A few bugs were caught & squashed, some user interface elements were updated and such. But the most important upgrade comes from the property fetching module. Some of the upgrades were courtesy of feedback from one of our loyal clients, Tyler Volker of West Vancouver.

Automated "Just Listed" or "New Listing" flags make browsing easier

Property Retrieval Module Upgrades

Our property display module has been going through some major upgrades, especially since the inception of the MLS Reciprocity integration we completed in 2011. “Completed” is a strange word in the world of software development, as it’s never really “complete”, but rather, a “phase” has been struck, with more improvements to come. Here’s what we improved on the property retrieval module:

• Speed – we made code optimizations to speed up the retrieval of properties sorted by city & subarea flags.
• Status remarks – for MLS® fed listings, we updated the remarks so that it automatically displays “New Listing” or “Just Listed” based on the listed date (beta)
• Ordering & Sorting – for Realtors® who display a hybrid of their own listings as well as MLS® Reciprocity listings, we’ve created a multi-dimensional ordering scheme that gives you more flexibility.

User Interface Upgrades (Admin Panel)

The back-end (Admin panel) used by real estate agents to update & maintain their own sites has been upgraded.

• Bugs in the resource/links section caught and fixed
• Menubar on top given more space, the “NEW” badge removed (it’s been a while since our overhaul to version 3 with the new interface, we realized!)
• Links to the support channel provided in more places for easy access (you can always directly visit support.brixwork.com for tech support)

Other than that, we made some small display adjustments, type-o fixing and more – nothing too noteworthy, so we’ll keep it short.

“the portion of baby boomers active on social networking sites could be close to half”

Many Realtors® question the viability of an active social media marketing campaign, let alone having a presence on social media networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. Many modern day marketers (and yes, all Realtors® are marketers, in essence) still do not see the value of being present on social media, and there are many excuses. “I don’t see how that’s going to get me a sale.” or “I don’t want to spend time on it.” are among the most common reasons why they refuse to invest time into social media marketing. And then there’s the age rhetoric: “Buyers who are able to afford are on the older side, and they are not on Facebook. I don’t need college kids as customers. I need baby boomers, people who are active in the labour force as buyers.”

32% of baby boomers are now on social networking websites

According to a recent study by Pew Internet(a division of the Pew Research Centre), this is a terrible excuse. 50% of all adults in the USA use social networking websites regularly! As for the baby boomers, their usage rate of social networking sites was up to 32% from 20% the previous year – that’s a 60% increase over one year. And these are 2011 statistics – if the trend continues into 2012, which is more than likely, the portion of baby boomers active on social networking sites could be close to half!

So how do Realtors® capitalize on this market?

We’re not suggesting that you can find fresh buyers all from Facebook, and that you spend a tonne of money on buying advertisements on Facebook. In fact, this is not even how a proper social media marketing scheme works.

The 3 Rs for Realtors®, as we like to call it, is to be Remembered – and get Referrals, and get Repeat transactions. Social media helps you to be remembered by your clients, or your friends & family so that when somebody asks them “do you know a good Realtor®?”, the answer will be your name.

Here’a  list of very simple things you can do on your social media network to be remembered by everyone as “The Realtor® I know”:

• Post interesting & meaningful articles. Do not copy-paste news bulletins from your local real estate board. Write your own blog article in your own words if you can, and then link it to your website page containing the article.
• Keep in touch with people. When you see somebody getting married, offer a congratulatory comment. If you have their address, send them a nice postcard. Facebook will allow you to keep on top of these life-changing events. Did a client post pictures of a new grandchild? Did the client’s son just graduate from college? Send them a note and let them know you remember them. Back in the 80s you had to make phone calls to find out about these things. Nowadays, you can get updates on Facebook. Easy enough?
• Offer advice and become the expert in their lives. People will often post questions on Facebook, of all topics. “Do you know a good plumber?” or “Thinking of moving to the suburbs… thoughts?”  Be the expert to answer even the simplest questions when you have a chance.

These are things that will help you be remembered. The baby boomers are now getting on the social networking sites – be there with them!

Flexible Real Estate Listing Sorting Function

One of the most anticipated features that add on to our MLS® Search system was the ability to display the listings by price, square footage etc. Now your website visitors are able to order the listings by listed price, size of the property, number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, and the listed date – in both ascending and descending order as they wish.

This search/sort function features a very smooth & responsive user interface that leverages jQuery & jQueryUI’s functionality for a rich web experience. The search functions are also mobile friendly – it will show up just fine on iPads, iPhones, Androids & Blackberries.

Better MLS® data exchange

Prior to this update, when our Realtor® clients designate a listing as his/her “OWN” listing, it was no longer affected by the MLS® data feed. This was an inconvenience when there is a listing price drop, or if an incorrect value (such as the square footage of a home) had to be rectified. Now, critical data such as price/sqft/bedroom/bathroom are periodically synced with the MLS® database, regardless of whether it’s your own listing or not – so price drops can be reflected automatically as soon as the MLS® database feeds that change to our BRIXWORK servers. 

“No Image Ready” display fixed

On some clients’ websites, when an image of a property is unavailable, the “NO IMAGE YET” replacement image was not appearing at the proper size. That issue has been rectified.

Other Bug Fixes And Security Updates

There were numerous small bugs & security updates made. One of the issues include the inability to delete certain images from the property gallery – that issue has been resolved.

How to Best Leverage Your Search Functions

Our search function is innovative in the sense that each search generates a fully descriptive URL that contains the data of the search. In plain English, this means you can share the URL of any search result, and the recipients will see the exact results pre-populated, and are able to further manipulate the search from that point on. This means that you can easily share listing search results with clients, and post these results on forums, blogs, social media engines (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn) and your visitors will see exactly what you see!

Search results can be shared easily!

Try an example here: on Yujin’s website, we’ve created a search for Port Moody Townhomes with at least 2 bed/2 bath, ordered by highest price to lowest price. This link can be posted anywhere by copy-pasting the URL in the address bar! Or you can also hit the Tweet/Facebook LIKE/Google+ buttons to share the results instantly to your social networks.

This has several benefits to our Realtor® clients:

• Maintain full branding of yourself when presenting listing search results
• Generate more niche-specific traffic to your site, directly to search result pages. People are impatient – give them what they want right away!
• Increase your position on Google with more listing search results such as this, by posting this URL to your social networks, 3rd party websites/blogs/forums, and more!

Success of Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram & Apple.. and more

Great visual impact has been one of the most important attributes for some of the most successful companies that rely on customer loyalty. And customer loyalty, referrals, and repeat business over many years is what can make the biggest difference to how successful your real estate business can be.

One of the greatest factors in Facebook edging out MySpace with so much ease was the simplicity & cleanliness of the design. MySpace users were given too much free reign to put too much colours, boxes, and ugly content all over their user profiles. In comparison, Facebook had a tight control over the layout & look of each page, and by having a good degree of restriction they managed to keep their website looking clean.

Apple was able to dominate the iPod market, squashing out the Zune MP3 player from Microsoft like a little bug. The simplicity of the design of the iPod with just a few buttons and a simple body was a clear winner. The iPads and iPhones are a similar story – simple clean designs, big screens for delivery of pictures & videos made it a clear winner in the smartphone & tablet market. Apple’s sales figures of the iPads are just enormous.

Instagram recently was sold to Facebook for a whopping $1 Billion!

Pinterest & Instagram are one of the most successful new web start-ups. Pinterest is a visual-driven website where people simply pin up pictures & images they like. The fact that a photo-only social network is able to so easily dominate the social media start-up market is telling of how visually motivated people are. Instagram provides mobile apps that allow users to edit their photos for beautiful photo effects (colour tones, frames etc.) with ease. It seems visually stimulating things are the most popular and most engaging to the human brain.

Websites that try to say too much about itself, or the agent, is the real-life equivalent of the guy who never shuts up and keeps on talking, without giving the customer a chance to react, communicate and offer some space to talk. We strive to design websites with less clutter, more valuable content (pictures & videos specifically), and most of all, a trust-invoking design.

A New Blog Post on Mashable.com

Mashable, which is one of the best online magazines discussing marketing, business and technology, has released a great article recently – Why Great Design Is The Future Of Content Marketing. It’s worth a read. The article focuses on:

1. The importance of easy & effective user interfaces on popular apps proving a success
2. How interactive design with some effects is better than a static, boring website with no responsivenes
3. Less is more when it comes to design

Check out some of our Realtor Website Designs!

A clean, simple & personable website design for Yujin Jung, a Tri-city Realtor in BC

One of the biggest elements of modern marketing is email marketing. Yes, there’s been controversy over how effective it is since people are sick of spam, but the results are still there – if you do it right! But before we even get into “how do I do email marketing right”, let’s talk about something more basic. “What’s the proper way to send out email newsletters?” – a question we often receive.

No More Microsoft Outlook!

Well, if you are thinking “I use my list on Outlook!” we need to have a serious talk! Outlook is not meant for email marketing. Outlook will simply send out the exact same message to everybody on the list without any personalization, and it offers no tracking whatsoever. A proper email marketing system is able to send out one email per recipient, but trough an entire list. It can individualize each email (for example, the email can start with “Hi Susan..” instead of “Hello,”). So then, what do we use?

Introducing Mailchimp

Sign Up Now for $30 Reward Credits from Mailchimp!

Proper email marketing is done by proper software, and we recommend, based on our own experience, Mailchimp. This is a web based application built just for email marketing, and that alone. We used to use Interspire’s Email Marketer, but that software was way too outdated and expensive to use. Also, the email editor was so error prone, that ordinary users with minimum computer savvy were pulling their hair out while editing newsletters. After we migrated our clients to Mailchimp recently, everybody was happy. So far Mailchimp has been a winner in the email marketing software category for us, by a far far margin – and our criteria is strict. 

Mailchimp boasts the following benefits:

• Easy to create & design templates, even for basic computer users
• Easy to type out emails and set up the layout without breaking the template
• Great email tracking system – see who opened your email, how many times, and which links are being clicked
• Integration with Google Analytics to see which campaigns send you the most traffic
• Cost effective – free for up to 12,000 emails per month on basic features. Even the premium accounts are very cost effective, starting at a mere $15.00 month, and gives you auto-responders, social profile scrapes and more.

You can track clicks, views & who opened your emails

Get $30 in Monkey Rewards Credit When You Sign Up!

We at BRIXWORK & Sonika use Mailchimp as our email marketing tool as well – so give it a whirl! You can sign up for Mailchimp here for free - and get $30 in reward credits when you subscribe. Happy Marketing!

1. Get more connections with people easily – better than Facebook friends!

The LinkedIn algorithm for finding “People you may know” is by far more powerful and more business oriented than that of Facebook. It searches not only based on your current connections (Facebook’s equivalent would be the algorithm that finds people you may know based on mutual friends), but also by the company at which people worked at, schools they went to, geographic location & business interests. Using this filter, I was personally able to find many more old connections that I may have forgotten about, since not everybody is on my Facebook, or for that matter, on Facebook at all. This brings me to another important point, and that many people do not use Facebook for privacy reasons, as they find it to be a much more personal ground. Even if they do, they do not want to add people to their Facebook beyond their close friends. But, LinkedIn is viewed as a more public and professional space, so even those who may not want to be your Facebook friend will probably happy to be your LinkedIn connection. Even the term “connection” is much less intrusive than “friend”.

2. Claim your place on Google’s 1st page

Unless you have a very generic name such as David Jones, you have a great shot at becoming the #1 search result on Google when somebody searches up your name. Go search up “Jeff Kee” for example on Google, and most (if not all) of the first 10 results are actually about me personally. Social media profiles always have your name on it of course, and it also can contain links back to your business website or your personal website, which is great for forging free back links to the websites you own. Don’t have a website? No problem – think of your LinkedIn page as your website which will show up when somebody searches your name. When a potential business prospect (or an employer) wants to do a background search on you through Google, your well-groomed LinkedIn page should be the centre of attention, not your Vegas trip photos on your Facebook. On a related note, here’s some important security tips for your Facebook page since the new timeline launch.

3. Relevant News & Updates

I’ve been using the LinkedIn news feature (I get it emailed to me, but you can also choose to log into the site to see them), and I love it. The news articles are filtered based on trending, popularity, and best of all, your profession & interests, meaning that they will be much more relevant to you than, say, hitting bbc.com as a habit. These news articles have been a great source of information and thoughts for each day as I start my work hours. It saves me a lot of time compared to having to look through multiple news sites for information.

Also, LinkedIn has a feature for members to share links to other websites, articles and more. This means that you can see what your connections are talking about, and see if there’s any business opportunities anywhere. It also keeps you in tune of what’s trending and what you should be on the lookout for. You can also join Groups on LinkedIn based on your profession & interests, which is another great way to keep updated. And don’t be shy to share your blog posts or any interesting articles you found – show your expertise in your field!

LinkedIn users may be fewer, but with more relevancy

4. Growing user base that is also relevant

LinkedIn, for a while, trailed far behind other social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter due to its more “rigid” appearance. However, LinkedIn’s member count increased by 60% in 2011 since their IPO. Their numbers are still smaller than that of Facebook, but the quality of the members is much higher. Facebook is accessible to everybody – whether you are a pre-pubescent high school kid trolling around for attention, or whether you are a senior trying to keep a tab of your grand children. However, LinkedIn, with its professional-purposes-only niche, contains many more quality connections who are actively engaged in business, and can be of value to you. In case you’re curious, as of April 2012, the numbers on Facebook are 845M active users, while LinkedIn reported 150M in contrast. We probably won’t see LinkedIn getting higher numbers than Facebook, ever, because of the limited usage – which is good news for the quality of each connection on LinkedIn.

5. Professional Appearance & Online Resume

Even if you’re not planning on being active on the social media scene, when a potential client (or employer) looks up your name on Google (which is commonplace these days) you will have a place to show your work & education history, as well as your personal interests. It beats having nothing online. LinkedIn’s profiles are much more geared towards your professional & educational track records rather than photos of you.

Remain Logged Into The Back-End (max 2 weeks)

How long do you want to keep your login alive for?

The new login option for your back-end allows our Realtors® to remain logged in for a longer period of time. This is handy when you have a office or home computer that you constantly use to manage your website. The available options are: short (5 minutes), medium (1 hour), and long (2 weeks). Let us explain how this works: we do not mean that you will be bounced out of the system after 5 minutes of usage if you go with the shortest option. The time indicates the length of time your login is maintained after your last activity on the website. If you keep opening new sections as you work, you will never be logged out. If you stop your usage, however, the login will be valid during the inactivity for the specified length of time. The system also remembers the last username you used. We took inspiration from the login mechanisms of larger websites such as Facebook when we made this upgrade.

Security is important, especially when using public computers

Please be careful to NOT use the extended login option when using a public computer. And for added security, even when you are using the short login options, be sure to hit the “log off” button on the top right when you are done when on a public computer. Any loss of data that occurs while a user is logged into the system is the responsibility of the client, and recovery efforts require a payment of $75/hour to cover the labour (unless of course the loss is a result of a system error).

Listing Data Bugs Squashed

Some properties on the system in the Vancouver region experienced a glitch in which the year built was not showing up on the property details page. This has been rectified.

There were some irregularities when converting a listing provided by the MLS® network to “my listing”. The frontage/lot depths reverted to 0.00 ft when blank, and our clients had to manually fix it. This has been fixed up. Also, when converting a listing to “my listing”, the photos are imported locally. However, if it’s your own listing, we recommend you delete all those photos and upload your own high-resolution photos. The MLS® system has restrictions on the size & quality of the photos, as well as the quantity.

Photo Gallery Management Page Links to Full Size Photos

When editing the photo gallery of your listings on the back-end, you are now able to open (and download) full resolution images that you have uploaded. This serves as a valuable photo back-up option as well, and gives you access to your high resolution property photos no matter where you are – just log in to the back-end, and download the photos!

Other Updates

These are updates that are not visible to you, but we’ll note them anyway to satisfy your curiosity.

• jQuery & other javascript libraries upgraded
• responsive mobile grid framework added to the master website for retrieval
• PHP version upgraded to 5.3 throughout our servers, and the filebase updated for compatibility

We are committed to keeping up with the trends, the technology, and your taste! If you have any issues, please submit a ticket through our Support Desk!

Note that these upgrades are offered only for monthly subscribed clients. Legacy websites below version 3.5 need a major upgrade – contact our sales team.

The design is stylish as well - which helps!

Here’s another mind-blowing project that Google has recently shown a glimpse of – Project Glass. It appears to be a wearable device with a mini screen hovering right above your eye, and it is effectively a mini computer that works as your personal assistant by notifying you of your schedules, directions to places, weather and more. It also keeps you connected with your social networks through Google+, from what I can see on this video. Although I’m sure they will include Facebook and Twitter. Voice recognition appears to be a basic feature of course.

I’ve got no clue on when this will be available for the general public, or how much it will cost. But with the rapid improvement we see in electronics and communications technology, this may come to your local cell phone dealership sooner than you think. Wireless data is becoming more and more accessible, as well as faster. Our data devices have long before evolved away from needing a wi-fi hotspot to operate.

How will our Realtor clients use this? That’s a great question. Implementing a web-app that can run on this device, and automatically pull in listing information as one walks/drives by active listings could be an interesting idea. It could, on the fly, give pertinent information (price, size, bedrooms etc.) and get them in touch with the listing agent so that a showing can be set. Or, upon entering a street, the user could get a notification on how many active listings there are on that street. The possibilities are infinite. Ideas are welcome. Not that we’re able to develop anything for this right away, but just having some food for thought will help us shape our roadmap!

Check out the demo video here of Project Glass by Google. And here is the original post by NY Times, where we first found this information.

So, how do we achieve this? There are many ways, but let’s look at the most accessible ways first.

Convert PDFs online

This is by far the easiest and cheapest way to achieve this. There are many sites you can use:

1. www.pdfmerge.com – it provides the service free for up to 15MBs, which should be plenty for most situations. When using this one, ignore the red “Download Now” button (unless you want to pay for a desktop software to install, which is not what we recommend).
2. www.ilovepdf.com/merge_pdf – Up to 10 PDF files, maximum 80MBs means a larger limit. The upload/download speed on this website was much better than the one above. So far ILovePDF is the winner on our books!

Use a Desktop Software

Adobe Acrobat Pro is a powerful PDF management software for Mac & Windows

Frankly we do not recommend this – more and more software is going in the direction of web-based services, and cluttering your computer with more programs is not necessary. That being said, when we combine PDFs in-house, we use Adobe Acrobat Pro – it’s not a free software, but it is extremely powerful. The functionalities go way beyond simply combining PDFs.

Adobe Acrobat Pro allows you to:

1. Create PDF forms that can collect data
2. Include multimedia (pictures, videos) from multiple sources into the PDF
3. Sign PDFs
4. And more!

Acrobat Pro is available for both Windows and Mac OSX. However, the price tag is not exactly low.

Another open-source (free) option is PDF Rider – it appears to be only for Windows at this point. You can read a review of PDF Rider by Addictive Tips.

Upgrades To Our Realtor® Websites Over The Past Few Months

• MLS Reciprocity (IDX) Search Function through a true RETS integration (the best integration method)
• A New Dashboard for your back-end management screen
• Auto-Update module to keep your software up-to-date
• Upgraded Google Streetview Module
• Responsive Grid Design for Advanced Mobile Friendly Websites

Try opening this page on an iPhone!

This website is optimized to re-size, re-shuffle based on the size of your viewport. Whether you are visiting from an iPhone, an iPad, Blackberry, Android, or a computer, the content will re-organize itself for the best viewing experience!

Responsive grid design is the best way to accomodate different mobile browsers in today’s diverse marketplace. It is the most cost effective and quickest way to deploy high-quality mobile-optimized websites that work instantly, delivering the same content and same branding. Do not miss out on the mobile browsing market – it is growing, and you cannot ignore it anymore. We have gone the flash-free route years ago already, and our video tours have been served by Youtube in the past year or so, for complete HTML5 compliance.

What’s Next?

More upgrades of course. We will be offering more features on our MLS® search forms to better serve the public (and consequently, the Realtors® who have a website with us), enhancing the Google Map search, upgrading the back-end to make maintenance of your website easier, and much more. We are also working on a Craigslist ad generator so you can quickly and easily share your listings on Craigslist with full photos, links and all the details you need. Stay tuned!