There are strong rumours circulating that Realestate.com.au will be launching a new site in early March 2010. What this site will look like is any one’s guess?
REA have come under criticism in the past that the realestate.com.au website is more about selling 3rd party services than actually marketing real estate agents listings, so it will be interesting to see how much of the feedback they have received over the years gets put into place.
Given that REA are the leader, I am be expecting something special, no excuses, I mean the site has had some minor adjustments over years, but this is 2010 and I would expect nothing short of brilliance from this team after this period of time. I am sure the hype will build up and can’t wait to get a sneak peak and report back to all.
Here are some of the things i will be looking for:
Make the Home Page Customisable
If you want registrations and repeat customers, make it so I can fully customize the home page. I should be able to login and set what types of listings I am looking for. The home page should then become ‘my home page’, with relevant listings, sales data, advertising and real estate news and media from my areas. I should be able to login with my Google, Facebook accounts and I should be to set up watch lists for local properties, agents etc.
Agents Listings First
95% or more of realestate.com.au’s visitors would be people looking to buy, sell, rent or have their properties managed, so it beggars belief that so many real estate sites make it difficult to contact an agent on a listing page. This should be prominent at top left of listings page (where eyes first look) and not hidden away down the left or right side.
Give me what I search for
I don’t care if a listing is one year old or one day old, I want to get accurate results for what I search for. Today agents need to re-list properties (which can get you barred on REA) on some sites every ninety days, otherwise they are not found.
Agents are commissioned to sell a property for the vendor. It makes it hard to sell if it cannot be found, it is just so pathetic that only the first 200 listings are displayed, load and data cannot be the excuse, especially when there is so much junk thrown in the users face on each page.
3rd Party Advertising
REA should by now have realised that pop up ads are a pain in the proverbial, just give me non-intrusive, relevant advertising and I am happy. Surely by now they would have some control over their advertising market.
API
Yes this is 2010 and not one of the major portals has an API (Application Program Interface) That allows anyone to mash data up and create just about anything you could think of and many things we hadn’t. This is why Google is such a threat, to companies like REA and Domain – because it likes to share and makes billlions from it!
Comments
We should be able to make comments on a property, agents should be able to choose whether the comments and their responses are public. This would provide great information to other prospectives! It could also separate the productive hard working agents from the rest. Maybe some kind of comment/feedback all star agent.
What are you expecting to see?