Thanks for the tip-off Leo. It seems MyHome has added a link to the Home Page now, they have also been hard at work with some other tweaks, see if any of you can notice the updates, many of which were suggested here by the readers!
After what I would call the ‘stubborn period” the developers seems to have thought about some of their ‘innovations’ and took a long hard look at usability… Now if only they would hire an interface designer…….more here soon! Also, give me some feedback on your suburb and do a search on Domain, REA and MyHome………….
Here are my results…..
Search 2026 (Bondi) – ADSL 2+
REA Australia 168 listings (Sale) results displayed in 18 seconds….
Domain 185 listings (Sale) results displayed in 9 seconds
MyHome 52 Listings (Sale) results displayed in 3 seconds
57 Comments
Dave Platter
(I work at realestate.com.au Ltd/the REA Group.)
Thanks for the post, Peter. This is sort of a tangent, but since it’s in the same theme of site improvements, you might also like to hear some more of the comments we’ve received from people who are trying out our free-for-agents beta site: property.com.au.
(RECAP: You already know the goal for the site is to test out better ways of search. We’ve got over 1,000 user comments with suggestions for improving it.)
These comments are unedited (I’ve removed contact info), and right from the users’s keyboards:
Leo
REA does seem slow lately………or is it just me ?
David Rob Slattery
Dave Platter – missed the request for feedback on Property.com?
Peter –
I searched Balmain, NSW
REA Australia 70 listings (Sale) results displayed in 9 seconds
Scott
Searched postcode 4074 (combined surburb area – Mount ommaney, jamboree hts, westlake, sumner, riverhills, jindalee and Middle park)
Using ADSL
Results:
Realestate.com.au – 199 listings (Sale) results displayed in 9 seconds
Elizabeth
Good Morning,
Peter I just clicked on the myhome home button, which on my computer is the myhome logo. However all it did was refresh the same page. It had the same last search content appearing as before.
So it seems to be that this new ‘feature’ is either broken, or is a way to get more of those hit things. Either way this seems to be a negative thing.
Or am I misunderstanding technology again?
I also see a number of sold listings appearing, so I think the numbers which everyone is getting above might not be indicative of true listings.
E
John (Licensed Land Agent)
My biggest complaint is properties listed with no address & no price especially on REA thus the mapping function is therefore useless!!
Peter
Yes Elizabeth, I too did notice that just now, just seems to be a link – to satisfy the naysayers, it all works on cookies I think, so it only remembers where you are.
Pretty sad, but a tiny step in right direction….You wikll find they will fix this in time, especially if advertisers want to be on Home page and users only get one chance to see them.
And no – you are not misunderstanding technology, no one does, it is misunderstanding the user….
Peter
John, to me that is very frustration as well.
Dave Platter
(I work at realestate.com.au Ltd/the REA Group.)
John and Peter, I hear you. The search would probably be easier if every property had a price and an address on it.
We’re not the only portal that allows agents to upload properties without disclosing those features. Also, some agent sites work in the same way.
It comes down to our decision to respect the wishes of the agents and their vendors on this issue. In some cases they prefer to reserve that information.
Hopefully, the increased use of mapping and the internet will encourage people to realize the disadvantages of not including this information in their listings and improve the situation.
dave
Anthony
Dave – simple fix to that – if no price is displayed – or chosen to display – when a person searches by price – do not display results 🙂
I hate the way a property can be advertised with no price – the agent can indicate a price in the back end – say $800,000 – but it really is in the $1,000,000 plus range. Then it appears on searches – where it looks like a great buy.
Anthony
In the Australian
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21383245-25658,00.html
Ray White get discounts of up to 20%….. Is this true REA?
And my next question:
REA = 36%
Domain = 12.5%
MyHome = 1.3%
TOTAL = 49.8%
That means 50.2% is going somewhere else ????
I have serious doubts about these numbers?
Peter
Dave – 100% true and I understand – maybe relegating these listings no price display and no address display listings down further?
Dave Platter
Regarding the Hitwise numbers, as much as I like Hitwise, their property category is flawed for the purposes of this blog’s readers. Their property category includes just about everyone with any relation to property, not just real estate listing sites like ours.
There are hundreds of sites on the list, many with less than a single percent of market share. That might be useful for some people, but not for the purposes of the discussion here.
Interesting though, that they are right on in one thing, that our number one competitor has about half our traffic (also according to Nielsen). I noticed on Nielsen this week that our top 15 competitors all thrown together have less unique browsers than realestate.com.au. That’s one reason we drive so many leads to agents.
dave
Dave Platter
(I work at realestate.com.au Ltd/the REA Group.)
I can’t comment on any firm’s specific discounts. Let me, however, share this quote that Simon Baker, CEO and Managing Director of the REA Group, gave to the Australian last night.
John (Licensed Land Agent)
Good point Tony about the 50% going???Where???
Quote:
“Dave Platter
Mar 15th, 2007 at 9:37 am /
(I work at realestate.com.au Ltd/the REA Group.)
John and Peter, I hear you. The search would probably be easier if every property had a price and an address on it.
We
Dave Platter
(I work at realestate.com.au Ltd/the REA Group.)
John, what agency do you belong to? Has anyone there ever listed a property without the address or price?
dave
John (Licensed Land Agent)
I will not reveal the agency I work for sorry.
My answer to yopur question is No!
But there is a certain group that does that all the time.
A few of these agencies are in Adelaide.
Look in the 5082 postcode area in REA for a clue?
Kind Regards
John
Elizabeth
Peter,
Do we have the beginnings of an online treasure hunt?
What are the prizes?
E
Peter Ricci
Elizabeth – An Angus Bull?
John (Licensed Land Agent)
Have you searched in the 5082 postcode area yet???
A further clue, search in the suburb of Prospect in South Australia?
Elizabeth
Peter,
Surely an Angus Bull is the booby prize for coming last?
E
Peter
You are not a vegetarian too are you Dame E?
Robert Simeon
Not sure about the bull – however someone has been on the grass !! 🙂
Elizabeth
Dear Peter,
Certainly no vegetarian, as I do like my meat.
However if you put a plate of Angus in front of me, my stomach would surely wretch.
Then perhaps Robert can share this ‘grass’ substance with me?
E
Robert Simeon
E,
I think the land agent may have that covered LOL
Mark Cohen
(I work for Domain.com.au)
Hi,
Speaking of search, have a look at the refine search features on domain.com.au now 🙂 You’ll notice we’ve been listening and have added some more refine fields – a small but useful incremental release to our search. You’ll also notice that search is that little bit faster today than yesterday (about 20% by my quick and not-altogether-scientific measurements today, and this would be affected by how you connect to us). Two more steps in the right direction 🙂
Peter, you’ll also notice I took your feedback on board and added price as the first thing in the heading in rss feeds (only where we have permission to display it of course)
As always, we appreciate your feedback 🙂
Mark
Anthony
Whoa…..
No defence – No PR
You asked – they deliver
I am impressed
Golf Claps Domain
Robert Simeon
Well done Mark and team,
Great to see that constructive criticism is not lost to all. The speed improvements are fantastic !! You can no longer boil an egg whilst waiting for the page to upload LOL
Nice to see that some are listening to their paying clients 🙂
David Rob Slattery
Well done Mark Cohen – I have also noticed your search functionaility is improving, and it needs it!
Your website was absolutley struggling on Saturday and Sunday. Is this extra traffic moving from REA to domain?
I appreciate that domain come onto this site and play the right game, listening.
Mark – where has Melina Cruickshank gone, the ONLY OTHER domain person on this site. Her brief presence was welcomed.
nick buick
In our case we mainly sell management rights not real estate – the private address concearn is difficult for us to address as many of the MRs for sale require the resort / building to remain anonimous for several reasons.
However, I believe penalising POA listings at a portal level is a good idea. On our site POA listings are excluded from all price related searches resulting in almost 100% of our listings including price data.
IMHO for a portal to be of value listings must be geared to service the end-users – not the brokers / agents. After all – No agent or broker will pay to list on a site that no one visits.
Elizabeth
Good Morning,
Perhaps we need to get some numbers to detect what works well.
Where can we get numbers to show the number enquiry from listings with full details, compared with listings with minimal details?
I can imagine that for 90% of the population, knowing the price and exact address of a property is paramount in their search for a home. however, let us also realise that there is 10% of the market that do not need this information. They know what they are looking for and how much a property it worth.
Peter, perhaps a little research project for you?
E
Mark Cohen
(I work at domain.com.au)
Hi,
Thanks David, Anthony and Robert. My team want you know that we’ve actually rolled out an architectural upgrade that has roughly doubled speed (timing is purely coincidental!) – we’d be really interested to see you guys redo your benchmark tests as you’ve done above.
Have a good weekend 🙂
Mark
Mick
I’ve noticed that domain is now allowing search refinement by bathroom and car spaces. Looks like someone is playing catchup with myhome?? What do others think?
Glenn
Myhome.com.au still has a very very long way to go with their usability problems.
Realestate.com.au is begging to be knocked down a peg or two with their masses of ads, and sheer number of products that they try and flog to squeeze every dollar out of you. I actually believe our local REA salesperson is actually embarrassed to tell us about the latest and greatest realestate.com.au product that the company is now flogging. They really are setting themselves up for a revolt and agents are getting sick and tired of funding their global expansion and aspirations.
Unfortunately Domain is not going to do it in a hurry and Myhome needs a complete redesign to even stay in business let alone mount an effective challenge. What annoys me most about the Domain salespeople is their myopic focus on realestate.com.au and how they continue to claim through their selective and creative graphs and marketing that they are really number 1… yeah right, who would believe that. Why not focus on providing the best value service.. ie.. nearly the same number of property enquiries, but each one will will require just 30% of what realestate.com.au costs.
And myhome… Honestly, what value could you place on the myhome.com.au traffic at the moment?? We have 0 property enquiries and not one visitor since they started and we have over 100 listings. We get better traffic from the local senior citizens website. Tip: fancy coding will get you nowhere, if what little visitors you have dont come back because it is a pain to use.
I would love to see a company like Google enter the industry and show them all how to provide a simple, user centric and cost effective solution that provides a reasonable level of advertising. In fact whilst we are at it why not allow for an advertising model that lets local businesses purchase ads on a per click basis to be displayed on local searches and local property pages and even allows the agent to share in the advertising revenue to offset our own costs.
Peter
Glenn, welcome to Business2, I hope we hear allot more from you and if the above comment is anything to go by, then your contribution to this forum will be invaluable.
Look forward to hearing more from you!
Dave Platter
(I work at realestate.com.au/the REA Group)
Glenn, thanks for the input.
We just ask that you judge us on results. Not every agent likes this or that detail about the site. That would be impossible.
Sometimes, we just have to politely say no when someone like yourself or Peter suggests a change. It’s nothing personal.
It’s just that we have a clear idea of how to generate leads and traffic for agents, and it’s working. It’s working better than anyone else’s idea. For next year’s leads to be greater than this year’s, we have to stick with what works:
January 2006, 410,000 email leads to agents
January 2007, 580,000 email leads to agents
January 2008, ???,000 email leads to agents
We still innovate. Property.com.au is where we are testing out innovations so we don’t have the same thing happen to realestate.com.au as myhome.
Thanks again for your comments and keep them coming.
dave
Dave Platter
(I work at realestate.com.au/the REA Group)
I’d like to point out that advertising on our site from banks is a feature that draws in more users, and keeps them coming back. That means more leads for agents.
If it wasn’t there, and users were going somewhere else for homeloans, I’m willing to wager we’d hear lots of clamouring for us to add home loan advertising to the site, so that traffic didn’t disappear.
More conevnience means more traffic.
This is why gas stations have convenience stores. It’s why newstands also sell gum and soda. And it’s why we let banks advertise on realestate.com.au.
dave
Glenn
Dave,
I understand that you are going defend your company but seriously, how do you expect us to believe that ads for home loans brings more traffic to the site. That’s like saying people buy newspapers for the ads. I have yet to see anybody walk out of a newsagent, remove the advertising inserts and throw the newspaper away. Why do the newspapers even invest in journalists and editors if the real secret is that its the ads the make people fork over the cash?
Visitors may indeed click on these ads once they visit the site, but that does not mean that they generated the traffic. You make it sound that we should all thank our lucky stars that realestate.com.au places masses of ads on each and every page on the site. Honestly, what proof have you got to support the claim that your ads create traffic and repeat visits?
I have no problem with a acceptable level of advertising on the site, but what I don’t personallly agree with is realestate.com.au’s advertising level. I guarantee that the vast majority of the agents feel exactly the same way.
Your gas station and convenience store examples are simply not comparable. Gum and Soda (you have to be American with gas, gum and soda) are products they sell, they are not advertising displayed. Maybe you would like to provide an example of a similar service industry that piggybacks that service they provide on behalf of a client with large quantities of advertisements for their own benefit. In fact I dont think I have seen any other web portal that fits in as much advertising as realestate.com.au but would love to be proved wrong.
At the moment you are market leaders and you are getting away with it (at the moment), but you are not building up any goodwill with the agents out there and given a worthy competitor your market share will plummet accordingly. Why do you think so many wanted myhome.com.au to be a success, and why they were so dissappointed when it flopped. Trust me, I dont think anybody in our industry believes Packer needs more money… we wanted realestate.com.au to have more competition and provide a viable alternative so, as the democrats once said, “to keep the bastards honest”.
The statistics you provided regarding the increasing number of email leads is typical of the realestate.com.au and domain.com.au marketing machines. The stats provided alone mean virtually nothing. I would appreciate it if you could provide other data for the same time periods, namely the number of agents subscribing, number of properties listed and the average agency subscription rate. From that we can really work out if realestate.com.au improved the average agencies’s enquries or not and if the cost of each of those enquiries has increased or decreased.
I submit that the cost of each email enquiry has increased substantially and the number of enquiries per property listed has dropped significantly.
You claim that if you removed home loans adverts that agents would request that you put them back on. I very much doubt that. Maybe your confusing the feature of a mortgage calculator with the countless ads for banks, building societies and finance brokers.
Realestate.com.au needs to see it from the agents point of view some time. What do you suggest we tell vendors when we ask for them to pay $60 for a feature property when they suggest that with all the advertising on their page, we should be paying them.
Robert Simeon
Dave Platter
(I work at realestate.com.au/the REA Group)
I
Paul D
I think the reason they have all the other advertising is to offset the payments to Google. That would be a crushing amount of money. And I personally think that the public are there for one thing, to look at property, and the advertising would become like the walpaper effect, you don’t notice it after a couple of looks.
Robert Simeon
Paul,
So you don’t concur with the REA perspective that they believe their third party advertising attracts traffic to their portal ?
If so many agree that people are only there to look at property – it amazes me that REA are the only ones who share the …. what part of this don’t you understand ?
Paul D
I agree with you Robert, the traffic generated to the agents (us) would be absolutely no different if there was no advertising. A very good analogy given by Glenn, buying a paper and throwing it away to get at the advertising. On the RARE occasion I buy a paper (usually in an airport terminal), the first thing to go is the advertising.
Robert Simeon
One can only hope that the “new Industry Advisory Council made up of eight real estate industry
Glenn
Paul D,
The only way you pay google is if they deliver you traffic so if what you say was true their natural visitor base is probably more like domain and they “buy” their increased traffic.
Personally I dont think that is really the case. I believe that their google adwords campaign is primarily targeting those web users who do organic searches first.
Whilst I am sure their google adwords expenditure is not cheap, as a percentage of the generated revenue I doubt it involves too much.
Lets face it, the public only has so much browsing time available to them. The more ads they click on the less property they can view. Whether realestate.com.au wants to admit it or not, that indirectly and negatively effects us the subscribing agents.
If realestate.com.au was really interested in what the agent and the visitor wanted they would order their property by price, rather than list date. Every agent would now be on equal footing and every property could then be displayed on its merits. Of course this would make their costly “add-ons” obsolete so I cant see that happening anyday soon. “Those agents” might actually try and stop cheating the system then too.
Glenn
Off topic I know, but I am sure somebody here can help me. I am looking for publicly available pageviews for each of the portals.
Realestate.com.au has their views publicly available (http://www.realestate.com.au/cgi-bin/rsearch?a=propvisits&id=103717845)
and Myhome also (http://www.myhome.com.au/p0005pbg/)
Does Domain have something similiar or can you only access that information from the backend?
TIA
Peter
Glenn, Domain provide this information to agents back-end. I would like to see this by a password protected RSS feed for all agents. That gives a breakdown of all email enquiries and property views….That agents with access can subscribe to.
Glenn
I guess they are trying to stop the direct comparison between realestate.com.au and domain.com.au on the same properties.
max
Glenn, dont assume consumer surf like we do.
Glenn
I am missing your point Max.. I never assumed that consumer would do anything with this. The reason I want it is to give quicker access to the salespeople via our intranet on their property views so they can report easier to the vendor. I assume that Domain is stopping agents and owners from quickly comparing results between portals for their own properties and others. I made no assumptions in regards to the consumer… It appears only one of us has done that.
Many consumers (ie. prospective buyers) would not even bother with this information but some will, and many agents and owners will. Now that you raised it, if I had my house listed on all three portals I would click on the property views button to display the information. It appears I could not do that with domain. Given the fact that the other two have it listed I would then think domain have something to hide.
If I was being asked to pay for the internet advertising I would find the results very interesting and it would form my opinion on who to spend my money with. Since in our area base listings are done at the agents expense the fact that one portal is higher would not bother me, someone has to win, someone has to lose. But if it is the industry standard to display the information and one does not do that it raises questions.
Thanks for raising that Max.
max
oops, sorry Glenn, no need to get your Reg Grundy’s in a twist.
My point was is response to this…
“If realestate.com.au was really interested in what the agent and the visitor wanted they would order their property by price, rather than list date. Every agent would now be on equal footing and every property could then be displayed on its merits. Of course this would make their costly
Glenn
First of all, I did not “get all pooie”. It seems your not the only one on this site that quickly resorts to claiming the other side is getting aggressive/all pooie/bad mood… etc etc.. if you post something and they dont like your answer. The “if they dont agree with me they must be all emotional” defensive mechanism as though nobody could provide a reasoned discussion against with them and be on opposing views. Max, if I get angry, I will tell you. I dont have to accuse the other party of getting all “pooie”.
Second, you have domain.com.au as your weblink and you posted directly after a post quoting domain.com.au. Now you claim you were referencing a post on realestate.com.au. May I suggest that if you are not referencing the last post by somebody that you quote your reference so as to avoid confusion and make sure nobody can accuse you changing your references at a later date.
and lastly, if indeed you really did reference that paragraph you are claiming, I find it interesting that you are defending realestate.com.au practice of default listing by list date rather than by price order which domain salespeople proudly tell me is a fairer system.
You claim that most consumers do not do generic searches… By this I assume you mean they dont do searches on suburbs? That I find hard to believe considering the default basic search for both domain.au and realestate.com.au is focussed around a geographical input… postcode, suburb, region or using the map. If searching by bedrooms, land size, price was really the majority of searches as you descrive this ability would not be hidden behind “more criteria” or secondary search screens.
I would like to bet that most peoples first search when they visit their site is by typing in a suburb or postcode, exactly as each portal asks for on their home page. Why else would both portals offer this as the default way to search.
But the crazy thing is the fact that I was clearly referring to the default order properties are displayed on the portals, not what searches they do. Your confusing the sort order with the type of search conducted. No matter what search a visitor does on the two portals the properties are displayed in different orders.
The order makes quite a difference. Ordering by date listed allows for the portal to then sell you upgrades to return to the top of the list. Then when heaps of people signup for that upgrade, they release version 2 which then allows you to leap ahead all over again. This also provides an incentive for agents to delete their properties and relist them to get them back to the top of the list which is a constant problem with realestate.com.au. The choice to sort the order of their properties by list date is for revenue purposes. Sorting via list price allows for the properties to be displayed on their merits and is the default sort method for agents websites and the property portals throughout the world.
Sam
Max you’re not from Domain so change the link from your name so people won’t get all confused and pooie.
Good post Glenn as are all your others.
max
You said “First of all, I did not
max
woops.. .
should read “should not be as strong”
Glenn
Can you provide those facts Max along with the source?
I dont know what you cannot understand with “if I get angry, I will tell you”. There is no hidden implied meaning. What were you looking for, some physical threat or conspiracy theory? We are not a bunch of teenagers bullying each other after school on an IRC channel…
I guess it will now come as no surprise to you that when I said “I am missing your point”, I really truly do mean that I am missing your point.
If you see me post something like “Max, your really pissing me off now!” then you will clearly know I am angry with you and your pissing me off. Until I say something like that, just assume I am sitting here with a big smile on my face. Most of the time you will be right. Sometimes I might get frustrated with another posters inability to understand something, but I will never get angry because you differed with my opinion. Quoting something as fact that I personally doubt will about always illicit a request for the facts… as above.
If you can support your claim, then great, I and all the others learn something, thats how we all improve our own knowledge. If you cannot support your claim, we can all reassess your claim of facts back as an opinion or anecdotal evidence at best. I am sure you wont have a problem providing the details will you?
max
Mate, all fair points but you have to admit that you, due to my lack of clarity, misunderstood my point and you were trying to be smart and no doubt enjoyed it – I know I did.
“If you see me post something like
Glenn
Hmmm.. so its anecdotal evidence at best then 😉
In hindsight I am sure you wish you prefaced your claim with that extra detail as the fact that your source was just verbal advice from salespeople is not the strongest of evidence. I am not going to rub it in anymore than that and I must say thanks for being honest about it.
Just for the record I believe that most searches would be based on geographic input such as suburb, postcode or using the maps to drill down. I have no doubt that advanced searches (such as land size, bedrooms and price) are done as well, but primarily as a way to filter a more generic initial search. I have nothing to support that other than good sense and experience. I would expect any web designer to setup their site with the most popular search styles as visitors will always take the course of lease resistance. A check of the major portals will reveal that they all seek a suburb, postcode and offer a map. A look that has been imitated by the majority of real estate group sites now.