Realestate.com.au have released a new website guide to selling. The new site is very comprehensive and well thought out with a great deal handy tips and guides. Sections include Preparing to Sell, Choosing an Agent, Advertising your Property and Presenting your Property.
Yes, there is a fair amount of advertising skewed to realestate.com.au but they are clearly number one across most segments in the online real estate space in Australia and so it makes sense. There are one or two doozies, such as “Should I buy or sell first?” (seriously).
Some articles have accompanying videos, which are quick and clean and very well presented by Comedian Lawrence Mooney and rumoured to also run a 10 week television campaign which will run in Melbourne and Sydney.
Agents will want to be familiar with the materials that potential clients will arm themselves with on this site. Overall this is a very good resource.
So this site seems to be a significant investment for REA in Australia in 2009 and it will be interesting to note whether vendors use this new website.
PDF brochure file download. Guide to selling
PDF brochure file download. Agents Checklist
13 Comments
Glenn Rogers
Thats a good idea, cant see any links to it from the REA site, if thats the URL (sub domain) they are using then they should think again it should be stand alone and have it’s own proper address for people to remember.
There are numerous avenues to expend the REA business to generate more revenue and support the REA site while doing so.
Glenn Batten
I have not read every word… but by first looks they have done a great job… to a point.
I think they should have been thinking of how they could involve their clients into such a site. I personally would have liked them to have created a standalone site “sponsored by realestate.com.au” and expand it to something like this :-
If you went to the site direct it was the normal selling guide that exists right now but every client agency is given a unique variable to add to the url (ie. http://www.sellingguide.com.au/id=56843) so if the traffic was generated by an agency the branding on the site changed to become the “xxx Real Estate Selling Guide – Sponsored by Realestate.com.au”.
The one thing most cookie cutter template sites lack is content. They should have leveraged that by getting agents to link to the site so it becomes an extension of their own site. The co-branded site could have calls to action to get an appraisal or list their property driving back success to the agent and to REA. Agents could promote it on their websites, email and other internet marketing as well as other offline initiatives.
Instead of just being a resource for potential sellers it also becomes a business tool for their clients, the real estate agents.
This would create a stack more agencies sending traffic to their site rather than just relying upon their own traffic and all up be a win win situation for everyone. If an agency did not like the concept, or the content on the site they just do not participate.
In fact if it was co-branded right I could see some agents wrapping whole adword campaigns right around it.
Glenn Rogers
A couple of problems with that –
“This would create a stack more agencies sending traffic to their site rather than just relying upon their own traffic”
You mean the REA site ? if so thats not traffic that would be of any use tho their clients just more traffic to add to REA monthy figures, like the traffc they get from agents sites linking to REA listings.
All agents would have the same selling tool, would become a bit obvious. Agents can do their own , it’s not hard and would be unique to them.
Glenn Batten
Glenn,
Good points, but remember agents have been able to do there own selling guides for quite awhile but 99% have not. The vast majority have gone ahead with templated sites just like all the agents and content wise very little differentiates them even across different groups and independents.
This leads into another of your points about agents having the same selling tool. Again totally correct, but I am not suggesting this for the 1 or 2% of agents who have content rich sites but for those that have only invested in a cookie cutter approach to the internet already.
Just because you give the masses a tool does not mean that they will all use it. You just have to talk with RPData about how many people use the paid and unpaid extra tools in their system that they provide. I don’t reckon you would even get 20% of the agents going ahead with this because most wont invest the time to put a few links and graphics on their sites.. The public are use to seeing identical sites anyway.. Go to any 2 hooker sites and show me the difference.. They will visit and respond to the first version of the site they visit and just ignore another iteration if they come across it.
This site already exists and is going to get traffic. I believe that it would be better for everyone that if they find their way there it be co-branded with the agents details and that should someone want to take it further and list their property or generate an appraisal that they be given your details to contact, not every agent in your area.
Whilst I agree with your comments I just believe it is about perspective. We are talking about the masses here, not the few to which I think your comments are more relevant..
The idea that it is on its own domain would stop REA being able to include the stats which is obviously one reason why they chose the sub-domain route.
Glenn Rogers
Glenn – I see your point and I know all about agents template sites being the same… I’m a national editor for DMOZ http://www.dmoz.org that feeds Google it’s directory results.
I edit all Australian real estate content and many of these sites are the same but they do serve a purpose though very basic.
You’re right agents aren’t prepared to do much to help themselves in the main UNLESS it’s worth their while and their competitors do it.
REA could develop this idea further and charge agents a small fee in addition to their subscription to have it on their sites – the possibilities are only limited by your imagination.
The whole idea of an agents site is to display their listings clearly, everything after that is secondary, to add anything further it must be of real interest to the visitor, because ….. all they are really there for is the listings.
Peter Ricci
Just to break up this Glenn2Glenn boy band you have going on here. Some great ideas. I think agents need to focus on a few objectives online and not get too drawn into to many avenues of connect.
Remember I think the buyers already know where to go. So to me it is about effectively gaining their attention.
Sellers, well that is another story and it will be interesitng to see how well some agents handle the transition of marketing from print (news, flyers, magazines) to online in its individual form (websites, blogs, social).
Glenn Rogers
Yep Peter and never forget , all that matters is List and Sell</B.
Without that it’s time to go fishing 🙂
Glenn Rogers
Yep Peter and never forget , all that matters is List and Sell
Without that it
Glenn Batten
Glenn,
Interesting about DMOZ. I was an editor for Queensland Real Estate quite a while back, up until someone wanted to play political games with it. They submitted their state based network sites to the state based sections on the site. Their submissions were that bad that every state got rejected except for Queensland. The other states were rejected by other editors but I was trying to build the Queensland section up so took the time to bring their submission up to the required standard rather than rejecting it outright.
What did I get for my trouble? Accusations that I sabotaged all their listings on DMOZ for right around Australia. Even though it was easy to disprove, especially considering I was the only one that had approved anything they submitted, it pissed me off and I think that was the last time I logged on.
Glenn Rogers
Yep it’s a funny system I think I’ve been an editor for 9 or so years ?
I don’t agree with the way they do a few things but you give up after a while, I’m the only one doing AU real estate at the moment, no one else is interested because it’s so boring I think.
The descriptions for real estate sites are almost identical, there’s really nothing unique about any of them, that’s very boring for me, BUT in practical terms I don’t think it matters , the main game is List and Sell and their visitors are only interested in a good looking site and the listings on it.
I haven’t resigned from DMOZ because I’ve been there so long but I do very little now even though I have privileges for the whole of Australia, one day when I’ve got more time perhaps.
Glenn Rogers
P/S …….DMOZ is very important as far as Google goes, I started the commercial cat years ago and tidied all the real estate cats.
Can barely find the time to log in at all these days.
Glenn Batten
9 Years…!!! You deserve a medal.. It was probably you who knocked back all their others submissions 🙂
As you said.. as far as SEO goes DMOZ is one huge box to tick. You have to wonder why so many don’t put any thought into their submissions.. Not too many editors have the time to fix up every single submission in all cat’s the way they should be.
Glenn Rogers
If you dont have your street address in you dont get through – agents usually do so it’s ok.
Everything gets fixed pretty quick, no self promoting in DMOZ descriptions, just dtraight doen the line , ehat the site does and offers and in the case of real estte sites you could cut and paste the same description for just about all of them.
This selling guide for instance would not get into DMOZ under a subdomain because it’s part of an existing site that is already listed, but under it’s own URL no problems as long as there is a physical address in the contact details section.
Yes I know it’s strange, because portals dont get put in a locality they get placed at National level, how do we decide what goes there and what doesnt ? if a portal has enough contect to justify top level placement thats where it goes but if not it goes in it’s locality cat, who makes that judgement ? ME 🙂