This book by Avinash Kaushik came to my attention via a video someone told me I would like (for goodness sake please remind me if it was you. I have lost all memory of who told me about it . The video and several others just as impactful may be seen on Avinash's website.

According to the author, if you read his blog "Occam's Razor" you have all the book's content for free. I highly doubt that, but even if true the book not only compiles it all, 100% of his proceeds are given to charities like Doctors without Borders.

Now on to the book...

Get this book if you are tasked with the (often thankless) job of increasing web conversions, or better placement, or making the execs "feel good" about expenses on the website(s) you maintain for them. There are 3 outcomes for what we do;
1. Increase Revenue 2. Reduce Cost 3. Improve Customer Loyalty / Satisfaction (quoted from the author's blog post)

This book provides actionable insights into what analytics is and should be. More than anything I appreciate Avinash's zeal and his approach to this very deep subject from a developer's viewpoint... Not the viewpoint typically found on mahogany row.

Making small (but measured) alterations and utilizing the tool sets (many of which are free) to provide the executives with irrefutable proof that your actions are impacting one of the three outcomes above, is shear brilliance!!

Thank you Avinash for this book, as well as your continued efforts!!


Follow Avinash on Twitter: @avinashkaushik

Every now and then I accidentally happen upon a great read. (assuming one believes in accidents and chance)

I recently was in my local bookstore looking for something to read while I wait on my computer to finish tasks I have given it. These are books that normally can be set aside and picked up when I have a long wait ahead. (yes, encoding video for streaming can be a long process)

I happened upon a book by Tim Ash (founder of SiteTuners) entitled Landing Page Optimization The definitive guide to testing and tuning landing pages.

This book is not a light read. If you are not seriously engaged in conversion of your website visitors toward a specific action you may as well ignore this book. HOWEVER if you are serious about conversion, and you have some time to test and tune, WOW! this is a great book.

Most of this book is easily consumable by anyone moderately involved in their web presence. But there are sections where Tim gets Mathematical & Statistical on you and that can be brutal if you're not ready. For the faint of heart I suggest you gloss over these parts, and come back to them later.

This book takes a no nonsense approach to defining your landing pages and conversion rates. I highly recommend this book for anyone seriously attempting to convert visitors into more than a digit on your unique visitor stats.

Microsoft SilverLight Streaming Service: video that starts fast, no matter how huge! This (currently free) service just works!

Serendipity, don’t you just love it??? I have a client that needed a solution, and in my zeal to help, I found a wicked cool service from our friends at Microsoft.

Problem:
A client had a video that is a slide show of the community he works in. It is set to steel drum music which after the bazzillion-th listen has used up it's charm with me. It is a 20mb .wmv file, and has leading and trailing slides that must be trimmed out. (the site is still in beta test, links will follow later See the video below)

Solution:
Microsoft Expression Encoder 2 (+ Publishing add in) AND Microsoft Silverlight Streaming Service (a new part of my MS Live account)
It took me less than 5 minutes to prepare this encoding project.

1. I drug the wmv file into the Microsoft Expression Encoder 2 project  interface.
2. I trimmed away the first few seconds and the last few seconds
3. I set my publishing preferences (size, skin and such)
4. I clicked “Encode” (this took awhile, but ran in background while I worked on other things)

The newly encoded file was considerably larger than the original (73mb). It starts instantly, and plays quite nicely at full screen too.

It took me less than 5 more minutes to publish video and embed it into the client’s website, thanks to the Encoder 2 “Addin” for publishing directly to MS SLS Service. This awesome addin not only uploads all my files, it returns the embed code saving me the trip to the server to get that.

Take a look:

There are as many reasons to have a website as there are websites (almost). Before you begin to speak with your friendly neighborhood code-junkie about writing that first line of code, you would be well ahead if you had a good clear understanding of the above.

Lewis Carroll said: "If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there."

Frankly if you don’t know where you are going, you may end up on many more roads than you ever thought you would. This is decision by meandering.  You just keep moving, doing, looking (and spending) until you think you have gotten there.

The project manager in me abhors such meandering. I crave success. Creating successful websites blows my skirt up (so to speak). Indecision and uncertainty are never good when you are in the build phase. It becomes very costly.

So one good question is:
Will this website be about you or about your perceived visitor?

If it is about you, then strap in for some serious soul searching about who you are in the context of this website. Maybe you are the authority on a specific community, or lifestyle. Maybe you are the absolute best at pricing properties correctly (list/sell price ratios are a hot ticket item right now). Heck, maybe you are known in your area for some outlandish marketing ploy and this site is an extension of “that” you.

Or maybe this website is really designed to “speak” to a specific type of buyer or seller. You could create a niche play website that is geared for “red heads” that are moving to a sunny coastal area. Maybe your call to action is that if they ask you, you will make sure they have the best of the best sun block (SPF50 of course... and be careful how you word this or you will attract all the wrong visitors).

If your site is about your visitor you need to figure out whom that target audience is, what they like.

So, let’s say you use a key phrase like “Rolling Horse Property in Nashville Tennessee” (529K hits on Google 181K hits on MSN). How many seconds will a person “give” you to actually show them why your website is relevant? What information will you have to have front and center to satisfy the 5-10 second rule? If you get the entire 10 seconds, how much info can you present?

START HERE…

I will show you the 3 or 4 Rolling Horse Properties in the Nashville area which best match your dreams!!

Trust me, you do not want to see all <count_horse_properties> of them!

Call me now and let’s discuss your wildest dreams! <Toll_free_number>

I will then email you a list of web pa

… TIME’S UP!!!

Remember you don’t have your website simply to beat the 5 – 10 second rule; you want leads, clients, customers, moola!!!  So, let’s say you keep them there on your site a while longer. What do you offer that will get them to pick up the phone or send you an email?

So, what’s it going to be on your website? What or who will it be about or for?  Will it have an impact on the visitor that is akin to the impact you have on them when in person? Will it challenge them to make some sort of decision? Will it call them to action?
 
I certainly hope so!!!!

Lately clients have been expressing a renewed and fervent interest in “refreshing” their web-presence.

Typically they begin by telling me that their website has not done anything for them lately. When I hear these words I ask; “How do you know?”.

Why is it that few respond by telling me about their call tracking matrix and the percentage of calls that are driven by which advertising category?

Let’s be serious about this. It is business after all. If you place funds in a savings account, you would expect an ROI (Return on Investment) and you would be able to tell from where that return came. I mean you can TRACK this type of investment and in fact there is no doubt that you would track it.

If you put your advertising budget into several categories and fail to track how each category performs you simply have no RIO knowledge to judge what to do next year.

Let’s assume that you have 4 categories:

1. Print (periodicals)
2. Print (mailings)
3. Electronic (website)
4. Electronic (email campaigns)

Any time the phone rings there is one question that must be asked EVERY TIME. “How did you get this number?” (of course you use a polite tone, not the accusational one) Let me place it in context:

Caller: “Hi, my name is Steve and I wanted to ask you about a house on 3^rd street”
You: “Hello Steve, I would be happy to answer all your questions about that property. First, may I ask how you heard of me and found my phone number?”

Get the ROI Tracking engines fired up at the start and every time the phone rings. If you have an assistant answering the office number, have that tracking a measured part of their review process.

Once you have a matrix that tells you which advertising dollar returns the most phone calls you can begin to nail down where you “deals” come from. Keep in mind that it is possible that more phone calls come in on one type than the others, but none of those calls are converted to dollars. Not probable, but possible.

At this point you could actually answer the primary question posed here in this blog; “What’s your website done for you lately?”

Now I want to shift gears a tad.

If I told you that a $5,000 investment today; would yield $25,000 PER YEAR for the next 3 years; would you consider that a good ROI?

I had a conversation with one of my good friends who is a prolific Realtor in the area about this exact scenario. I asked him to consider what his website delivering ONE CLOSING per year would mean to his earnings. He told me that he averages $25K/closing.

Now you may not have such high end homes to deal with. So let’s change the question to;

“What if your website returned 3 closings per year which netted you $25K, would that be a good return on investment?”

My point here is very simple. It is easy to overlook ROI if you are not seriously tracking where your dollars come from. It is easy to become disgruntled about your website if you can not directly attribute earnings against investment.

I can tell you that until you are tracking where each and every deal comes from, you can not know where to invest for sure. BUT an investment in a killer website doesn’t have to do much to show a great Return On Investment.

Let’s say you went crazy and spent $10,000 each and every year on your website, and you could DIRECTLY attribute 10 closings per year to that website. Would that be a great ROI?

Tell me, What’s your website done for you lately?
More importantly, What have you done for it?
Have you at the very least given it a fighting chance at showing you the ROI it provides?

Do you track your advertising dollar?

 

 

Yesterday on MyTechOpinion NikNik wrote about a great resource for School data and widgets: Schooling Your Clients From Your Real Estate Blog. I liked what I saw so much I created (in less than 2 minutes) the widget you see here. This is provided free from Education.com, and if you want to get right to creating one of your own, click here. They also offer a web service that grants you access to all the great data which may be displayed in your own application (heavy coding required). The list of information they provide is below. Please note that the interface allows for Parent Ratings and Reviews as well. This sort of crowd sourcing will make the offering very compelling over time. The only issue I can see here is that if you use the widget, and folks click on a school for more info, it opens another browser window, leaving your website behind the new window. This could be avoided if one used the webservice, but the development costs to do so might be prohibitive when compared to the risk of loosing eyeballs on your website. This is  in Beta right now, so if you use it beware that it may be spotty at times. I have seen map loads take wicked long here.

Naples, Florida Schools map school list find Get your own Local Schools Widget

Schools Over 125,000 schools nationwide: 96,000 Public Schools, including charter, magnet, andalternative schools 30,000 Private Schools, including independent and parochial schools 17,000 School Districts School Profiles Contact Information School Name Address Phone number Latitude/ Longitude of school School distance from latitude/longitude School Facts School Type: Charter, Magnet, etc. School District Enrollment Grades Served Test Scores State Standardized Test Results Results by grade and subject level No Child Left Behind Accountability Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) API Result (California)

Student and Teacher Statistics Student-Teacher Ratio Student Ethnicity Student Gender Student Economic Level English Language Learners Students Participating in Special Education Programs Gifted Students Graduation Rate/ Dropout Rate Teacher Credentials/ Certification Teacher Experience Teacher Degree Level Parent Ratings and Reviews Parent Testimonial Reviews of school culture and environment Manual QA of all school reviews Overall and Specific Parent Ratings Curriculum and Instruction Parental Involvement Facilities Safety Athletics Special Education Resources Gifted and Talented Resources Extracurricular Opportunities

Today on Inman there was a great post by Lia Saetern about niche marketing: "Real estate niches stretch from nudists to celebs".

While on first reading the title, you may shutter at the implications of "clothing optional" real estate as a niche; think about how that plays out in attracting clients of like mind. I have been telling agents for years that they need to define their niche, and market into it. This article illustrates successes which may shed some light on why it is important.

It's still "Location, Location, Location"! What is it that you know about your specific location that might become your niche? In Naples Florida we have a major north/south road, US Route 41. This road in the early days was referred to as "the Hogline". Basically, anything east of 41 was the home of hogs and other undesirable critters. This reference was one used by the folks that lived "west of 41" where the beaches are. While the areas east of 41 have become quite inhabitable (in fact you have to go many miles east to find something inexpensive) the Beaches are still west of 41.

NaplesWestof41.com:

I purchased this domain name about a year ago.. I picked it up after suggesting it to an agent that could not see the value of niche marketing. When the agent failed to buy it, I snapped it up. I have done nothing with it, because I am not in a business for which such a niche would be beneficial. BUT I expect that one day, I will meet someone who is.

Now, my domain name is not as "out there" as nudist-agent.com is, but it is a clear niche. It is location specific enough that I could create a web site that targeted only those clients that want something WEST of 41 in Naples. My site could have information that very narrowly targets homes, restaurants, golf clubs, etc that are west of 41. This includes the PRIME real estate in Naples.

Now, any of you that know Naples may be saying; well that is not much of a niche, since US 41 runs the entire length of Naples from north to south. But I know I can divide it up easily and very quickly direct the user to the sections of importance to them.

I hope that you take a look at Lia's article on Inman and find in it some interesting tidbits that can be applied to your business.

Today there was a great post on Inman called Quantity, quality vary at real estate search sites.

After reading through all the comments I had a thought.

Just how stale is the data? So I did a quick survey, which led me to post a comment. Below is the comment for your reading pleasure.

If we step back and ask ourselves why we care if the listing data on these sites is accurate or up to date, we have to admit that there are only a couple answers:
• We want bragging rights. (not my favorite answer, but valid non the less)
• We actually do care how the customer perceives and associates trust with the industry. (my personal fave)

In a very quick non-scientific test, I viewed each of the sites listed in the test above. What I found was that 2 (yes only two) provide any indication of when a listing was last updated. Without such information, one has no confidence that the product is fresh, as opposed to growing mold like a week old loaf of organic bread.

Of the two that have “last updated” info, only one provides the number of days on the site. They also provide both data points immediately next to each other. So if it says Updated last (7 days ago) and number of days on site = 25, I have a higher confidence factor that this is a fresh and useful listing.

So, who were the two?
Redfin and Zillow.
Who gave me both data points in an easily consumable fashion?
Zillow.

If you want to increase consumer confidence and create relevance in their minds; there are (at least) two things that are needed:
• Provide value add information like the “last updated”.
• Clearly define for the user what your sources are (industry leaders, or other), and how often they typically update their info. This is a scary thing to do if you are a site that is not updated at least daily. BUT if you really key in on this difference, and inform the customer that this is your secret sauce, you win that battle of “fresh or stale” in their minds.

I wonder as I write this; exactly who is the customer of the sites listed in this article. Clearly, they all need higher and higher Unique Visitor counts in order to sell their brand. But, is the visitor their customer or are the sellers and/or their agents?

If a website’s business model is to sell “online shelf space” for “inventory” provided by agents and sellers, what is their obligation to fully disclose to the visitor how old that inventory is? More importantly, what is the driving force that would cause them to expose the fact that their shelves are full of stale product?

In the current frenzy to have bragging rights of the most properties, the most visitors, the most metro-areas served; where is the freshness of the information for the user or website visitor considered. Two places I can find.

For over 14 years now I have been sitting across the desk from real estate agents and brokers who have bitten by the latest "buzzword". They are all atwitter (pun intended) about what someone they know has told them they must have to make their business better. Never mind the credibility of the "someone" or their understanding of what it is that this specific business person does (or more importantly will not do) on a daily basis.

I can understand their eagerness to "get with it". All the cool kids are doing it!

Let’s ask ourselves one important question. Just now much time will you as a business person invest in this new thing? Is that a bit too vague? OK, How about Twitter? I have a Twitter account, I Tweet. Not that often, and not about much that is business related. Well there was one tweet that announced this blog to my "followers", all 14 of them. I guess I don't have time to add any Twitter-Juice to my cred.

Let’s say that you get a twitter account, and you are going to use it for business. What are you going to tweet about? Links to new listings you have? How much social cred does that tweet hold? How many folks will follow you and actually see that you have a new listing? Let's assume that it is north of 100 followers. What does this tweet actually do for your business?

Now let's ask about something that is not free, and will take more than 30 seconds of your time: CRM. Customer (or client) Relationship Management technology is all the rage now with many of the template website sellers. They tout it as the holy grail of website user administration, and drip systems. It may very well be.

I have heard of many agents that do very well using any of these systems. They have drunk the Kool-Aid, and are fully indoctrinated. This is good for them. But, before you make any business decision, especially if there are dollars and terms of agreement involved, you need to take a look at how it meshes with your business plan. (You have one of those, right?)

I know "old school" agents that seldom email, never text, and use wooden pencils and notepads as their "portable hard drive". I also know agents that grew up with computers in their bedroom, living room, school room, and seemingly have always had a laptop on their laps when seated.

These are the two ends of the spectrum. Only you know where you fit in this sliding scale of "tech savvy". If I told you that you could see the IP address of every person that visits your website, would that delight, scare, or confuse you?

How about if I said that there are tools that you could have that would allow you to not only drip email to all your sphere, but also know that they had opened it, clicked on a photo or link, AND everything they did on your site after clicking into it. Did they send that home as an email to Aunt Suzie? (Here’s her email address) did she click and view it? And so on, ad-infinitum.

None of the above paragraph does anything for your business unless you change the way you do business and actually use it. Now bear with me a bit here.

I am now and pretty much always have been a pragmatist about business. I believe that anything you can decide to do in business, when well planned and executed equally well is achievable. My problem is that I sometimes wish to play tennis rather than execute my business plan.

The Question is and always has been; how much does this change my daily routine?
Things like:

• Do I have to rethink my business plan, and the areas where I invest my time?
• How long will I commit to the new process before I declare it a failure?
• Do my team members have to change as well?
• Can I handle the changes this represents?
• Will these changes disorient me enough that I get distracted and lose focus, or worse?

Now, I am a technology implementer. It may sound like I am speaking out against technology. I AM NOT. There are tools that will forever alter your perception of “how” you do business, while ensuring income. What I am advocating is a hard look at what a technology means to you in your daily business life. If the investment is acceptable, then I would further suggest that you have an “escape hatch”. An allotted amount of time that no matter how bad it looks, you are committed to staying the course.

If you have a clear understanding of the time, money, and change in your business processes you are much more likely to succeed. If your chosen technology vendor is willing to have frank discussions with you about the costs (both time and money), the process changes you must make, as well as what all your team member investment will be, then you have a good vendor. I would go even a bit further and say that if your chosen vendor brings it up before you do, you have a great business partnership with that vendor!!

Technology for technology’s sake, is noting to get all atwitter about.

I have been in an email conversation with Ron Gombach on the topic of "The Sidelined Buyer".
Note: I did not know Ron prior to connecting with him in back and forth comments on an Inman blog post. We took our conversation off line (off Inman that is) in order to better explore the concepts.

Ron suggested in a comment on an Inman post that there are transactions which could happen, but don't because the current search capabilities do not allow some folks to find what they want. In our subsequent conversation (ongoing) he provided several real-life stories of friends and acquaintances who were, or are, unable to offer their "slice of the transaction pie" to anyone, because no one has answered their need.

In Ron's descriptions of these "sidelined buyers" circumstances; each had what I would consider specific, yet nebulous, criteria. A common thread amongst them all was a term of Ron's own concoction; "Location-Independent".

Ron's assertion that there are many buyers that are "location-independent" and therefore not focused on a place, as much as a specific lifestyle or type of property. Given the domain used for this blog, you might imagine this got my attention!!

As we survey the web and the location indifferent or "National in scope" RE search tools, we find a LOT of deviation in comprehensiveness. This was recently written about on TechCrunch (of all places) by Erick Schonfeld in a post called How accurate are listings on real estate sites?. This is a very telling post about the comprehensiveness of listing data out on the web.
Note: I am an avid techcruch reader. Imagine my surprise this morning when I found they were articulating what I have been saying here. The web-ification of real estate search is in it's infancy.

What is not fully known is how comprehensive data is (or ever could be) if one considers NON-MLS listings as a factor in the total number of listings. These listings may represent a larger than anticipated percentage of "total count of homes for sale" as values drop and equity is lost, leaving little (if any) room for agent compensation.

Agent compensation and the models broken by the large influx of "short sales" is the subject of yet another post today; which alas has slipped my memory. I read so much these days and have not formalized a bookmarking system.

Back to Ron's sidelined buyers:

In our discussion it became apparent that what is needed is a new search metaphor which employs a national (if not global) meta-data, tagging system.

BUT: How does one go about building consensus in such a fragmented pool of data providers. It is bad enough when you consider that there are 900+ MLS systems in the US alone. Then you have to add in the non-MLS listing agencies, as well as the FSBOs that are totally on their own and may not even know what Craig's List is.

This is a technologist's nightmare. Well actually, it is the Data Base Administrator who is having nightmares of normalization schemas broken by every new source of data.

So, let's assume that someone waves a magic wand and suddenly all of the real estate related data can be aggregated, normalized, and centralized. You still probably don't know enough about all the real estate in order to answer many lifestyle questions a user may ask.

Sure you may know how many bedrooms and baths. Although; I would submit that in many cases a 3+den is actually a 4 bedroom home, but some agent or owner decided that having a den was advantageous to help sell the home. Hopefully enough buyers are able to work around that in the search criteria they use.

• What about noise levels?
• What about predators (of the four, as well as two legged type)?
• How do you know if the property in question is (to borrow Ron's specific need) Adaptive-Reuse?
• What about quality of lifestyle options? (tennis anyone?)

OK, maybe you can glean this info from the "remarks to buyer" field so popular in MLS systems. Maybe not. I suggested that a broker add deep text searching of the "remarks"; to his corporate website They may end up doing that, but would it yield the above answers?

What if you allowed the listing agents the ability to post blog content for each listing on a broker's corporate site? That may get you closer, but it would depend on the amount of time and effort put in by each "independent contractor status" agent.

What if you went one step further and allowed agents from other brokerages to add blog content about "their" listings displayed on your site? (Can you feel the love yet?)

In the end, it comes down to one person (agent or owner) finding ways to articulate everything about a piece of property in great detail, in an effort to attract one person (agent or buyer) to the property. This is not well done on any localized platform, let alone national or global.

The desired outcome (the transfer of real property) is achieved as the direct result of a conversation about the property. When I say a conversation, I am not limiting it to a single instance. I see this as potentially happening over weeks or months and many discussions. As with all conversations, this has the incredible potential for misunderstanding, lack of communication, and failure.

It is our hope that in our conversation (here and elsewhere) we hit upon ways to mitigate the risk, and build an aptitude for successful conversations about the transfer of real property.