Dustin’s asking for feedback on Top Producer‘s new Top Marketer, a marketing tool that’s based on real-time content generated from the local MLS.
Having just been involved in the design of a similar system for my brokerage, I think there’s clear value for agents to have access to this type of tool, for the simple fact that it helps them cultivate a genuine relationship with their clients by providing them with meaningful data on their local market, rather than spamming them with recycled newsletter content.
That said, Holy God. Top Producer needs to hire a usability designer. Fast. The Market Snapshot report is such a mish-mash of information with no clear logical flow and so many conflicting design elements, I’m going cross-eyed just looking at it.
My overall approach to design is the simpler the better. This report takes that ethos and chucks it straight out the window. The layered elements pull my eyes in all different directions. The color scheme is hard on the eyes and there’s no whitespace to highlight the important elements. More problematically, the data presented is scattered across the page with no clear hierarchy of information.
As I said, I think there’s clear value in this report, but just not in how it’s currently presented.
Also, I’m also not entirely clear how this product is supposed to be delivered.
Top Producer has a landing page site at Home Insight, which serves up an abridged version of the report to consumers through a simplified street address search interface. Consumers can opt to receive the full version of the report which is sent from one of the agents. Agents who sign up to be part of the system pay $25-30 for each of these leads.
This strikes me as slightly kludgey, as it is incumbent on how successful Top Producer is in promoting Home Insight as a destination site. In a market increasingly saturated with competing AVM tools, I’ll be interested in seeing how much traffic they can generate.
Top Producer would be better served licensing this tool to agents or brokers as part of a keep-in-touch campaign to their existing client bases.
But please, please redesign it first.
