CDPE Partnership

FloorPlanOnline is proud to be sponsoring this years Momentum 2011 Conference. This will be THE place to get actionable techniques you can start using as soon as you get home.

And until 5:00PM Eastern on 05/27/11 you can use the $100 credit negotiated to have put in your account toward this powerful Momentum Conference 2011.

This is our way of saying THANK YOU for your continued support.

If you only attend one conference this year, make this the one.

Here is where you can get the inside scoop: http://www.MomemtumConference.com
cdpe momentum conference logo

To use your $100 credit simply use promo code MMOAF at checkout.

Get a FAST MOVER BONUS when you hurry to be one of the first 110 people to take advantage of this. Get an exclusive complimentary 30 minute 1-on-1 Q&A session with a Bank of America negotiator. Your negotiator session could wrap up with you having a deal being moved toward the finish line.

This will be THE real estate event of the year. We look forward to seeing you there and would love to see you at our booth. Don’t forget to use promo code MMOAF at checkout when registering. Reserve your seat today!

Article By: Kris Cone
Categories : Real Estate News

FloorPlanOnline is proud to announce another cool tool for your FloorPlanOnline tours.
QR codes are square barcode like boxes that are included on your flier with one click.
Buyers scan the code with their smart phone and go directly to the Free Mobile Tour of your single property website.

Its Easy to add this Free Upgrade to your fliers and mobile tours.

Here are the step by step directions

How to add QR codes to your FloorPlan Tours:
Log in to FloorPlanOnline and Click Manage Tours

Find the correct listing Click Edit tour

From the Tour Editor / Tour Preview screen click EDIT FLYER at the top

From the Edit Flyer Flyer page, click EDIT TEXT

Scroll down and click the check box next to the QR code.

Click save and you are done.

Extra Credit:

Tech Savvy folks may choose to download the QR code from the Marketing materials page for use in other applications.

Now you have QR codes! To view or print click on the flyer in the tour or download it from Marketing Materials.

More cool tools like this are in the pipeline as we continue to innovate.
Thanks for working with Floor Plan Online.

Article By: Kris Cone
Categories : Listing Tools

3D Room Planner is Here!
In the spring of 2010, we introduced the free RoomPlanner tool that allows visitors to drag and drop home furnishings onto the floor plan. We’ve taken it a step further and now offer a 3D RoomPlanner, where you can even color the walls.

The 3D upgrade is $20. If you’d like to upgrade your tour to include a 3D RoomPlanner, please send an email to orders@floorplanonline.com or call Customer Care at 866-810-3816 option 3. Please reference you order ID or MLS number and we’ll get right on it.  We will add it as an official upgrade in the near future.

To see a live tour sample please click here choose the RoomPlanner icon on the left and when the floor plan opens, click on the 3D box in the upper right corner.

Article By: Kris Cone

We are pleased to announce the support of basic tour functionality for the Apple iPad! This complements the existing support for iPhones, Androids and most other smart phones. This is version 1.0. It is not an exact replica of the web based tour because the iPad (or iPhone) does not support Adobe’s Flash, which is the technology our web tour currently uses to display content. We are working on re-coding our tours to work completely on the iPad in the next few months, so stay tuned! The content that is visible for Apple-based devices include photos (slide-show with swipe enabled), floor plan images, YouTube video, printable materials (the same PDFs that are on the tour, so anyone can print them with a print app installed), area map, and agent contact info. A screen shot is below, or just go to www.111anystreet.com on a mobile device to see the functionality.

Over the next month or so, we are working to add complete tour support. For Android devices that support flash (most newer devices, including most tablets based on the Android operating system), you can actually get full tour support today. We hope you enjoy the enhancement, and as always, we welcome your comments!
iPad Tours now supported

Article By: Kris Cone

SargesList Launches

Live near a military base?

For Realtors, military members are in high demand because they move often and the home buyer tax credit has been extended to April 30, 2011 for military personnel. On average, one-third of those who live off-base are homeowners. If your market is within 60 miles around a military base, you can now advertise your active listings free of charge to this highly desirable audience through a new military classifieds site (SargesList.com). FloorPlanOnline has partnered with SargesList.com, which has been heralded as the “Craigslist for Military.” While it is similar to craigslist, it has more functionality and helps military identify who is in their network for a more trusted interaction.

Reaching moving military BEFORE they move can be challenging. Since move season is just heating up and word is getting out about SargesList, make sure you get your listings posted soon (and automatically enter to win an iPad this month). Registration and basic listings are free but there are upgraded features you can purchase. If you are interested in being an exclusive advertiser for your military area, contact info@sargeslist.com for more information. With over 500 installations around the world, check and see if the installation near your market is available.

Visit www.sargeslist.com today!

The FloorPlanOnline developers have been working like elves this holiday season.   We just released what we call the “Tour Tweaks” case.  The case is mainly some visual changes to the look and feel of the FloorPlanOnline tours based on feedback from our customers, including:

  • Your Photo and Contact info moved to the top left….and it always shows on the tour with your name in bold!
  • Your Logo moved to the top right
  • The top of the tour is cleaned up with the price, MLS, etc. moved to the Descriptions & Details
  • Ability to select the tour template (the layout and look) as your place an order – choose our Classic Tour 1.0 (our original tour design) or the Webpage 2.0 design (the current default tour with customizable colors and more integrated content).
  • Contact Pop-up now only shows when a user clicks on it. And, we have added a downloadable business card called a vCard.  People can save your contact info, including your photo, into Outlook or Contacts (Apple users) with the click of a button.
  • On the Dashboard view, we have make the content “bright” by default, and when a user mouses over a media item, that section dims.
  • We have made it clearer that the Media icons on the left are clickable by changing the mouse icon to a hand. This is important for tours with a very light background color.

See an overview of these changes in this video.

A few things to note.
1. For best results, we suggest you re-upload your photo and your logo. Some of you may have your photo combined with your logo, which will still look fine, but if you want your photo next to your contact info, re-upload both.  If you only upload your logo, you will end up with 2 photos showing on the tour.
2. Logos that are more square vs a long rectangle will look best.
3. We show 2 phone numbers on the face of the tour, then other numbers on the contact business card. If the 2 numbers you want are not showing, try selecting them, or changing them, in your profile.

If you have a particular color in your logo and you want to match that with the background color of your tour, you can do that.  We suggest using either PhotoShop or PhotoShop Elements and the color eye-drop tool to get the right color code, or if you use Firefox for your browser, install the Colorzilla plugin (its free), and click on the color you want to use with Colorzilla, and then find the hex code (it will display at the bottom of your browser window), and update your tour and then your profile with that color code.  It will start with a # and look something like  #1D507D (each color has a different alpha-numeric code).  Note, if you already have active tours, you need to edit the color in each tour for it to go into effect, as each tour can be independently edited.  Once you edit your profile, the color should automatically apply for all future tours.


To see a sample tour with these changes, click here or go to http://111anystreet.com

We thank you for your business in 2010, and we wish you a very happy new year, and a prosperous 2011!

Article By: Kris Cone
radar testing floorplanonline tours

Photo credit: Robin Buckson / The Detroit News

“Faster” didn’t cut it. Neither did “new and improved”.

Recent improvements to our code and system have resulted in your tours loading 25-50% faster! Over Thanksgiving we were down for scheduled system maintenance. (We hope you were not inconvenienced).

Faster tours translate to greater effectiveness.

The new high speed floor plan virtual tour will further set your listings apart and ahead. We’ve done the work for you – check out your faster FloorPlanOnline tours to see for yourself, or check out the featured virtual tour of the week.

FloorPlanOnline – Simple, Effective and Affordable.

Have you used the fast and cool Embedded FloorPlanOnline Tour? Test drive one below. The Embedded Virtual Tour is FREE with every FPO Virtual Tour and can be placed in your blog.
Log in, and click Marketing materials then “Embedded Tour Beta”.

Hi FloorPlanOnline Customers.
We wanted to let you know we have made upgrades our servers and some of the underlying code behind what makes FloorPlanOnline work. This was done early Thursday. You may experience some things not working for a period as the server changes are being made. We are working to finalize all the changes and things should be back up running sometime Thursday. We did it on Thanksgiving Day because it has traditionally been a very slow day for the site and tours.

A few known issues.
1. The tour reporting is not displaying information. Working to fix that.
2. Active tours from Feb 2009 may not be displaying correctly. They are currently in the process of being moved.
3. Our system emails are not sending. If you are expecting a tour, please login, go to Manage Orders, and check the tour status. If it says “Ready for Review” then you can click the edit link under Tour Editor to preview or approve your tour.

With the new server configuration, the system should be much faster and it will allow us to do some more advance network activities. So thanks for your patience as we continue to make FloorPlanOnline better

Article By: Kris Cone
Categories : Technology

I presented at a RE/MAX office this week and met with several FloorPlanOnline customers.  We appreciate your business!  One was Mary Lou Roels, www.marylouroels.com.   She mentioned she and her co-listing agent Robert Lotz did a tour and got great results with FloorPlanOnline driving sale activities …here is what she had to say:

_______________

Love Floorplanonline- a team mate and I listed a 1.4 million dollar home in Redmond  and wanted the best marketing we could find to showcase this gorgeous 7000+ sq. foot home with a 3000 sq foot indoor pool and hottub. Pictures wouldn’t have captured this exquisite home. The first person that walked through the door bought the house. The second person put a full- priced back up offer on the home.  Both parties used the link to show the home to their family and friends.

My international clients find Floorplanonline perfect for their spatial design mindset- they shop online through the internet for homes, and being able to see a floor plan has made the difference in what they want to see when we go out to view homes.

Mary Lou Roels

RE/MAX Preference

Article By: Kris Cone

Today, Realtor.com operator Move Inc. said it has renewed the content agreement with MSN that allows consumers to access Move’s property listings and related information via MSN Real Estate.  Combined, Realtor.com and MSN Real Estate reach 18.6 million unique consumers each month, Move said, citing comScore data. Hitwise and comScore consistently rank both sites among the nation’s top 10 most visited real estate websites.

This is good new for FloorPlanOnline users.

First, if you are a Showcase member with Realtor.com, you get more distribution to MSN as part of this relationship.  Second, if you are not a Showcase member, you can still reach these users by paying our $20 linking fee (which they charge us), and you can get your tour attached to your listing on Realtor.com and the other sites it powers.  Either way, the tour shows up under the four main photos as the TOUR button.   We have to link the tour for you.   For those with few listings, it is likely more cost effective to not be a Showcase member.  Call Realtor.com at 800-878-4166 to discuss options.

However. Now that we are also creating an exact video file of the tour’s virtual WalkThru video, this creates further reason to be a Showcase members.  Showcase members can login to their Realtor.com control panel and upload the video to your listing.  When you do this, it adds a VIDEO button below the Photos as well.   You have to upload the video – there is no way for us to do this for you (we have asked Realtor.com several times now….).   If you add a video, your listing gets further preferential search treatment.

All you need to do to download the video is login at Floorplanonline.com, go to Manage Orders, then click the VIEW link under Marketing Materials.  If there is a Download Video button, click it and select the AVI option. Save on your computer, then login at Realtor.com and edit your listing and upload it!  It should be ready within 40 minutes.  If your listing does not have a video, go back to Manage orders, click on the Edit Tour link under Tour Editor, click on Edit Video, and then click the Save & Close button.  This will queue the video up for production.  It should show up in your account within 1 hr, but it could take longer, depending on the time of day and how many other videos are being processed.

Article By: Kris Cone