I just noticed that IDX Broker has an iPhone App called “myAgent” that is free to their clients. If there are any IDX Broker customers reading this who have tried it, what do you think? Are there any other IDX providers that have released iPhone Apps for their clients?

It honestly couldn’t be simpler: after a very quick install, you’ll have a dropbox folder on your computer.  Just drag your files into the folder, and they’re automatically backed up and available on any other computer or mobile device.

Want to share files? Just drag them into your folder, then invite people to them. You can also send them a link to a specific file in your Dropbox folder.  Want to share disclosures with another agent? Just email them the link.  Want to share files with your assistant or team members? Once they have access to your folder, all you need to do is drop files in there and you’re done.

Need a backup solution? All the files in your dropbox folder are automatically backed up to their secure servers.  Perfect for everything from transaction documents, to your music and video collections.

As they say on their website, Dropbox replaces:

• Emailing file attachments to yourself and other people
• Using USB drives
• Renaming files to keep a history of previous versions
• Complicated backup software

The best part? It’s free for up to 2 gigabytes of file sharing.  So if you use it just for real estate documents, you should be able to fit quite a few transactions before paying a penny.  The 50 gigabyte plan is $9.99, and the 100 gigabyte plan is $19.99 per month.

If you’re wondering why I sound like such a cheerleader about Dropbox, I have to admit I have an ulterior motive: I’m emailing this post to my brother, who’s also in real estate. I’ve been trying to convince him to use it for weeks instead of uploading things to a server we share, but so far no luck

Once you are able to get a web design that has great usability that has lowered your bounce rate and improved your traffic. Now what do you do with all the users signing up and all the new email requests about properties?

On the old site we did all this manually. We were living in the stone age as far as how we kept track of the leads and assigned them to agents on the team. The users (leads) would sign up on the site and we would export all the leads daily that we did not mark as called from the day before and then send out a percentage to the different agents on the team.  We handled the email requests from the site checking our spreadsheet to see if the lead had been assigned and then send a response back to the user letting the lead know our team member would be contacting them. We of course CC’D the agent and that was their trigger to call and follow up. Pretty archaic and very labor intensive.

When we redesigned the site and created the new IDX search we also decided to create our own Lead Management System (CRM) that would talk with the site. We have a team and serve the whole state (all Islands) of Hawaii. Our goal was to make it as efficient as possible and be able to have the system assign to agents on a Round Robin basis based on geographic regions as they came in. The goal was also to make it scalable and work in market.

We launched the new system a week ago and it is making a huge difference already. The agents are actually able to get back to the users when they are still on the site. This allows our agents to let them know how the site works and how they can use it as a tool to get new listings as they become available. Creating a personal relationship with the user when they first start using the site is huge and will definitely increase conversions .  The agents are also able to login in as the user and save searches for them if they are a little computer challenged.

Here are some of the things our new lead manager allows us to do:

5 Different ways to assign leads as they come in:

1.    Manual
2.    Round Robin
3.    Weighted Round Robin
4.    Geographic Round Robin
5.    Weighted Geographic Round Robin

We also have the ability to enable Idle Lead Reassignment feature — if the agent doesn’t take action on the lead within a specific time frame. The system will reassign the lead to the next available agent and notify the new agent of the new lead plus notify the old agent the lead has been reassigned. Pretty sweet option if you have a slacker on the team

The agents get an email, text message or both when a new lead signs up depending on their settings. Once a lead is assigned to an agent any email requests from that lead from the website gets routed right to that agent.  Of course the admin can get copied on all this if they choose to.

The system allows the agent to add activities, schedule follow-ups and many other cool things that all get archived in the detailed lead page.  All the users activity from the website gets logged into the leads detailed page as well.  Things like email requests, # of searches, visits, properties viewed, favorite properties, last logged in and much more.

The agent is also able to sort their leads by many different ways like– start date, time frames, urgency level, # of searches, activity level, plus others. It even has a pretty awesome advanced search option that you can set up different filters and save them. You can export the leads many different ways as well.

All agents and admin users have a dashboard that allows them to see things at a glance including up coming scheduled follows, past due follow ups, new leads, # leads today, # leads this week, # leads this month. Follow up stats, incoming emails.

The admin has more features and can see agent activity at a glance in a table that shows agents:

Leads: today, week, month & total.
Follow Ups: completed & past due.
Incoming emails.

All these items are links and can be viewed in detail by the admin.

One thing that I think is really helpful is the daily email reminder that goes out to the agent letting them know how many leads that still need attention, the # of follow ups for the day and the number of past due follow ups. Of course the admin can get that same email as well. The system also will send out an email reminder 3 hours prior to a follow up as well.

As I mentioned before, the new Lead Manager is already making a huge difference in our business.  I would love to hear how you are following up on your website leads and what has worked for you. I am always interested in learning something new and growing from others.

BTW: I will be buzzing around networking in San Diego at NAR this next week and would love to meet new people in the business that are working hard to improve their business. Sharing is great way to do that!! My cell is 808-295-5714

PS: Sorry about the length of the post

For those who were using Walk Score’s real estate tile, you now have public transit data on your website (for the 40 cities covered) as a result of the addition of transit data to Walk Score.

You can learn more over on the Walk Score Blog.

If you’ve experienced this but already clicked the link (doh!), change your password immediately. Additionally, tell the person that the DM came from so they are aware that their Twitter account has been compromised and to change their password.

Scammers/Spammers suck.

Everyone has an opinion: the CEO, the developers, the marketing team, your mom (ok, so maybe not your mom). But you get the idea.

Today, I want to introduce to you a tool that will allow you to eliminate the guesswork from site design. Yup, that’s right, no more “I like the blue button right there, because that’s what I think my users will like”. Why not let your visitors tell you what works best?

Enter Google Web Site Optimizer.

This tool (free) from Google will allow you to either A/B test your designs or use multivariate testing to determine what works best for your website. If your goal is conversions, you might be thinking, “Hey, we need more traffic” – but have you ever thought to focus on maximizing the traffic you already are getting to your site? That might be your golden ticket. By doing things like lowering your bounce rate as well as understanding your visitors better, you’ll maximize your ROI on your existing traffic.

Let’s take a quick look at how we ran an experiment at House Buyer Network. Our goal is to help motivated home sellers who want to sell my house. We wanted to understand how our visitors trust our brand a bit better.

For our testing purposes, we chose to run a simple A/B test. The test we ran looked specifically at showing our Thawte SSL Trust Seal on the home page and how that display could/would affect visitor trust in our brand. We’ve had our SSL for a long time but we didn’t show it to our site visitors. The test was turned on for about 5 days (more than enough time to collect visitor and conversion data).

Here’s a sample of the report that Website Optimizer provides:

As you can see from the graph above, the SSL Trust Test we ran performed better than not showing our Thawte SSL Trust Seal on the site. We were easily able to determine (via Google’s Website Optimizer) that the SSL Trust Seal on our home page was able to help improve our conversion goals (to the tune of a double digit improvement).

In a day where everyone has a design opinion, it might be time for you to start looking at Google’s Website Optimizer to eliminate the guesswork from your site design.

It will help and you’ll know really quick what works and what doesn’t. For a full story on how Extra Space (national storage company) used Website Optimizer, take a look at this video.

Good luck with your A/B testing to improve your site conversions and eliminate the guesswork from your website design! Be sure to comment on this post about how the Website Optimizer tool from Google helps your site…

Cheers, Matthew

My topic is Web 3.0, what will it look like? How can we help shape it? and most importantly, How can we use it to improve our “Internet Persona”? Be first to market, so to speak. It was just 3 short years ago that I, and many others in the REBlog space, began talking about things like Social Networking; using cool new tools like Twitter and Facebook to help create your “Internet Persona”. To help reach out to potential clients and peers in a more “transparent” way, a more “personable” way…and look at what has happened? Look at what some of the “early adapters” have been able to accomplish to this point, and how 80% of the Real Estate community is just now getting involved…

…yet for those of us who have been thinking and doing it for 3 years, we are already feeling it is “passe” somehow. we are (or should be) looking into the “crystal ball” for what’s next?

When I talk to groups of Agents, Brokers, or Salespeople in general I speak of Web 1.0 being described in a single word as “Availability”, Web 2.0 being “Transparency”, and now Web 3.0 as being … “Predictability”!

While I know this subject may be a bit “Edgy” or even “Obscure”, keep an open mind, and please…please…please comment on it. The discussions and forums that are created from your comments will allow us, as a group, to “Define” and “Design” the future of Real Estate websites, Blogs, and “Internet Persona’s” for years to come. We will be the “Early Adapters”. We will be “Ahead of the Curve”….so come on, think with me

Let’s begin with an excerpt from my personal Blog, AskTheRealEstateCoach.com…

“I like to think ahead, and thinking ahead right now means asking that question…What is Web 3.0 going to look like? I believe that the one word definition of Web 3.0 will be…Predictability…meaning that web presence’s will be riddled with predictability! They will know the answer before it is asked, they will provide information that the client didn’t even know they wanted, but they did! They will bring the client directly to the answer based on the actual need of the client, even if they didn’t even know it!

What does this look like in a practical sense? Follow along this scenario with me, I will use something very “common”, not really associated with Real Estate, so everyone can say “AH HA!” “I get what he means”

Our cars, our phones, and other electronic devices are equipped with GPS. This is a cool little feature that allows us to use our Navigation devices, set up map details, keep from getting lost, find cool lil stores, ect…but they are also leaving (creating) digital footprints of everything we do, everywhere we go. Our cell phone accounts have our ss# associated with them, so they can draw a clear picture of who we are from the information available via that ss#. Our income, our neighborhood, our education…starting to get it? The Internet now knows what I can afford, what I like to buy, what I drive, where I live, and with the GPS, now knows everywhere I go, and everything I do, via digital footprint. So if I am prone to buy Lexus automobiles, and I have an income of over $80,000 a year, and I drive down a particular street each day to get to work, and I buy new cars every 2.3 years, and I stop in at the Starbucks on the corner of 1st and Vine every weekday (See it, see it? Wait for it!) The local Lexus dealer will be placing advertising on the street I drive and in the Starbucks I visit 2.3 years after I bought my last car!

I can hear the skeptics amongst you right now, just as I heard the skeptics 3 years ago saying that Twitter, and Facebookwere stupid kids stuff! The advertisements will be virtual in nature and specific to each driver, not just me. They will come in the form of holograms..they will appear on navigation screens, and PDA’s they will come on my Starbucks receipt and the Guy or Gal behind me will get an ad for Irish Spring soap, because it has been 4.1 months since the last time he bought it at the Supermarket! SEE IT?”

Now listen to Kevin Kelly in this video. I know it is 19 minutes, and statistics say you won’t listen, but you can not truly understand this brilliant man’s theories unless you listen to the whole thing. So please, take a moment and really hear what he has to say…

Kevin Kelly – \”The Next 5000 Days of the Web\”

Now, let’s start talking! Your comments will shape my next post, then the next, and so on…I want you, our readers, some of the “Best & Brightest” stars of The REBlogsphere…my fellow REBarcampers, Rookies, Veterens, whom ever…Let’s “Design” & “Define”!!!

Can’t wait to hear back from you…

The Coach

My initial foray into social networking definitely consumed more time away from my business than it should have but I now block out time before or after the work day to jump on Twitter. Despite the learning curve that took precious time away from work, I’ve learned a ton about building a business and integrating technology into it by using social media.

Using Twitter I:

• Became a recurring attendee of Lucky Strike Social Media Club meetings run by the already (in)famous Rob Hahn (aka Notorious R.O.B.) It’s not technology per se but we all talk about geeky stuff over dinner in Manhattan. I first met Rob and learned about LSSMC through Twitter.
• Started using Freshbooks and the unrelated but equally useful BookFresh. The latter of the two was recommended to me by @jasonsandquist who has already picked up a few clients with it.
• Discovered who Gary Vaynerchuk was. Seriously, I had never heard of him but people I follow kept writing to @garyvee so I investigated. His latest business book is awesome. The vook (videos + book) [iTunes Link] is even better. Buy both, it’s worth it for the business building plan of attack alone but be warned — it’ll motivate the hell out of you.
• Brought a new buyer client to contract (closing in April 2010, new home) on our first tour. My client didn’t use my IDX to submit his contact info but he did register to receive @mikesimonsen’s Altos Research market reports on my website. Didn’t know these automated market reports existed before but now I’m a customer for life. Thanks to @ericstegemann for recommending Altos to me!
• Learned more from and met some of the most brilliant people in our industry including @1000wattmarc, Marc Davison; @topbrokerOC, Bob Watson; @sueadler; Sue Adler; @jolenta, Jolenta Averill, and @ericbramlett, Eric Bramlett. The countless things I’ve learned from each of them have significantly impacted how and, most importantly, why I run my business.

Definitely check out Matt’s video because he nails it when he talks about not allowing technology and social media to consume your business. Business should always come before experimenting. Now that we’re approaching the traditionally slower winter months of real estate I think now would be a good time for some experimenting.

New to Twitter and don’t know where to start? Check out @nik_nik’s Twitter guide: Twitter For Real Estate Twits.

Paralysis by Analysis – The story of Web 2.0 from Matthew Dollinger on Vimeo.

[via YouFactor]