For this month’s client spotlight we’ve picked Bill McCue, one of the very first adopters of our dsIDXpress WordPress plugin. As a long time user of both our IDX products, Bill’s website wesellsarasota.com has been successful generating leads using a combination of dsIDXpress widgets, shortcode, and search result pages along with dsSearchAgent’s map search and lead capture ability.
Using the settings found in the “dsIDXpress Options” area of his WordPress admin, Bill setup a special template for every IDX details page and results page. This let him add a big button linking visitors to his dsSearchAgent map search, a dsIDXpress IDX Search widget, and his own custom widgets to each property and search results page. Not only do these added widgets on his property and result pages help convert users as they search, but they also provide great options for visitors who stumble on one of his property pages when using a search engine.
He has also used dsIDXpress features on individual city pages he has created to add content, boost traffic, and make searching easier for his visitors. Each city page has content Bill wrote about the city followed by a list of the latest listings and links to more homes in specific price ranges.
Listings were added to each page using our Shortcode feature, and he created links to the different price ranges using our link structure guide.
Using a bit of unique shortcode, custom search URLs, and our search widget on nearly every page of wellsellsarasota.com, Bill has created a site with that allows visitors to get to precise search results within a click or two of his homepage while providing loads of content for search engines to crawl.
If you find see some tricks and ideas on Bill’s site that you’d like to try out on your own, we’re here to help! Our dsIDXpress wiki page goes over how to add listings to your pages using shortcode, how to create links to pre-filtered search results, and more. In addition, our active community page is great resource for ideas and help using dsIDXpress; or just give us a call!
Still a little new to see how we do on the search engines, but adding this plugin to http://www.homechoicerealestate.com has allowed more interaction between us and our visitors…great job. Why go anywhere else?? Thinking of the woo theme now….
Hi Hollie,
Love what you’ve done with your site and integrating both dsSearchAgent and IDXpress! Simple, clean and easy to navigate! I’m sure your visitors find it to be useful and accessible as well and that’s totally a good thing 🙂
Great featured site. Bill did an amazing job with his site. I’m starting work on a new site and I’m taking a hard look at your two IDX solutions. I love the design, simplicity and SEO benefits of dsIDXpress and I like the advanced features of dsSearchAgent.
The problem I have is that the two combined seem to form a disjointed user experience. The end user has no idea that there are two unique systems in place so they will be confused that they can save a property while using SearchAgent but then can’t save a property when using dsIDXpress.
I love what you are doing and I think each solution is good, but I can’t help but wish for a more integrated experience for the end user. I think Bill’s site is a good example of this issue. It’s a great site, but just a bit odd given the varying features on individual listing pages within a single site.
@Ethan – further integrating the two products is definitely something on our radar 🙂
Thanks for the compliment on the site Ethan! I agree with your thoughts too, and I am anxious to see what the DS team comes up with to integrate these two products! I have a lot of faith in DS, and their commitment to stay at the forefront with their idx products! (DS …if you need any last minute gift ideas… I would love to get my hands on the beta when available!!!!
Cheers!