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.
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
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:
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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.
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.
A recent study by Seattle-based Redfin, an online brokerage, suggests that homes with higher quality photos sell for a higher sales price, and get more views, than homes with lower quality or no photos. According to their analysis using MLS pulled data, homes with professional photographs were found to be viewed, on average, 61 percent more online than others in that price range shot with a lower-end camera. The listings that used digital SLR cameras also commanded a 47 percent higher asking price per square foot, according to the Redfin analysis.
However, Digital SLR cameras were only found to increase the likelihood of a sale for listings $300,000 and above. In other words, buyers don’t seem to judge a house by its photos as much for homes under $300,000. Digital SLR cameras don’t appear to be too popular in the real estate market, even when shooting luxury listings. Eighty percent of the listing analyzed were shot with a point-and-shoot camera; only 15 percent of the listings used a digital SLR camera.
What’s most surprising, only about half of the listings in the $1 million-plus range were shot using a professional SLR camera, nearly split with low-end camera usage in that price range.
Click here to read the fill article on Realtor Magazine.
We wanted to get your feedback on the new landscape oriented tour design we are working on. Please view the below sideshow, read the description, and then make your vote. Pleae note we are working on making some of these changes, like how the contact info, photo and logo show, on the current web-page oriented design.
Click on the sideshow for the full screen version
We appreciate your feedback – Please make your vote!
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