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New Sequoia Site Launch: Gibson Sotheby’s International Realty

Boston Logic is excited to announce the launch of yet another Sequoia platform website built with our Custom Design Theme option: Gibson Sotheby’s International Realty. Gibson Sotheby’s is a top-shelf brand, and only the best would suffice for their new website. Boston Logic’s Sequoia platform along with our Sequoia Custom Design Theme option was the only sensible choice. Every Sequoia platform real estate website comes with myriad tools built from the ground up to make your life easier, get more leads, and close more deals. Only a select few, however, get the royal treatment a Custom Theme affords.

The global elements of the website such as the fonts, headers, and footers are all customized to suit client needs and wants. The layout of the home page is tailored specifically to the client and their brand through an extensive creative process managed and executed by the best team in the business. And every interior page of the site, from luxury development pages to agent profiles to Town Pages, are customized to give the ultimate in flexibility and brand identity to the Custom Website Theme client. Truly the offering of choice for the most discerning real estate website clients, this design option allows you to make your online presence stand proud from the pack in a way only the services of Boston Logic’s expert design staff can deliver.

Gibson Sotheby's Agents Can also get their own Real Estate Agent Site!

Additionally, Gibson Sotheby’s has engaged Boston Logic in an ongoing Search Engine Optimization plan designed specifically to draw quality, targeted leads to the new Gibson Sotheby’s website. Our campaigns are based on results-accountable, tightly managed, and skillfully executed techniques which have proven time and time again to boost our clients’ online marketing and lead generation programs predictably and with fantastic results. Coupled with the outstanding design and superior usability of the new Gibson Sotheby’s site, our SEO campaign is sure to produce the results that continue to bring clients like Gibson Sotheby’s Realty to Boston Logic in order to power their online marketing to the next level and beyond.

Gibson Sotheby’s International Realty offices are independently owned and operated franchises of the Sotheby’s International Realty brand, one of the most recognized and respected worldwide. Boston Logic is proud to add them to our client roster. Visit them to find the home of your dreams, rent one of their outstanding luxury properties, or simply admire their stunning new website!

Interested in learning more about the Sequoia real estate website platform, or to discuss your Custom Theme options? Contact us today!

Boston Logic Grows with Rhode Island MLS Integration! 12/30/2010

Boston Logic's Sequoia platform continues to grow with the newest integration of the Rhode Island MLS.

Boston Logic recently integrated the Rhode Island Statewide MLS with the Sequoia platform!

We're now serving the entire state of Rhode Island thanks to our integration with the Statewide MLS. Those with our user-friendly Sequoia real estate websites can access data from any MLS we serve.

If you are one of our many customers who use this MLS, please contact us today for details on how to get started with Sequoia!

There's also still time to take advantage of our special holiday offer for Sequoia Agent Sites: don't miss out!

Sequoia Site Launch: Tory Row Real Estate, 12/21/2010

Tory Row Real Estate came to Boston Logic looking for an upgrade. They added themselves to the long list of real estate firms who have taken advantage of our Modified Theme realty web design package for the Sequoia platform.

Starting with one of our standard property web design themes, our team worked with Tory Row Real Estate through several rounds of revision to get them the site they wanted. The result, with minimal investment, Tory Row now has a uniquely branded real estate website.

The new Tory Row Real Estate site is clean and modern, and gives users easy access to the many tools that make the Sequoia platform the best in the industry.

By far our most popular design package, the Modified Theme lets you alter one of our standard themes through several rounds of revision. Home page layout, color schemes, global elements such as headers and footers, and many more elements that can be changed to suit your needs and brand identity.

Contact a member of the Boston Logic sales team today at 617-266-9166 to learn more about this great way to make your new Sequoia site unique and targeted at your specific audience.

Tory Row Real Estate is a leader in Cambridge apartment rentals, with a further specialization in apartment and home rentals in the surrounding areas of Arlington and Somerville.

New Sequoia Features on Websites for Realtors: Lead Management, Town Page Changes, System Upgrades: 11/1/2010

New Automatic Lead Assignment Options

Agents can now be taken out of the lead auto-assignment rotation if need be – each user’s profile now contains a checkbox that allows brokers and administrators to choose if that user should be included in automatic lead assignment.

Lead Searching

You can now search for leads in the Unassigned Leads list, Unverified Leads list, All Leads list, and Agent Stats list by email address.

Lead Ownership

All assigned leads now have an associated Owner, which is shown on tables like All Leads and Agent Stats to brokers and admins, and on My Leads for agents. A lead's Owner is either the last person to assign the lead, for example the broker who assigns a lead from the Unassigned pool, or the person who manually added the lead to the system. This lets brokers and admins track which leads they have personally assigned out, allowing them to see at a glance which leads they may be responsible for.

Page Permission Level Added for Office Managers

We’ve added a CMS page permission level for Office Managers. This lets Office Managers access pages restricted to their level or above – so if you want to put content on your site that should be seen by people at the Office Manager level or higher, but not agents or other employees, you can restrict the page accordingly.

Default Price Sorting for Searches

We’ve added a Price Sorting option on the Settings tab of all Sequoia sites. This lets you choose whether your customers see search results sorted by price with the highest first or lowest first (ascending or descending).

Sales Town Page Changes

We’ve added the ability to search for any open houses in the current week. Just check the “All This Week” box on any search form and you will see any properties with an open house between the current time and the coming Sunday at midnight

We’ve also added the ability to include search keywords on Town Pages and on Daily Email updates. This lets you and your customers search for anything in the property description, from architectural style to flooring type and everything in between.

Rental Town Pages Changes

You can now set rental Town Pages to show only your own listings – just check the Exclusive box when setting up or editing the page.

System Upgrades

We’ve been hard at work making website for realtors page load speeds much faster! This improves not only the user experience but also you Sequoia site’s SEO potential. Here’s what we’ve done:

All Javascript is externalized
All Javascript and CSS can now be cached locally
All images (with the exception of client uploads) can be cached locally

What this means for you is that these files no longer need to be downloaded every time you view a page, vastly increasing the speed with which search engines and users can navigate your custom real estate web site.

Want in on the action? Contact us to get started on your very own Sequoia realtor website design today!

Importing Leads to Your New Site With the Logic Leads System

Our goal here at Boston Logic is to help you deliver an exceptional real estate website that looks great, saves you time, and helps you close more deals. With the much-anticipated launch of recent real estate agent sites, we wanted to reach out to those users and develop some helpful blog posts to hit the ground running with their new real estate website design.

This post discusses how to import your existing leads into your site- if you haven't done so already. When logged into your new site, you can also reference our User Guide (see image) which is located on the right-hand side of your dashboard to help you get answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about your real estate platform. We have also created a very thorough walk through demo video on Lead Management.

Getting your leads into your website and leveraging your LogicLeads system will help you get more referrals from your clients and close deals!

Follow these steps to upload your leads:

1) To upload leads, select the Import Leads sub-item under your Lead Management tab.

2) Next, download the Batch User Template file by clicking the link to download. Once you have entered your lead data, simply upload the file by clicking the "Browse" button, locating the file, and clicking Import Users. The file must be less than 1KB.

3) After you have uploaded your leads you can manage them under the My Leads sub-item.

4) By viewing a lead's detailed information you can check out their favorite properties and searches, site activity, and tool usage.

5) As a real estate agent user, you can also update a lead's contact information and sales info, and add follow-up dates and contact events to keep your lead's information up to date.

6) One of our favorite features offered to leads is Daily Email Updates. Both the lead and Agent can set these up - Agents can do so by simply selecting "Email Updates" under the leads' detailed information.

7) Email updates can be set up for both sales and rentals. An agent can also choose to send out an updated search to their lead by clicking the New Daily Search link under the Email Updates tab on the lead's detailed information view.

Like what you see and want to get in on the real estate website action? Contact Boston Logic to get started on your very own agent real estate web site today!

Major upgrades to the Sequoia platform released: 6/4/2010

We’ve been hard at work keeping Sequoia sites head and shoulders above the competition. We recently released a round of system upgrades that improve the performance, user experience, and functionality of the Sequoia platform. Among many others, here are a few of the highlights for your custom real estate website:

• Multiple MLS search capability. Now we can display listings from more than one MLS in the same search results view, so brokers and agents who belong to more than one MLS can give their leads access to more properties than ever before.

• The ability to choose which property types are available for public search. Now Sequoia customers can control, through their Settings tab, which property types are searchable, on a per-MLS basis. Don’t want your users searching for commercial listings? Only want multi-family houses on your site? You can choose any or all property types.

• The ability to choose which towns appear on public search forms. Also on the Settings tab, you can now select as few or as many towns as you like from the list provided by your MLS, so you can broaden or focus the area your site represents at will.

• Faster search! We’ve upgraded the technology behind our property tools to greatly increase their speed.

• Multiple sets of search criteria for Daily Email Updates. Both users and agents can set up multiple searches to return results through Daily Email Updates. This lets users refine their results even further, showing them only the most relevant properties for their needs.

• Agents’ own listings can now be displayed on their Agent Details pages! Agents can now choose to have their bio include their exclusive listings.

• Direct-mail friendly lead export. Agents can now export their leads’ names, email, phone number, and address – handy if you want to send postcards or other direct mail pieces.

• Companies can now have multiple offices! Sequoia clients can now enter multiple offices and associate agents with each specific office. Offices can also display any exclusive properties listed by the agents in that office. All office locations can have a full profile and are displayed on a map, just like searched properties.

• Dynamic forms! Our newest optional feature, Dynamic Forms lets you create customizable forms for your users to fill out. From simple lead capture forms and requests for information to full questionnaires and more, you can build your own forms with checkboxes, radio buttons, required fields, file uploads, calendar selections, and much more! You can view all form submissions on the admin panel of your Sequoia site. Contact us to learn more.

Upgrade to Sequoia from z57

A client asked me for a list of reasons why they should upgrade to the Sequoia Real Estate Solutions platform instead of using z57. Here was my response:

Here's a list of just some of the upgrades that you will get:

Integrated property search with more picture, google maps, and interactive user tools
1. Currently, the search on the site is placed in an iFrame. This impedes search engine placement.
2. Additionally, the current search is labeled, in big bold red letters: Listings last updated at Monday at 02:12PM. This means that the data is a day old and as many agents come in after the long weekend to update their listings in MLS this morning, the searcher is looking at old data. Our data is updated hourly.
The site is not currently designed in a fashion that will maximize lead conversion. Our sites are created to convert anonymous users into leads at superior conversion rates. The current setup of your website isn't likely to produce nearly as many leads.
Lead management - The site will have a comprehensive lead management/CRM package to track and manage leads, see their site activity, etc.
Users will have access to tools which make the site the foundation of their search including
1. Save favorite listings
2. Save Favorite searches
3. Sign up for nightly property updates by email
4. Ability to RSS search results
5. Ability to take notes on listings
6. Mortgage calculators
7. etc.
When we met and demonstrated the product for you, there were a number of features that you identified would save you time every day. This was over a month ago. So, I can't remember them all, but for example, featured listings don't need to be entered/uploaded into the site. They're pulled directly from MLS.
Our platform will allow the team to create as many pages on the site as they wish. They'll have the power to edit and update pages as they see fit.
I remember you being attracted to our developments component. This would give them the functionality to create profiles on developments in Andover, surrounding towns, or even downtown Boston. The team would enter content on each development and the tool will then automatically populate the pages with inventory from MLS.
Our new forms tool will allow the team to configure custom forms on the site asking the user to provide any information that they request. For example, they could have a "List My Home" form which asks for information on the seller's home. This information is of course stored in the Lead Management/CRM system and an email with this information is sent to the agent as well.
Each agent in the office can be given a lead management account and leads can be assigned. This allows all of the agents in the office to direct their clients to the office website, if they wish.
If agents want to have their own website (Example: johnsmithrealestateagent.com) Our agent site product gives the agent 1 place to manage leads from their own site as well as lead generated on the office site which are assigned to him/her. Agents also get advanced property search features and as many pages on the site as they wish.

I could go on - Suffice it to say this represents a *major* upgrade to the site with many many capabilities, features, and functions that the z57 current site lacks.

The Importance of Websites for Realtors

A few years ago, it was difficult for Real Estate agents to acquire leads. With the constant utilization of the internet, this has become much easier for realtors. The vast majority of clients are now seeking homes by turning to the internet as their first means of search.

However, this is not to say that hard work isn't involved with this process. True, there is potentially no limit to how big your business can grow online - but it is up to each realtor and real estate broker to put in the effort. It is up to you how far you want to stretch, how much money you want to spend, and how much time and effort you are willing to invest in your website.

Without a functioning, aesthetically pleasing web presence (or without a web presence at all), your realty company risks becoming obsolete: customers and leads trust agencies with good websites. The fact is that your brick and mortar office is no longer your biggest sign of significance, it's your real estate office website.

Consider a new website or website makeover as an investment in the success of your real estate brokerage. Sequoia Real Estate Solutions provides a high-quality, customized website option for you at a great price. Click here to read more about how you can market your real estate brokerage - and all the advantages and features that go along with it!

New Sequoia Site Launch: Gibson Sotheby’s International Realty

Related Links:

Boston Logic Grows with Rhode Island MLS Integration! 12/30/2010

Related Links:

Sequoia Site Launch: Tory Row Real Estate, 12/21/2010

Related Links:

New Sequoia Features on Websites for Realtors: Lead Management, Town Page Changes, System Upgrades: 11/1/2010

Related Links:

Importing Leads to Your New Site With the Logic Leads System

Related Links:

Major upgrades to the Sequoia platform released: 6/4/2010

Related Links:

Upgrade to Sequoia from z57

Related Links:

The Importance of Websites for Realtors

Related Links:

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