“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”.
The innovative Premium Virtual Tour company FloorPlanOnline has done it again.
FloorPlanOnline continues to offer additional features and functions to its tours and single property websites…without charge. Real Estate Agents may now check a simple box and an automated process creates and posts a YouTube video of the listing online into the FloorPlanOnline YouTube Channel or….your own (or company’s) channel! It’s very simple to use – just use our normal video editing tools and save your changes. Best of all, this enhanced tour distribution service is FREE. The video will be available for download under Marketing Materials generally within 1-2 hours after saving your changes (time varies based on the number of videos in the processing queue). In addition, we also create a video file that can be used to upload into your Realtor.com Showcase listing. For now, this is something you must do as Realtor.com has no automated process for tour companies to handle this job for you.
More adventurous Realtors may opt to select different music, type in captions for each photo and edit photos to create a more personalized YouTube video. In order to take advantage of the new YouTube & Realtor.com tool – FPO customers should log in and edit their linking profile by checking the box to include the linking to the FloorPlanOnline YouTube channel. Then just make sure it is selected on the order as you place create a new tour.
This new tool works on all new tours created as of Monday, Aug 30th 2010. Click here to view an example video on YouTube or just play the sample below:
As with most enhancements and improvements to FPO tours, there is no additional fee for this feature. Other companies charge up to $20 or more, just to put a video on YouTube. On top of that, they charge up to $49 or more for the same virtual tour we price at $29. As long as your tour is active, including tours that have been renewed, you can create a video file and have the video uploaded to YouTube. Please read our FAQ below for more details on how to create a video file. Additionally, word from the FloorPlanOnline development department is that further options and YouTube related tools are being tested and tweaked for launch before the end of the year.
Why should you link the tour to YouTube, or Realtor.com? More online exposure. Most people are not going to YouTube to search for properties. In fact, according to the most recent NAR statistics, less than 1% of buyers in the survey sited YouTube as a source for online content. Realtor.com was one of the highest websites, however. However, putting the video on YouTube can help with search engine optimization…so your tour gets found, and you get it sold!
To learn more, just click on one of the FAQs below to read more details (click again to hide the detail).
[imasters-wp-faq cat=”13″]
That’s FloorPlanOnline – Simple, Effective and Affordable.
I was looking through the 2009 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers research report published by the National Association of Realtors, and I thought I would share some interesting information.
1. What website features buyers value. 97% of buyers thought photos and detailed property information were helpful (not sure what the other 3% are thinking here…?). 89% thought virtual tours were helpful. I would like to think if they all saw a FloorPlanOnline tour, that number would be close to 100%! I would also like to point out that other companies have done research around online content, and several studies have indicated that Photos score the highest in terms of essential content and floor plans score #2! So, if your listing does not have its Floor Plan Online….it should.
2. More and more Buyers are Online to search. The first step taken by far in the home buying process was go online to look for properties for sale – 36% listed this as the first step taken. This was double the next highest action, which was contact a real estate agent (18%).
In addition, 90% of all buyers used the Internet to search, while 93% of first time buyers used the Internet. Again more than any other source. In the key buying group of 25 to 44 year olds, 96% of the respondents used the Internet to search.
3. Websites used in the Home Search process. The most used site by far was the multiple listing service (MLS) website. This could be a factor that agents typically email listing info to their buyers, so it is pushed to them. Some MLSs have their own consumer oriented search site…but I know some do not. The total list of websites used by Buyers (percentages are for All Buyers surveyed):
MLS – 60%
Real Estate Company website – 46%
Realtor.com – 46%
Real estate agent website – 45%
Other websites with real estate listings (Trulia, Zillow, etc) – 30%
For Sale by Owner websites – 17%
Newspaper website – 9%
Real Estate Magazine website – 4%
Social media websites (Facebook, MySpace, etc) – 1%
YouTube – <1%
It is interesting to note that the types of sites used by different age brackets did not differ much at all. The top site for all groups was the MLS, followed by the company site and Realtor.com. Also, there is a lot of hype about social media and YouTube…but this is not necessarily translating into buyers using these sites for searching. For example, between the age groups of 18 to 24 and 25 to 44, only 1% said they used social media websites. The 45 and over crowd said less than 1%. Surprisingly, 2% over 65 said they used YouTube, while all the other age groups responded with less than 1%. Now, this does not mean there is no value to social media or YouTube…these outlets just need to be used in the right way and for the right reason. I also think there is some search engine benefit to posting content on these sites. Note…we will address the YouTube video posting issue in 2010. 🙂
4. The Internet is getting results. 36% of respondents FIRST found the home they purchased via the Internet search. This was the same as through a real estate agent, and up from 32% last year. No other source was higher. Print newspaper was down to 2% now….ouch. Also, 77% of buyers drove by or viewed a home after finding it online, while 61% walked through the home. Another interesting stat – 28% found the agent they used to buy the home online. There was also a high correlation in people that used the Internet to search and those that used an agent to buy – 79% used an agent to buy.
Implications – I think what all of these stats boils down to is YOU need to be online and you need to have the best online content for your listings, because chances are, if you make an impression online, you are going to get a buyer to call you, drive by or tour your listing. The first step is getting the right content. People want to see photos and floor plans. All the other fancy stuff like spinning 360s, deep zoom, property videos with voice over has actually scored lower on the desirability scale. In some cases, like voice over and music playing when you first open a tour scores negative. People want to see the essentials quickly and easily.
The second step is get this content distributed to the KEY places people search. Your virtual tours need to be linked to your MLS (use the unbranded link – in many markets we do this for you automatically), on Realtor.com (we link the tour for you automatically….and it is FREE if you are a Realtor.com Showcase member), your company website and your website/blog. This will get you 95% or more there. You can then use our tools to link the tour to your Facebook site, Twitter, and more. Realtor.com has a nice Facebook widget to add your listings to your Facebook profile. We also are posting listings to Google Base now. We will be working to add more sites like Zillow, Trulia, Craigslist, etc. in the coming months (however you can do this now manually).
In addition, talk to your company IT people about posting the company tours to Zillow, Trulia and others. As part of this make sure your virtual tour links come through with the data feed. Most if not all of these sites can include the virtual tour link…but the company needs to send it along. As I stated in a previous post, your company should really be posting tours to these other websites….There is a hierarchy Zillow and others use, and companies like us are the last on the list. So if we link a tour to Zillow, for example, and your company pushes the listing there, it will push our link off…and if the company info does not include the tour link, your tour will not get exposure on Zillow. So, push your company to post listings to these other website portals and make sure the virtual tour links are included. You paid good money for the content and you deserve the most exposure!
All for now…time for the weekend. Thanks for reading
I attended the Seattle REBar event yesterday, and listened to Spencer Rascoff of Zillow talk about why real estate agents should put their listings on Zillow. I agree it makes sense, and here are the main reasons.
1. They are a top 1 or 2 real estate site now with OVER 8 million unique visitors and it is growing over 70% year over year – you will never get that many people to your site. A study by CAR showed that 55% of California Sellers use Zillow.
2. About 2/3rds of buyers are on Zillow to buy/sell NOW.
3. Can post your listings for free – there are broker feeds (they suggest this), agent manual or tour companies can post (we will be adding this soon). Virtual tour links come through the feeds if the process is set up correctly
4. Zillow is mobile. Their iPhone application has been downloaded over 700,000 times, by far the most popular application in any category. On weekends, 20% of Zillow’s traffic comes from iPhone users – 20%! FloorPlanOnline just launched a multi-device, mobile optimized site…so now basic content can be seen on virtually any mobile device. So upload your listings and include the foorplanonline.com link.
5. Use the Zestimates as a tool to show your real estate expertise. Zillow admits and clearly publishes the fact that the Zestimate is just an estimate…and with better data it can get better. This is where you can use your expertise as a Realtor to explain why you would price a home or why the Zestimate is not correct. Also, when you list a house for sale on Zillow, the Zestimate falls to the bottom and what is most visible on the map and property details is the listing price.
PS. Join their Advice forums and be the local expert for consumers in your area. Just watch the hard sell, as people want information, not to be inundated with hard sales pushes.
You must be logged in to post a comment.