I had the good fortune of addressing some of the best and brightest real estate agencies in Australia at the Best Practice annual get together on Hamilton Island.
Firstly I would like to thank Robert Bevan and his team led by Katie for the opportunity to speak at this event. The event was held on Hamilton Island which was perfect for all but one reason, that there was no Internet access, which sort of makes creating a Keynote Presentation with live content difficult to say the least. No fault of course of the organizers of the event, but meant I needed to re-create my whole presentation the night before and therefore less time lapping up the gorgeous surroundings!
The highlight of the event for me was Adrian Butera of Compton Green doing what was a mix of a stand up routine and off the cuff hilarity on final evening dinner. Funny stuff!
So what did I speak about?
Well what I attempted to do was create some inspiration for taking control of their websites and daring to be a little different in their approach to the future of their own websites.
Some notable points
- Understand the web medium (see above video)
- Get a Open Source Content Management System (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla) to control the content on their website from company pages to blogging and social media integration.
- Work only with providers that have (or are planning) an API (Application Programming Interface) so that they can hook into CRM (Customer Relationship Management ), Web Forms, PMS (Property Management Systems) and any other systems that bring in data to their websites or systems.
- Embrace Android for building mobile interfaces to applications for their team and general public.
Responsive Design / Generation Change
The talks highlights are listed below. A little hard to follow without the speech, but I thought I would add this information anyway.
I spoke about our company and the tools i need to use to get the job done. Most of the people use iPhones which is probably the best phone out there, however iPhone 5 is a dud for agents until they get their maps sorted out, so stay away until at the another year or until they get Google Maps back into the fold of at least sort out the myriad of issues they are having with new maps application – a true shocker!
My Tools
- Google Premium Apps
- iPad, Google Nexus, Kindle Fire
- iPhone, Samsung Nexus Phone, HTC Thunderbolt
- iMacs, Macbook Pro, Macbook Air, Acer Laptop
- Integrated Google API’s, Highrise, Quotiant, Basecamp, Xero Accounting,
- Payments from ANZ, Citi, Square, PayPal
Understand + Change + Users
- Where have we come from? Where are we now?
- First Impressions
- Google vs Microsoft vs Apple
- HTML5
- Who you are? What do you do?
- Who are your users? Google Analytics
- Your Target Audience: Google Webmaster Tools / Google Analytics
- Site Visitors / Separate: Google Analytics
- Front Office / Educate:
- Team / Streamline Processes:
- Owners / Reports & Goals: Google Analytics
Identify Processes
- Front Office / Tools: Basecamp, Gravity Forms , Highrise CRM, Gather Content
- Team / Appraisals, Photography, Videos: Gravity Forms, Samsung Camera, Google Hangouts, Google Glasses
- Owners / Reporting: Google Analytics
- CMS / CRM?: WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Expression Engine
Systems Flow
- Vendors: Gravity Forms , Highrise CRM, Google Analytics
- Appraisals: Gravity Forms , Highrise CRM, Google Analytics
- Leads: Gravity Forms , Highrise CRM, Google Analytics
- Enquiries: Gravity Forms , Highrise CRM, Google Analytics
Typography & Icons
- Fonts: Google Fonts Fonts.com
- Elements / Titles, H3, Meta: Sample Page
- Icons and Placement: Examples
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Future + Tools
- API
- Photography
- Mapping
- Videos
- Infographics
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Design
- Home Page Elements: Harcourts, W+K Amsterdam
- Search Page: Best Practice
- Property Pages: Harcourts, Google+ Events
- People Pages: Daisho
- Events Page: Gravity Forms, Google+ Events, Google Calendar
- Enquiry Forms: Gravity Forms, Best Practice
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SEO
- State of SEO / Local / Personal / Relevant:
- Google Webmaster: Google Webmaster Tools / Google Analytics
- XML Sitemaps: Generator, Google
- 3rd Party Vendors: Beware
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Social Media Marketing & Tools
- State of Social Media: Infographic
- Google Analytics Integration: Google Analytics
- Facebook: Corcoran Group
- Twitter: Me 🙂
- Google+: Google Plus
- Pinterest: Pinterest
- Linkedin: Linkedin
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Launch
- Testing: Browserlabs, Sauce Labs
- Proofing: Sauce Labs
- Google Webmaster Links: Google Webmaster Tools
- Validation: W3C, Google Webmaster Tools
- Error Pages: W3C, Google Webmaster Tools, Sauce Labs
- Cloud Hosting: Rackspace Cloud Sites
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Sample Sites
Real Estate
Other Inspiration
- The Brief
- Food Sense
- Gather Content
- Hoarder
- We Are 3
- Ikaros
- Scorn
- Adept Style
- Magazine Explorer
- Daisho
- Snap Guide
- Ditto
- Milwaukee Police
- W + K Amsterdam
2 Comments
Greg Vincent
Robert Bevan runs one of the most professional events in the real estate calender…such a great collection of brains-trust in the room too.
I chatted with one of the attendees last night who said that he really gained a lot out of your session Peter. Well done. 🙂
Peter Ricci
Thanks Greg, I think it went quite well, having to rewrite the whole talk in a few hours to be static was a little bit of a bummer, but hey, such is life and if you dont know your subject then you only get found out with these technical issues