’ve written about the iPhone on this blog before, but the thing just keeps getting better.

The new model released this week–a faster 3G model at about half the price of the original model–makes me even more clear that this device will transform real estate.

What has to happen for the iPhone to bring workable real estate onto a mobile device for the first time?

A smart developer just has to create the applications. KCPB is funding promising application developers, and all applications will be for sale or free in the “Ap(plication) Store” for instant download and installation.

Watch the Apple WWDC keynote video to see some examples of iPhone applications that were created in just a couple of weeks. Once you see the examples in the video–from companies like eBay, Loopt and Major League Baseball–I’m sure you’ll be blown away.

Despite Blackberry’s, Palm’s and Nokia’s best efforts, I don’t see them catching up any time soon. Just imagine a Blackberry product launch in which new features are greated not just with polite applause, but with outright surprise, laughter and joy. But, if they do catch up, all the better for the real estate industry.

People really don’t want to look for property on a pain-in-the-neck mobile device with poor usability, difficult buttons, a small screen and annoying software.

But all that will soon change. Let me say right now that this post isn’t just more mindless iPhone hype. I don’t think I’ll spring for an iPhone as soon as they become available, but I have no doubt that the iPhone and probably Android, the Google phone software, will finally make real estate search and sales mobile-ready activities.

For the last several years, realestate.com.au has tested partnerships with mobile phone providers. In my opinion, they have never been very successful. I heard that Telstra shut theirs off without even telling realestate.com.au because there was so little traffic that it didn’t make a difference.

When the 3G iPhone hits Australia’s sandy beaches, things will be different. People love using it, and they love using it for stuff they never loved doing on their phones before. Even looking at property listings with 27 photos is a breeze on this device that fits in your pocket.

WHAT’S OLD IS NEW AGAIN
It’s not that the iPhone does anything that you can’t already do on another mobile phone. But just like Apple computers are intuitive and a pleasure to use, the Apple phone makes all those formerly painful mobile phone tasks into a joy.

A researcher named Charles Le Tocq believes the iPhone has pushed the mobile phone market past a “tipping point” for capabilities.

Here are two more examples of the difference between the iPhone and other mobile phones. iPhone users in the UK surf the internet on their phones far more than owners of other smartphones. The Financial Times reported that 60 per cent of UK iPhone customers were sending or receiving more than 25MB of data per month (equivalent to 7500 e-mails), compared to 1.8 per cent of users of other smartphones. (via MacChat)

And, Marissa Mayer, a legend in Silicon Valley and Vice President of Search Products & User Experience at Google said that Google Maps traffic increased by 40% to 50% almost overnight after the iPhone was released. “It’s clear to see that people are switching off their computers and switching on their cell phones,” she says.

Let’s break this down: the iPhone boosted Google Maps because it was so easy to use that suddenly people were interested in mapping things on their phone.

Or, as Jeff Jarvis blogged over at the Guardian, “Everything that the computer, the web, and the browser have done to content … is now in the palm of your hand. Everything you can do on the web you can do with media on the iPhone, anywhere, any time.”

Jarvis, along with Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams, also feels the iPhone is the first portable device on which newspapers are easier to read than print papers. Think about that. It’s got “phone” in its name, but it’s so enjoyable to use that it is better than print and than existing electronic readers.

All of these benefits apply just as well to real estate. But there is one more. For real estate, one of the most important features of the iPhone is its ability to imitate GPS by triangulating from nearby mobile phone towers to determine your location. This capability was recently released in the USA, and I hope this will be available in Australia when the iPhone debuts here.

The iPhone creates an opportunity for real estate web portals and agents to serve people in a medium that they suddenly want to take advantage of. Whoever doesn’t take up the opportunity risks having someone else grab the market and whatever revenue goes with it.