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2011

As part of the unlimited support and training we provide to all Sequoia platform clients, we’ve recently launched a new online User Guide. This easy-to-read “instruction manual” gives you simple, step-by-step directions on how to use virtually all of the tools and features Sequoia offers.

When you are logged into your Sequoia real estate website, simply navigate to the Admin section (back end) and you will see a User Guide link at the far right of the admin panel navigation menu as before. This now takes you to the updated, expanded Sequoia User Guide.

With concise directions and sharp, full-size visual aids, the new User Guide is designed to help you learn not only how to use all of the great Sequoia real estate features, but to really make the most of them. Sequoia is designed to not only make your job and your life easier, but to help your site achieve higher organic search engine results right out of the gate. The more you know about how the Sequoia suite of tools can empower you, the greater your potential for success.

In the coming weeks, we’re also adding video guides to all of the topics covered in the User Guide. Along with the visual aids already in place to augment the written instructions, we’ll walk you through the process with recorded screencasts of the real estate Sequoia platform in action. Each section will feature a short video of exactly the process described, walking you through the written instructions in real time.

Of course, if you feel like anything is missing, we’d love to hear from you so we can improve the guide. If there is anything you’d like to ask a question about or need more detail to fully understand, please don’t hesitate to call or email us!

New Video About the Sequoia Platform!

There's no doubt that the Sequoia platform encompasses the most cutting-edge real estate website software available on the market. But how is this done? What features are available on a Sequoia website? How does Sequoia help you succeed in your real estate business?

We've put together a great real estate website video that breaks down exactly what it takes to make your real estate online marketing campaign to be successful. Click the image to view the video, or visit the Boston Logic YouTube page.

First, you need to drive traffic to your website. To do this, the Sequoia platform helps your site rank higher in search engines for highly applicable search terms. The platform also helps you leverage social media websites like Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin. All of this is tracked using state of the art Analytics so that you can hone your campaign based on performance and actual usage statistics.

Next, when users arrive at your site, they should intuitively know where to click, and they should be able to quickly find what they came looking for. For example, many users on real estate websites arrive and want to immediately search for their perfect home. Once they’ve found what they want, or feel like they’re getting close, we want to compel them to provide their contact information. This is when the visitor converts from an anonymous user into a lead.
Throughout the user experience, prominent calls to action give easy access to tools which allow your customers to contact an agent, schedule a showing, save a favorite property, take notes on listings to help organize their search – even share a listing by broadcasting it to social media sites or emailing it to a friend.

How Can Sequoia Help?

The Sequoia Platform educates your clients by showing them the complete MLS listing. In addition, we’ve integrated the Sequoia platform with Yelp!, Walkscore, Education.com, Google Maps, Zillow, and myriad other data resources to provide relevant information about the town or neighborhood where your customers are looking to buy or rent. All of these tools help educate the user and ensure that your website becomes the foundation of their search for a new home.

Now that you have generated lots of leads and your site has become the foundation of their online home search, you’re going to need tools to incubate those leads until they’re ready to buy or rent. Not all leads are ready to close at the moment when you first identify them. So, we’ve built extensive functionality designed to maximize the ease of workflow and help you manage your pipeline.
We’ve also automated many of the tasks that you perform most often. The Sequoia system makes it quick and easy to create and print listing sheets, communicate with clients, schedule and coordinate showings, print showing sheets, search your MLS or rental database, send listing updates, follow up, and never forget a task.

While you’re at it, you’re going to want a record of your communication with each client. The Sequoia platform helps you precisely track your website’s user activity. You’ll know exactly what your clients are doing on your site, including how often they’re coming back, what they are searching for, homes they’re looking at, which listings they liked the most, and much more. All of this data will help you serve your customers better and close more deals!

When it’s time to put in an offer, the Sequoia platform helps you stay organized with our deal tracker component and virtual documents feature, making the process an organized procedure, rather than a mess of paperwork and tasks to juggle.
By facilitating this process, Sequoia makes your real estate online marketing campaign successful while making you more efficient! The Sequoia platform even helps you sign new seller clients by making your listings look great and maximizing the exposure of those listings on sites like Facebook, Trulia, and Zillow.

To learn more about Boston Logic, and how we can help you achieve results online, please give us a call or contact us for a demonstration.

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!

New Sequoia Features: 4/15/2011

1) Property Details Pages Redesign. We’ve completely redesigned our property details pages – the new look is thoroughly modern and sophisticated, and shows off all of the great new tools available to users of the Sequoia system. Among the many upgrades, any attributes for a listing which are left blank in the MLS description are now hidden, so users only see actual, useful information. We’re now using a unified map tool to display not only search results and property details, but also useful data from our Yelp, Education.com, and Walkscore tools as well.

We’ve also added tools to every listing detail that let you share it on either Facebook or Twitter, and we’ve hidden the Schedule a Showing tool for properties with inactive statuses. In addition, property addresses on listing details now include the unit number by default (if the listing is one) to boost the page’s real estate SEO potential!

2) Type-Ahead Search Technology in Sequoia Back-End. On the back end of your Sequoia site, you now have access to the same type-ahead search technology we recently introduced for locations – only now we’ve added this for lead names as well! Rather than scroll through your long list of leads, you can now select leads for actions like messages, tasks, and events by simply starting to type their name and selecting it from the list of suggestions. This not only makes your life easier, but also makes any pages that used to have these drop-down lists on them load much faster.

Also, our tracking of lead’s Last Active dates now rely on a much broader set of criteria in order to give you as much intelligence as possible on your users. Now this date is updated whenever a lead performs almost any action, regardless of whether they are working with sales or rentals listings. This date also now only tracks activity initiated by leads themselves – agents updating lead info no longer gets tracked for these stats.

Get access to these features and more when you sign up for a real estate website from Sequoia: you will also receive automatic site upgrades and additional features whenever we roll them out.

Contact Boston Logic today to get started!

A "Guarantee" that's Worth it's Weight in Dirt

I'm honestly astounded.

I know that we offer high quality products and services for the real estate vertical and I'm proud to say we're firmly the very best, but I'm astonished at just how low some of our "competitors" set the bar.

" We guarantee 60 visitors within the first two calendar months or it's free! "

This is the "guarantee" that z57 has right on their home page! I'd be embarrassed to put this sentence on this site or on BostonLogic.com. Down right embarrassed!

If you're reading this and you're a real estate website beginner, I'll explain in the next paragraph. If you're an educated web marketer or, really, have spent any time looking at online marketing traffic reports, you've probably already concluded just how poor z57's sites must be.

For the novices out there - nothing to be ashamed of - here's a reality check:

A website that sees just 1 visit/day is almost useless! Most of the real estate websites we launch start seeing 5 or 10 times this traffic within days.

Like selling a car and saying it will run 5 miles

Would You Trust This Guy?

z57 is, in effect, guaranteeing that they'll provide next to nothing. This is like selling a car and guaranteeing that it'll drive 5 miles. No thank you.

Here's what really gets my goat; These folks are praying on the lack of education that most of their potential customers possess. I think that's just plain dishonest. I couldn't do it and I don't think anyone who has ever worked at Boston Logic would ever stoop to this level.

Instead, we have 3 blogs working to educate our current and potential clients. We hold a free LogicClassroom every month. AND we'll honestly answer any question you might have and base those answers on web best practices.

If this blog post reads like a rant, well, it is. I hope it was illuminating, if not entertaining.

New Sequoia Real Estate Agent Site Launch: Christine Lacava

Christine Lacava is an agent with Jack Conway & Co. When she needed a new website, she came came to Boston Logic and the Sequoia platform in order to leverage all of the great tools she came to know and love on the Jack Conway corporate site!

Christine needed a great site at a great price, so she took advantage of one of our ready-to-deploy design themes for the Sequoia platform.
Choosing a standard theme allows you to have a new, fully functional website up and running in minimal time. For a low startup cost, you can have your new Sequoia site live to the world in less than 24 hours if you choose one of our standard themes. This is a great option for anyone on a budget - or in a hurry!

Our Real Estate Agent Sites offer all of the great features of our sites for entire offices, as well as integrated lead management - which enables you to get leads assigned to you from your brokerage as well as from your own website! No need to log into two systems; leads captured on your office's Sequoia site can be sent directly to your real estate agent website for you to manage directly. This system cuts down on much of the time and effort required to maintain your own site while still working as a member of an office.

Contact the Boston Logic sales team today at 617-266-9166 to learn more about the Sequoia platform and our various real estate web design options.

Christine Lacava represents residential buyers and sellers in Plymouth and Bristol counties.

New Sequoia Features and Upgrades! 1/21/2011

The latest Sequoia real estate websites feature releases and site upgrades - if you are a Sequoia client, be sure to check them out on your own website!

We’ve upgraded our system emails in many ways; the most noticeable being the email address and name the emails come from. Now each company’s system emails, such as daily email updates for leads, messages generated by the LogicLeads CRM system, and more will reflect the appropriate company or agent name. Emails to assigned leads will come from the agent, with their email address and name in the “From” fields in the message. Unassigned leads will get messages from the company’s name and default email address, set in the Settings portion of the back end of each site.

We’ve added an optional email signature on every agent’s profile. Agents can edit this signature at any time, and it is appended to any email sent on their behalf by the Sequoia real estate software system.

We’ve expanded the back-end property search functionality to include rentals from LogicRentals or RentJuice. The back-end navigation item that used to be titled “Search Sales” is now titled “Property Search” – and if you have a rentals component, there are two sub-items; Sales Search and Rentals Search. The back-end rentals search shows agents and brokers comments and remarks that are not publicly available, such as showing instructions. Just as the back-end sales search provides a comprehensive property overview for MLS listings, our new back-end rentals search allows brokers and agents to get as much intelligence as possible on any given listing – without having to log into two separate systems!

We’ve added a great new feature for brokers and agents who need to show multiple listings to one client, or to organize their showings for the day. You can now create Showing Sheets on the back end – these are helpful sheets with basic property info that allow agents to print a list, with images, of the day’s properties to be shown, or to email the list to a lead. Now when you execute a search on the back end, whether for sales or rentals listings, each search result has a checkbox to add the listing to a showing sheet. Sheets can be associated with leads, or printed simply for agents’ own use. If you set a start and end time for a showing sheet tied to a lead, this gets saved as an Event in the LogicLeads CRM system – the same is true for emailing a sheet to a lead. There’s a new tab on each lead’s profile titled “Listings” which shows any listings that have been emailed to the lead – and now and showing sheets for either sales and rentals as well!

Like what you see and want to learn more? Contact us about your own real estate website design 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!

New Sequoia CRM Features and Backend Upgrades, 12/6/2010

Boston Logic is excited to announce the launch of a powerful new suite of features and realtor web design upgrades! Monday morning, we are upgraded the back end of your Sequoia site in leaps and bounds. These upgrades are part of the new CRM component we have been developing for the past several months.

The first thing you will notice upon logging into your site is a new and improved Dashboard. Here you will see a host of significant upgrades, both in the real estate agent website design of the page but also the functionality. Thanks to the addition of the CRM component, you will now see your assigned Tasks at the top of the page. Tasks are the most significant addition to Sequoia as a result of the CRM component; you can use Tasks to manage workflow for yourself and your agents and to schedule follow-ups with your leads. Our type-ahead technology makes it easy to fill out fields for Task assignment, and a Task search, useable as a simple or advanced form, lets you find any open or completed task with ease:

Contact Events have also evolved and been merged with another new feature, Events. Events can be scheduled for any reason, and a set of quick contact events is now available atop lead profiles so you can add basic event records, such as noting when a lead calls you on the phone, with one click.

The best part? All of your Tasks and Events can be tied to users and leads, and can be viewed on an easy-to-use Tasks and Events Calendar:

realtor web design

We’ve also made it much easier to sort leads on any table of leads such as Unassigned Leads, All Leads, and My Leads, as well as adding a highly advanced lead search tool which can filter or sort by any usable criteria – as well as save searches so you can pull these reports at any time!

There’s a lot more too, like the ability to send messages to other users of your site and even leads, with a simple interface built right into the back end of your site:

Please let us know if you have any questions, and we hope you enjoy the new features and upgrades!

Holiday Special Offer: Sequoia Agent Websites for $50/month! 12/6/2010

real estate agent websites

Special Holiday Offer for Real Estate Agents

For a limited time, Boston Logic is offering Sequoia Agent Sites for just $50 per month! Agent Sites consistently produce leads, traffic, and search engine ranking - now at half off the regular price. Don't delay - get the competitive advantage of a Sequoia Agent Site before this great offer expires!

Regular Price: $100 / month

YOUR PRICE: Only $50/month if you sign up before the end of 2010!

Do the math - You save $600!

The best part? We're constantly improving and upgrading the Sequioa platform. Your website will receive these upgrades automatically for FREE, so your personal website will always have the latest features and be using the best technology in the industry. It's like leasing a car that never gets old!

This offer expires January 1st, 2011.

Contact Boston Logic to get started today!

New Sequoia Platform User Guide! 5/11/2011

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New Video About the Sequoia Platform!

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New Sequoia Site Launch: Gibson Sotheby’s International Realty

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New Sequoia Features: 4/15/2011

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A "Guarantee" that's Worth it's Weight in Dirt

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New Sequoia Real Estate Agent Site Launch: Christine Lacava

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New Sequoia Features and Upgrades! 1/21/2011

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

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New Sequoia CRM Features and Backend Upgrades, 12/6/2010

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Holiday Special Offer: Sequoia Agent Websites for $50/month! 12/6/2010

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