Late last month Realestateview undertook a small makeover to the residential section of their portal. What they’ve done is enhanced the usability of the site, provided extra content, improved the styling and overall, offer site browsers a better experience.
The key homepage improvements include:
- Search – is now the main priority on the homepage allowing users to search for listings or agents. REV have also launched a search via map feature which can be selected from the homepage search.
- Local Data – this is now a key part of the homepage and showcases a few graphs with medium prices. I’m surprised this does not link through to their property data section.
- Expert View – useful information for vendors, property seekers and investors, links through to this section where site users can engage in forums.
- My Searchers, My Shortlist and My Last Viewed – here REV have attempt to personalise the portal by providing information specific to site users.
Other changes within the site include removing the right sidebar for search results and on the property page they have added recent sales and suburb profile information which is sensible given the sold data they have access to. They’ve also moved away from the sidebar navigation and placed a secondary navigation across the top below the header. This provides a much cleaner and less cluttered experience for the user.
I think Realestateview has done a reasonable job with this upgrade and they’ll find users become a lot more engaged with the portal.
What are your thoughts?
28 Comments
Peter Ricci
Looks great, hopefully bigpond are just a sponsor and will not completely ruin the site like they have done with http://www.afl.com.au which is a dogs breakfast
Theo
Also looks like http://www.myhome.com.au is now redirecting to realestateview too.
Glenn Rogers
Looks and works well, if agents don’t support this they’re crazy.
Peter the sponsors are probably needed to keep the cost to the agents down, after all this is what an industry site should be all about.
Ryan O'Grady
Yeah, Myhome shut their doors a few weeks ago and are now non accepting any agents nor feeds. Everything must go through REV.
Greg Vincent
I like the cleaner look of the main site but the bigpond drop-down navigation tabs that overlay the site make it look busy and are annoying.
Hopefully this is just a short term agreement because it makes them look like they’re part of Telstra.
Stepping away from the REV site for a moment, I’m surprised to see that the other states haven’t taken a leaf out of REIWA’s and REIQ’s book and inserted a RealEstateView Property Search function within the home page of their Institute sites.
I appreciate that they are providing information to REI members but they also have a lot of consumer related information that they provide. Or am I missing something?
Glenn Rogers
[quote]but the bigpond drop-down navigation tabs that overlay the site make it look busy and are annoying. [/quote]
Hadn’t noticed that, really inappropriate for a real estate portal.
Jezza
that site looks like its was built by, I dunno, an industry body trying to work in a space they have no idea about…….oh hang on.
Glenn Rogers
Re the Big Pond stuff, it’s ok to have links but dropdowns that cover your main content ? Apart from that I think it works well
Glenn Batten
Let me guess… he is going to light the real estate world on fire with his creative marketing techniques 🙂
daniel
ha i see you guys are the experts in the field , its actually a uni project of mine not anything serious . just thought it would be the best way to approach you to get ideas/opinions as websites are not my area of expertise and i thought it might be yours. seems i was right !
Peter Ricci
Daniel, my advice would be to create a simple visual website offering with clean search and accept feeds from REA. Good luck!
Glenn Batten
You are a Uni Student and this is just a uni project and you were really just trying to get unbiased feedback….. really???
Ryan O'Grady
Daniel, we’re off topic here but discussion about the article has about ended. So lets try and help you with your portal.
1. What is your portal specialising in?
2. What is its point of difference?
daniel
I Study BA Commerce at UTS sydney and the project requires a business plan and i decided to do a online property portal due to my interest in property development .
The portal would specialise in advertising development sites for sale commercial, residential etc – providing developers etc a property portal which only lists the type of properties they are after .
the website is just a complimentary as most of my marks with come from the actual business plan.
Apologies for taking your article of track
Vic
Daniel we have set several business plans in the development of our niche portal. The only things to have met budget are on the costs side.
Your business plan should not allow for positive cash flow for several years. And your investors should have deep pockets and iron nerves.
Good luck with the project, but a tip: keep it academic. :)))
Ryan O'Grady
I don’t think neither Domain or realestate.com.au have a great solution in this area so there is an opportunity for a portal to come along and do this right.
Glenn Rogers
Daniel, the plan goes like this –
Get a domain name , build a portal, email every agent in Australia telling them they can join for free.
Open all 5 replies from mailout.
Shut site down and get a Jims Mowing franchise and claim the loses from the portal against your income for the next 10 years.
Project complete.
daniel
Cheers Ryan,
Hopefully the lecturer agrees .
Shane Dale
Agree with Glenn!
Glenn Rogers
It’s simple when you know how Shane 🙂
Shane Dale
Interestingly still no way to add virtual tours or video or external links to realestateview as other sites like REA and domain have for over a decade – comments?
e.g
http://www.realestateview.com.au/Real-Estate/armidale/Property-Details-buy-residential-3460817.html
http://www.realestate.com.au/property-house-nsw-armidale-109003651
Vic Del Vecchio
You are right Shane, wonder why this is not done yet. You, no doubt have a theory or reason for why not as you worked for them for a while. Guess it is still a work in progress.
What I have noticed though is some work still needs be done on load time.
Shane Dale
hehe – as if I would know.
Well, I may write an article on this soon – but seems like even REA recently had a survey where virtual tours were one of the most requested items by buyers – its not a huge leap of logic that buyers find them useful, and I have years of stats showing consistent user preference for properties listed with virtual tours above non VT listings – assuming the listing is highlighted as having a Virtual Tour. Thats the key.
I presume its just too much hassle for them to include in their development queue. I will lobby them in the new year and heres to hoping they see it as a sensible priority.
At a bare minimum its a glaring omission by comparison with basic functionality on other portals, and its strange it still exists – every other known portal accepts XML with external links to video, virtual tours etc – why not REVW – which is one of the oldest portals?
Vic Del Vecchio
Bearing in mind the interest in the extraordinary move of REVIEW to purchase My Home then to mothball it; your article would be really interesting.
Wouldn’t REVIEW have a handle on what Agents and consumers want? After all this is supposed to be part of REV’s role ie, to know.
Maybe Enzo Raimondo can shed some light on it.
Shane Dale
As we both agree – portals are hard work, the competitors are large and well established and getting agents on board is described often as herding cats.
Realestateview have alot of work to do, and less staff than REA or domain, plus other challenges.
Its their right to proceed as they wish, so I usually avoid making direct comments about them as a courtesy. Its a shame Myhome was culled but thats life, in business. They seem to have absorbed a few of our ideas and techniques into their new design. Lets see how they go.
I do think the orange search panel is too “flat” and needs a little zing but the site is functional and has many new features and works well, I have observed them rising steadily in SEO over the last 18 months.
I will make a renewed effort in 2012 for VTs with them and others, I hope I can gather some support from others here when I talk with Enzo.
Petra Sprekos
Hi Shane and all
Happy New Year!
Of course realestateVIEW.com.au has a Virtual Tour link on the property you pointed out, and all properties. It’s under the Tools heading on the RHS.
FYI, we’ve had Virtual Tour links for over 10 years, as well as the following links, which I’m guessing are more comprehensive than other portals.
Virtual Tour Link
Video Link
PDF Link
Interactive Floorplan Link
Virtual Reality Tour Link
Interactive Website Link
Contract Link
Extra External URL #1 (these are multi-purpose links)
Extra External URL #2
Extra External URL #3
Shane Dale
Happy New year Petra
My apologies for making a mistake – is there an XML field for the data feed to send through links?
Seems like alot of our clients are not getting their links through to realestateview for some reason – naturally keen to ensure they do so. I will chase up their website providers in this case.
Shane Dale
Thanks for that now I see it – the links are there! although it a little hard to see, in fact in past I must have missed them too.
However I do feel foolish, maybe I need some new glasses. My apologies.
The recent REA buyer surveys seem to highlight the desire of buyers to see more virtual tours – but from our own experience on w ebsites they only get used when the link is clearly highlighted somehow.
Buyers do like them – why wouldn’t they? they are very handy and meaningful – but we found traffic volume to be directly related to the visibility of the virtual tour icon – animated icons worked especially well.
Hope that helps. By the way – the new android app looks fantastic. Surroundpix does actually provide automatic redirection to iphone friendly virtual tours – as flash doesnt work, we remade them to suit – yet no links on domain or REA mobile sites to virtual tours – no icons at all!