On the 25th of June the New York Times published an article by Barnard Lunn entitled Build an Insanely Great Web Service. Not only is this article worth reading because it gives the reader the opportunity to read the work “suck” as a descriptor in a New York Times article which I just find amusing, but it offers a great model of the engagement thresholds that websites and services need to think about. The article is written using a start up web service as a model. The applicability of what the author Mr. Lunn says does not stop there, however. The concept can easily be transferred to any website and web service. Viewed through the lens of real estate sites, we see a clear structure in which to think about how users interact with websites. The time thresholds that he lays out are:

• 30 seconds: “I get it.”
• 3 minutes: “I’ve used it and still get it, and it has not annoyed me yet.”
• 3 days: “I find this really useful or fun.”
• 3 weeks: “I am raving about this to other people.”
• 3 months: “I couldn’t imagine not having this, and I’m boring my friends telling them about it.”
• 3 years: “How weird to see this on Oprah.”

(Lunn, Barnard, New York Times 6/25/09)

Now, I am not saying that your real estate website is going to end up on Oprah — though I would not rule it out. But in the mean time, lets look at this structure in the context of a well designed real estate site being used by an interested potential buyer. (Please note that I am going to add a threshold that I feel was overlooked):

• After 3 seconds visitors should like the site design, be able to identify where they should look first and find it easy to read. (Things to think about: Design and Layout)
• After 30 seconds visitors should have clear idea of what your site has to offer them and most importantly what the next step is that they can take. (Things to think about: homepage content and calls to action)
• After three minutes, your visitor has used some of the functionality on your site. If it is well organized and the functionality is intuitive, they will still see the value in your site because they will find that they can easily access the information that they are interested in. (Things to think about: ease of use of your sites functionality and navigation)
• After three days they have fully explored your site, read information on you, your market area and used all the applicable functionality. They find it useful and at this point contact you. (Things to think about: quality and amount of information available, easy and obvious conversion tools)
• After three weeks they have found that your website integrates seamlessly with their property search process and your personal service. They continue to use the site to save searches and ask you questions as you set up viewings. (Things to think about: Lead management and contact utilities)
• After three months they have found the house they want and close on it. They can’t imagine what the process would have been like without your website and your personal attention. (Things to think about: how integrated is your website to your current client management)
• After three years they are ready to buy again and call you . . . or they see you on Oprah and are really impressed. (Things to think about: the value of continued contact with past clients, how good Oprah looks in that pant suit!)

Using these time thresholds as a structure to think about your website is a great way to take a tough look at how your site encourages the engagement of potential and existing clients. If your site is not up to snuff, the possibility of losing potential buyers at any one of these 6 stages is a very serious reality.

The moral of the story is always look at your site from the user’s perspective. Your site should be all about what the potential client is looking for and what you can offer them that they haven’t even thought of yet.

Camp Takumta is a wonderful camp here in Vermont for children who have or are battling cancer. The camp has been serving children in the Vermont and Upstate New York area for 24 years. Their new site incorporates photo galleries, a blog and a dynamic calendar to allow parents and campers to stay connected through out the year.

Oleet & Co is a Burlington based financial services firm that specializes in mergers and acquisitions. The firm (formally Worth Mountain Associates) Advises New England companies as they navigate the tumultuous financial market, ensuring a prosporous and productive future.

In the past month we have launched two new Real Estate related websites. The first is Tami Pelletier Real Estate LLC, a real estate office in Weare, New Hampshire. Tami Pelletier specilizes in all kinds of Southern New Hampshire Residental Real Estate and has more than 19 years of experience in the feild.

The Grand View Commons is a new water front community in Wolfboro, New Hampshire situated on Wolfboro Neck on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee. The community offers waterfront and interior homes conveniently situated a moments from the downtown of one of the oldest summer communites in the country.

We are very pleased to add these new clients to our portfolio.

This feature enables rapid sharing of information about listings, bookmarking blog posts about your local service area or a quick email to friends and family. It’s easy to use and provides a choice of platforms depending on what you want to achieve. Bookmark your favorite listings with Google bookmarks for example or Twitter a listing to an engaged group of followers and receive instant feedback. Use the Facebook function to participate in real estate groups or people looking for particular properties in certain areas.

As people become more accustomed to these links and use them more and more it adds further usability and interactivity for the viewer. For the realtor adds superb SEO opportunities especially in garnering relevant, inbound links from trusted sources.

Examples of our sites with this feature are:

Bryan Bomba

BCK Real Estate

Greybeard

Can you have too many followers?

10, 50, 100, 500? There is surely a finite amount of conversations any one person can follow and how well relationships can develop by “drive-by” remarks. It is also true of people following you. How do you provide good value to say a thousand people that follow you?

From a business point of view it is sensible to maintain a smaller volume of followers that are truly interested in your business to keep people engaged and vice versa. The best way to achieve this is to grow organically, which is often a good maxim in business. With the use of APIs (application programming interface) that artificially generate lists of friends you risk becoming a spammer. Much like all interaction with the web it is perhaps wiser to focus on good contributions in your local or national community with content that people want to hear about rather than empty tweets that will often get lost among all the other noise.

Relationship building has become the currency of social media and like any relationship needs to be cultivated, therefore putting a marketing hat on and talking “at” people is not going to cut it in this medium and there won’t be much value gained.

What do you think? Leave your comments.

Adam was recently selected to REALTOR Magazine’s “30 Under 30″ for 2009.  A longtime Union Street Media client, Adam and his wife Sarah recognized early on that that a strong online presence is key to building a business in real estate.  They have been able to convert the leads they have collected online into sales and are now one the top REALTOR teams in the Burlington area.  Union Street Media has worked with Adam since 2006 and are honored to be a part of his success!

There is an excellent blog post by Bill Taylor I recently read on the Harvard Business School blog that discussed the difference between entrepreneurs & MBA’s and who has the upper hand the economy we now face.  In this topsy-turvey economy, with desperation being the mother of invention, we’re seeing both an increase in graduate school applications and start up companies.

Let me start by saying that I see myself as an entrepreneur. I’ve been one since I opened my lemonade stand to finance my baseball card collection in fourth grade. A number of our clients are entrepreneurs too: REALTORS, hospitality businesses, social entrepreneurs such as Choose Responsibility & Given Limb.  The list is extensive.  There are a lot of people out there starting things and when you start something, you inevitably need a web site.  One of my favorite parts of my job is working with entrepreneurs to help them further their initiatives.

On occasion I have been asked to speak to student groups about my experience as an entrepreneur.  I’ve often said that when one is considering starting a business, they should envision the worst case scenario, which is normally something along the lines of “My business idea fails. I lose money. My lifestyle is negatively effected” etc.  I then ask them if they’re willing to accept that scenario as fact?  If the answer is yes, then I encourage them to move forward with it.

When I started Union Street Media in 1999, my worse case scenario was “the company dot-bombs, I’m 24/25/26 years old, I have a great story and I apply to business school.”  Well, the dot-bomb didn’t happen.  I’m now 32 and still haven’t managed to get to business school.  A few years ago when I was asked to speak to a panel of Tuck MBA’s their first week of class that line got the best response of all.

My father, who is both an MBA and an entrepreneur, made an interesting point that the presumption in Taylor’s post is that the two identities are mutually exclusive.

Dad wrote: “The MBA stereotype being referred to is that of the consultant or investment banker, and the entrepreneur stereotype is of a scrappy and even uneducated street fighter.  But as several of the commentators observed, they are both entrepreneurs and MBA’s.  In certain fields like independent institutional money management, it helps to be both.

One reason more MBA’s are not entrepreneurs is the risk/reward:  with the MBA historically most can get high rewards without taking the risk of entrepreneurship.   There is also the matter of defining and measuring outcomes.  If you measure outcomes as expected value, which is the probability of success times the dollar value of achieving that success, the expected value of the MBA is a lot higher.  If you use other measures you might come to different conclusions.

Many entrepreneurs are misfits.  They don’t see where they fit in, so they make their own way.  Most MBA’s are the antithesis of misfits, especially in recent times when business schools have become highly selective.

But business schools study, even revere, entrepreneurship.  Indeed, it was a business school professor who did this research that defined the distinctions.  The observation that entrepreneurs were misfits was something I learned in a business school course on entrepreneurship.  The behavioral dynamic that entrepreneurial decision-making was a function of defining the downside was something I learned in real life when becoming an entrepreneur.”

This month, thousands of students will walk across the stage and officially enter the “real world.”  They will join millions of others currently in the workforce that are trying to best navigate this recession.  I encourage both groups - and even the MBA’s - to consider starting a business or non-profit on their own.  If you decide to take the jump, please contact Union Street Media to help get your web site off the ground.  You’ll find an energetic entrepreneur on the other end that’s excited to help out!

Tired of blogging? No Time?

Recently I came across this forum post by a beleaguered, blogging Realtor.

“when i first began blogging i was very excited i found out a way to reach the world and express my thoughts.My Real Estate blog began to be filled with content and awesome articles. As i continue to blog and expand my audience and continue to grow my business i have found myself exhausted and overwhelmed. I am exhausted every article requires time and thought something that i really dont have. i recently began looking for a ghost blogger but guess what i haven’t found one yet. Does any one have any suggestions?”

As the season gets busier for Realtors, a common issue is finding time to sit down and write a well written blog post with good content. It is wiser to keep a consistent output rather than flurries of activity, so if you only blog once a month that is preferable to a high frequency of blogs and then nothing at all for long periods. Readers will check in at regular intervals but if there is nothing there for ages you run the risk of losing them completely as they think the blog is dormant. Rather than leave your blog dormant until you find the time and energy to jump back in, consider this:

Microblogging

For example, Twitter. You only have to come up with a maximum of 140 characters and it’s becoming more and more popular. This is a great way to keep feeding new information while you formulate a more content-rich and keyword-focused blog. For double the benefit, set up an RSS feed of your “tweets” to your site so that your site gains a regular infusion of content.

Short posts that link out and keep your brand lively can be just as useful as ones that take an hour to write, so don’t damage your brand with poor, lazy posts just because you feel you have to crank something out. Just keep it short (literally a paragraph!) and link to something of interest in the local or national media or on a local web site that is of interest to your market. It could be a reminder of an upcoming “Green Up” day, beach cleanup, community-wide rummage sale, shred-fest, important school board meeting, music festival, property tax due date, you name it. Anything that is relevant to living in your community will take only a moment to write, can be keyword rich, and useful to your readers.

Ghost/Guest Blogging

This avenue is an acceptable route for SEO purposes as it can guarantee good content and add a fresh voice to your brand and blog. It also will provide great support for you in the busy season enabling you to focus on lead generation and getting out to meet your clients. Just make sure that the writer knows your business and your community. Hiring someone on another continent, therefore, would not help extend your brand or accurately represent your expertise in your local market.

Listen to your Analytics

If you are wondering how much effect your blog is having on traffic to your site and brand awareness then use Google Analytics to see if your efforts are furthering your business goals. You might discover what is working for you and help you to either trim the fat with certain content or provide motivation to expand more on ideas that are gaining traction.

Looking for Ideas?

Check out some of our Real Estate client’s blogs that perform well and have great content:

Bryan Bomba - Chicago
Brad Dinsmore - New Hampshire
Lomenzo Properties - Cape Cod
Wright Realty - New Hampshire

In addition here are some great tips at ProBlogger.com

Although college students perceived as market leaders when it comes to technology adaptation (just behind middle schoolers), they’re not the only ones using their mobile devices to look up real estate.  As iPhone sales skyrocket even in this down economy, users are expecting that your site will load on their mobile device.  The trend is catching on amongst real estate data sites too.  Some newspapers like the Gainsville Sun and sites like Trulia & Zillow are making their sites easier to search using a mobile phone.

You should check with your web developer to make sure your site is mobile friendly.  Some real estate web site developers (like Union Street Media), can create a new mobile template for your site that strips away non-core images & content, which increases the speed that the site loads on the mobile phone.  Check out the two variations of Brian Boardman’s web site to see what it looks like on a web browser and on a mobile phone.

We generally see three types of REALTORS requesting mobile-friendly sites:

• REALTORS who are technology savvy and browse the web on their mobile phones
• REALTORS who’s clients are technology savvy and use mobile phones for real estate searches
• REALTORS in a second home markets

Check out www.adamdow.com if you’d like to see one person that fits all three categories (and was one of the first clients to get a mobile-friendly site from USM).

There are a lot of other cool examples of mobile-friendly real estate web sites out there.  Please share any that you have come across in the comments section below.  Thanks!