Guest Post: Upgrading the Broker Web site

Nominations for the Web Marketing Association's Best Real Estate Website close on May 31, 2007. I checked past winners and notice that they have won based on design and aesthetics, and not on original functionality. I see the broker Web site, all of them now at the Web 1.0 stage delivering one-way data to the consumer, on the verge of changing drastically to embrace Web 2.0 functionality. I've always thought the strangest of the Web 1.0 real estate Web sites are those Craig Proctor Web sites that bombard the user with every possible variation of take-away information using flashing icons and a hideous presentation. Every come-on leads to the same lead generating contact form.

Andrea at Famous Agents wrote a revealing article about the Craig Proctor method last September, and some of the comments confirmed what I had expected... the consumer can recognize a lead generation site. They are reluctant to provide their contact information for a home valuation, or a free mortgage preapproval in such an obvious "lead trap."

I mention Proctor because Web 2.0 Web sites will begin to provide all that come-on information more easily in the form of widgets instead of those blinking links. The widgets can potentially offer interaction far more engaging than that exasperating "click-on-a-link-to-a-contact-form" experience. In fact, Proctor could eventually replace all those links with widgets and suddenly have a very interactive 2.0 site to sell to his clients.

At Transparent today, I describe the broker Web site of the future... it doesn't exist today, but pioneer brokers who adopt the next generation 2.0 Web sites are going to benefit greatly from increased visibility and traffic based on 2.0's functionality  for two-way interactivity and data presentation. Once adopted, I think these new sites will wipe up the local competition.

--Pat Kitano, Transparent Real Estate

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