When the major real estate portals conduct their own client surveys the questions are obviously limited and never compare them openly to their competition. Also the published results are often handpicked to show them in the best light rather than an full, honest and open view of the results in a totally transparent manner.
That’s why I have created a survey using the QuestionPro online survey targeted to the Real Estate Industry Participants on the subject of Real Estate Portals, their impact and their future in the industry.
Once the survey is closed I will post the results on this blog. In fact I will also release all information to any real estate group or portal who wants it. Please contact me direct to request a copy of the data.
Please pass the survey aussierealestateportals.questionpro.com to everyone you know in the industry.
It would be fantastic if some of the real estate groups could also forward the survey out to their membership as the more people we get to complete the survey the greater cross section of results we will get and the better understanding of the industry’s opinion on this topic.
You can be anonymous if you want to however if you leave your name and company it will place better emphasis on your selections and comments.
12 Comments
Robert Simeon
Great idea Glenn, guys copy and paste the URL into your newsletters (so long as electronic) http://www.rwm.com.au/2009/07/i-spy-something-starting-with-g/ and for those on Twitter lets get it out there 🙂
Shane Dale
Another excellent idea Glenn, there has to be a role for you in advising portals I think! Count me in – I look forward to the comments, good or bad and acting upon them as fast as possible – lets see if the others do the same! It cannot possibly be a bad thing for the industry to have this type of research tabulated and formatted formally. It sure saves me time and effort and cost plus it has the extra benefit of being from a third party, so I cannot be accused of slanting the results to suit myself.
Glenn Batten
Thanks guys.
Already there are some interesting trends appearing, some of them not quite what everyone expected. We just need more and more people to spend 5 to 10 min out of their day to fill the survey in.
I laboured with a smaller quicker survey that maybe more people would complete, against a more detailed survey and chose the later because of the broader range of subjects.
Glenn Batten
The average time taken to finish the survey so far is running about 7 min..
If everyone can please take 7 min out of your day to complete the survey it will be greatly appreciated.
Please pass the survey around to every agent you know.
Glenn Rogers
No commercial portals in there ?
i think you should have imcluded commercialrealestate and realcommerciasl but then again oerhaps the sample might be too small for commercial agents visiting B2 then again a lot of the resi agents sell a bit of commercial industrial as well.
I would have put them in, it’s all useful information.
Glenn Batten
Glenn,
Yeah, sorry about that but with the free version of QuestionPro I am limited to only 10 questions and no branching.. ie. If I had more questions I could have asked if the visitor was only a commercial real estate consultant and if they were they would have been asked specific commercial questions. Same goes for Property Management. I did think about adding in the other real estate categories in more depth but chose to keep it this way to keep it to this size. I believe that the bigger you go the less people will fill it in.
As you probably guessed this is also serving as a test of the QuestionPro system which seems ideal for agents using it for client surveys.
Ideally what I would like to do is run better surveys across a range of topics every few months. To do that it would require some sort of sponsorship of the surveys to cover the cost and ideally a prize draw for the participants.
Other topics I would like to survey include :
Technology in the office
Print Advertising
Mobile Internet and Smartphones
Internet Marketing and Social Media
But one thing at a time.. lets get this one done and we can see where we go from here… if anybody is interested in helping with more regular surveys they can get in contact.
Charlie
Great idea – the info put out by the major portals is as you say ‘cleansed for public consumption’ first to a major degree. You can get stats to say what you want.
Sad to see our 10 year old real estate portal is not on the list, (but you can’t mention all I realise), and we are mainly Perth WA, but over here we have a good following, and we certainly rank higher than quite a few of those you have included in your list (on Alexa.com… I know it’s not gospel but I do know our traffic).. sniff sniff 🙁
but I don’t mean to criticise – ‘twould be nice to be recognised and included in the future please!?
all the best; and good luck with the survey – will read the results with great interest.
Charlie
Kylie Emans
I was very happy to vent about the real estate portals in your survey. I will pass this on to everyone I know in real estate. I think it is partly our fault we have let these portals get too powerful by being lazy and not developing and promoting our own websites. That has to change. Otherwise they will be like the Coles and Woolworths of online real estate.
Also there are so many new free portals where do you draw the line? Another reason to promote your own website!
Glenn Batten
Charlie… Thanks for the feedback. Sorry about the ommission. It was an oversight. Unlike commercial portals where I made a conscious decision to leave out you are a popular state based portal and I was trying to include as many as them as I could find as you can see. Totally my fault..
Kylie.. Thanks for spreading the news.
Charlie
No worries Greg! appreciate your nice comments about us; if we were included, I would happily send this out to all the 1100 or so real estate reps and property managers on our site in WA – so next time! (You’d probably want to do this regularly, to guage any change/trends, etc)
keep up the great work. Love reading your blog and all the comments.
Kylie – you’re 100% correct – the agent’s own site is more important than ever
Kylie Emans
Hi Glenn,
When will you post the results?
Glenn Batten
The article with the results has been submitted and should be available shortly.