The Diverse Solutions Blog

Hey everybody, we’ve upgraded everyone’s webmail to a new-and-improved web-2.0-ey client. We just wanted to give everyone a quick heads up, and an overview of the major changes that might affect your normal usage.

First of all there is a distinct new look, as you can see in the screenshot to the right. The main improvement in the overall user interface is that all your main tasks and email-folders are located in the easy-to-use menu on the left hand side.

Additionally the rest of the available options and tasks are in the streamlined dropdown menus in the top-left of the page. One thing to note on this interface is that when you have enough emails that paging is required, you have to remember that the paging interface is in the top-right of the page.

Another major thing of note is that when you are looking at an email, if you want to take an action on the email, (such as Reply, Forward, Delete, etc.) the buttons are on the very top of the page, you can see this reflected in the screenshot on the left.

Secondly, if you can’t find the “button” or “dropdown” to take an action, create a new item, etc. in any of the areas of webmail, try right-clicking your mouse, more than likely a simple list of options has been given to you. For example, from your list of emails, you can right click on any given email and take any of the necessary actions on it, such as reply or forward.

Anyway, we hope you like the new webmail, and as always, if you have a problem feel free to call or email our support team. Thanks!

Wow! I’m tired! I arrived in Vegas Tuesday at 2pm, while Justin and his team had been here since Sunday night to prepare the endless tasks to get this show rolling. We have been SO busy ever since the start of the show. Anyway, I really wanted to put a “shout out” to all the awesome people I’ve met and finally been able to put not only a face, but a voice, to the “post” per-say. Thanks everyone for coming by to chat a little about this crazy industry of ours!

Pat Kitano - Transparent Real Estate

Kevin Boyer - 3 Oceans Real Estate (who unabashedly fired up a crazy discussion about mls rules and regulations, awesome!)

Michael Price - ML Broadcast

Brian Boero - 1000Watt Blog

David Gibbons - Zillow Blog

Loren Nason - Future of Real Estate Technology

Reggie Nicolay - My Tech Opinion

Mark Flavin - Tales from the Tech Side

I never thought we’d get so many of these blogger-dudes over to our booth, it was pretty sweet.

In addition to all of that, I also was given the chance to talk to a couple of our current clients:

Stephen, Todd Webster & Christine - SuccessRealEstate.Com

Jay Valento & Stella - RedWagonTeam.Com

Make sure to come back in the next week to check out our full low-down on this year’s NAR Convention.

Again, thanks to everything that made it out, and if I’ve left anyone out feel free to berate me in the comments

Everyone should know by now that the all-time classic car is a ‘57 Chevy. As I realized that the car has now been around for 50 years, I began to think what it must have been like 50 years ago. There was a strong sense of community, soda-pop fountains (I recommend Watson’s in Orange, CA), hula-hoops, and service stations that actually offered service. Attendants would run out to your car to check the oil, air pressure, clean the windows, and fill it up. We all know about those feel-good days which are often referred as the “bubble-gum-era,” and the ideas of that era are forever immortalized in movie’s like “American Graffiti” and “Back to the Future.”

Similarly, as the real estate industries begins to descend into rougher waters, consumers will demand more for their dollar and will expect this high level of service for the commissions paid. Today’s consumers are far more tech-savvy than ever before, and over the past several years, I’m sure that they’ve noticed that agents’ websites have began to all look alike and offer the same content. Such similarities between sites allow those consumers to more easily differentiate agents when they stand out from the crowd, and with the recent turmoil in the real estate industry, it will allow them to choose an agent which they believe will offer them a higher level of service per dollar.

Additionally, consumers are also expecting that the latest in technology be a part of that service. The “salad days” of simply putting a listing on the MLS and having it sold within days or weeks with little or no marketing are a long ways behind us. Agents who intend to stay in business and do well in today’s real estate industry must also understand and effectively use newer technologies to their benefit. For example, agents must be willing to place their listings in Craiglist along with photos, links to their listing page, links to their blog, etc. What agents should not do is put their listings into Craigslist without putting photos or any other similarly important information. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Like I was saying, consumers are more tech savvy than ever before, and agents now have more technology available to them than ever before. The key to unlocking the relationship is to provide a 1957 service experience for the consumer. Your use of technology is a reflection of you and your service. That being said your website should provide a positive experience for the consumer with interactive maps, chat, and other useful content.

The lesson here is 50 years old. Take the time and effort to provide a sincere service to the consumer in order to making their experience a beneficial one and, in turn, both you and your client will be handsomely rewarded.

Practice what you preach, right? Well, this month I’m going to practice something I preach to my clients not to do… I’m going to veer off my outline and write about something that happened to me in the last month that truly annoyed me. I believe, generally speaking, in following an outline when writing pages for your site. But I am veering off my outline because there is no better teacher than personal experience. And I want to share my experience with you in hopes that you will evaluate your own website for these common issues and mistakes.

Evaluating websites is my job. It’s what I do and have done for the last seven years of my life. I evaluate countless real estate sites every year. However, I don’t stop there. I live online. I am online an estimated 10 hours each day and visit countless non real estate related websites every day as well. I evaluate them, I scrutinize them, and some make me want to throw my monitor out the nearest window. My actual computer sits on the ground to the right… the far right… of my kicking range for good reason. My left foot wished the same was true of my computer at home a couple weeks ago.

I was getting ready to go out celebrating a special occasion with a good friend. I’d put my makeup on, straightened my straight brown hair, put on jeans, a new shirt and earrings. I was ready to go. My friend called to let me know what time he would be to my house to pick me up and asked that I find out what time the kitchen closed at the Anaheim House of Blues. I hopped online and typed in HOB.com to find their dining hours…

Tick, tock, tick, tock…

Five minutes later I had not found their dining hours and was rather annoyed that a restaurant as well known as the House of Blue’s would not have thought to put their dining hours on their website!!!

Could I have called them to find out when their kitchen closed? Sure… I could have… but guess what? I DIDN’T WANT TO! And further… I WASN’T GOING TO!

Without wasting another moment of precious time we chose another restaurant within Downtown Disney, Ralph Brennan’s Jazz Kitchen, that we hoped would have their dining hours listed. And they did. So, off to The Jazz Kitchen we went to enjoy New Orleans cuisine and forget for the moment about our tasteless experience with the HOB.com website.

To those of you who are thinking, “Well, that’s not such a big deal that HOB left off their dining hours” and maybe YOU would have called them yourself to find out when their kitchen closed… the 20 year olds of today are just as picky as I am when it comes to finding information. They don’t want to pick up a phone to get an answer… they want the answer NOW… they want the answer from you ON your website. And if you don’t give them the information they are seeking they WILL find it somewhere else. Further, the 20 year olds of today are your home buyers and sellers of tomorrow.

If you want to keep their attention you better get on the ball and make sure that…

1. Your website is a complete resource for real estate in your area. Have pages about the areas you serve as well as relevant real estate related topics.
2. Your email address and other contact info are prevalently located throughout your site. List it on your homepage, your about page, and if possible, on the navigation area of your site.
3. You have contact forms throughout your site.

Okay, so you might be thinking to yourself… but I thought you just said “they don’t want to contact you”… Of course the idea is to get the people visiting your site to contact you! I’m not suggesting that your visitors will not contact you once they find the information they are seeking from your site. The idea is to make sure they don’t go to ANY OTHER WEBSITE for the information they are seeking. If they are able to find everything they need from your website they will have no need to search elsewhere and will eventually contact you when they are ready to buy or sell. Isn’t that the idea? Don’t you want to be THE source for real estate information in your area? Don’t you want to be THE REALTOR that every other agent strives to become? The way to do that is NOT to be an information hog. Don’t require that people ‘sign in’ to get to the information they seek. You will lose more visitors than you will gain. All too often agents tell me, “But the people that are serious buyers/sellers won’t mind signing a form”.

First of all… YES they do. No one wants to offer up their email address for a potential increase in spam. Further, everyone starts off as a non-serious buyer/seller. Your website is supposed to work as a bridge between yourself and potential buyers/sellers in your area. Statistics show that an increasing number of buyers research real estate for approx. 7 weeks before contacting a REALTOR. What does this mean for you?

1. Leads from your website are likely informed buyers/sellers.
2. They will waste LESS of your time than those that have not researched real estate online.
3. They will likely buy/sell more quickly than others.
4. You will do less work and get paid the same!

Of course… to actually get visitors and eventually leads… you must continually work to improve your website and its pages of content. Refer back to my blog last month where I began discussing the importance of content and look forward to my next blog where I promise to focus on a different aspect of content again.