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!

Feature Upgrades for Sequoia Real Estate Websites: 9/28/2010

Always innovating at Boston Logic, we have recently launched a new round of Sequoia real estate website features and upgrades this past month.

Improved Property Details. Sequoia has now improved the details on the Admin access details on a specific property, which will show every piece of information that we get from each MLS on your real estate website design. One the front-end, your leads will now be able to see all absolutely all information details (legally allowed, of course!) on an MLS property!

Upgrades to Town Pages. If you are creating a sales town page, you no longer need to enter a MLS ID, Town, or Zip Code if you simply check the "Featured" check box! (This allows you to create pages like "All My Featured Properties Priced over $1 million") You can still enter towns, zips, or MLS ID’s as well to further refine searches. Additionally, you also now have the ability to add Sold / Pending listings to a town page!

System Upgrades. We will now be using the highly reputable Sendgrid as our new email delivery service, which will ensure greater deliverability. Sendgrid will also be able to reduce the amount of emails that are being air marked as spam. We have also upgraded the servers that are responsible for distributing our emails, so we can now send more emails and send them faster.

Lead Import Upgrades. Agents importing leads on their real estate agent website design will now correctly log those leads has being created on the agent site as opposed to the brokerage site. Leads imported by Office Managers are now assigned to that Office Managers office but not to themselves as the agent, so they go in as office only leads. This will allow the Office manager to easily distribute those leads to the correct agents

New MLS's. We now offer a new MLS for our Sequoia Real Estate websites, (MREIS) which is now live for the state of Maine!

New Adherence to Email Marketing vendor rules (iContact and ConstantContact). These vendors do not allow you to automatically subscribe people to email lists. We added settings to the Settings / Configuration / Email Marketing section. There is a "Mailing List Signup checkbox Label" setting which is what you would like the wording next to the checkbox to be on the form. Also, there is also a dropdown of your CMS section to pick the page which has your policy on what you will use the email addresses for. Both are required to be filled out / selected for the mailing list signup functionality to work. We have a link (open in a new tab) to the policy page next to the checkbox to subscribe to the mailing list.

Search Updates. Added "Waterfront Only" checkbox to the advanced search box on all themes!

Property Access. If a lead is not logged in they can now access a companies sold listings without having to log in to your website.

Automatic Password Expiration. This feature is required by MREIS - Passwords for leads only will expire after a set number of days after the last time a password was created (or updated). The number of days is set on the company (MREIS requires 90 days). To disable the feature, make sure this number is 0.

7 days before the password is set to expire the lead will receive an email telling them their password will expire in 7 days and they need to reset the password to continue using their account, it will contain a link to reset the password

If a leads password has expired and they try and log in, they will be redirected to the reset password page (they will also receive an email telling them their password has expired with the link in case they do not choose to reset their password at that time)

Rentals Updates. We have added the type ahead location selection for both LogicRentals and Rentjuice searches. Works just like the sales type ahead search forms.

As always, let us know if you have any questions! Read about Sequoia's realtor web design features.

New Sequoia Real Estate Website Feature: Type-Ahead Search Forms 8/27/2010

We've recently introduced another great Sequoia broker web design feature - type-ahead search forms!

Now instead of scrolling through lists of towns and neighborhoods when performing a search, setting up email updates, and creating pages with search forms, all you need to do is start typing the name of the town or neighborhood.

Once you do, the system will automatically provide a list of all towns and neighborhoods that match the characters you have entered- for example, typing B-O-S will give you Boston and all Boston neighborhoods. Keep typing to make the list smaller until you see what you want, or just scroll the list and click on the choice you want to make. If you make a mistake while making a page, or want to remove a town or neighborhood, just click the "x" to the upper right of the place name.

This feature gives Sequoia web sites for realtors two great benefits. First is, of course, the ease and simplicity with which users can perform searches, and agents can set up pages. Second, pages with search forms on them now load much faster, since your browser doesn't have to load the list of towns provided by your MLS. Both of these improvements make the user experience of your Sequoia site that much more enjoyable, and will contribute to increased lead traffic.

This is just one of the many features we have recently introduced for the Sequoia platform - part of our ongoing commitment to maintaining Sequoia's position as the highest-quality real estate website platform in the industry.

Read more of Sequoia's Latest Feature Upgrades available on our Websites for Realtors.

Continued Innovation with New Sequoia Features: 6/30/2010

We are constantly innovating new real estate website design features here at Boston Logic, and here are some exciting new releases for the Sequoia platform!

We've added the ability to send leads to iContact automatically. Boson Logic has been integrated with Constant Contact for some time now. Clients requested that we add iContact to this short list. Now, your leads can be automatically sent to the iContact realtor internet marketing system too.

Email marketing through iContact allows you to create, send and track your email messages with ease and efficiency. For this feature, all you need to do is create a list in iContact and enter the list name and your client number into your Sequoia System's settings - the system will then send your leads' info to iContact whenever they sign up on your site and every time you enter a lead using LogicLeads. This eliminates the need for exporting and importing lead lists.

We've also added a college search option for LogicRentals clients. Now users can search by proximity to the college or university of their choice! The search will return all properties within a mile of the chosen school that meet the searcher's criteria. You can see a great example of this feature in action on the Warren Rentals website.

We've now added the Similar Properties feature to rental searches. Just as for sales, you can choose in your websites for realtors settings whether or not to display similar properties on your property details pages. As many as six properties will be displayed, all within 10% of the price or rent of the original property and from the same town or neighborhood!

Keep the Upgrades Coming! 6/15/2010

Once again, our developers have been hard at work innovating new ways to make more comprehensive and user-friendly websites for realtors. Browse through the following features, and contact us on how you can get started on your new real estate website design today!

We've added a Similar Listings option - companies can now turn on or off Similar Listings in their Settings. The feature shows up to six similar properties for sale in your property details view. The criteria for similarity are simply that the comparable properties come from the same MLS, the same town, and the same neighborhood if applicable, that their price be within 10% of the original property, and that their bed and bath count be plus or minus one of the original. The similar properties have to be active in MLS and have the same property type. This is a great way to show your customers other great listings that match their search criteria, keeping them engaged and on your site for longer.

We've enabled brokers and agents to manually send daily email updates. This can be done both for sales and rentals. If a new leads signs up and you don't want them to have to wait until the next day to get their first email, you can generate it right away using their search criteria (or criteria you set up for them).

We've also built an HTML search code generator that agents can place anywhere on the Web. Agents can generate the code from their profile details page when logged into the system - when the code is pasted on an outside site, it shows a search tool which sends leads back to the site the code was generated from. This is a great way for agents to gain more exposure, and leads coming in from these searches are automatically assigned to the agent who pasted the code!

Additionally, we made our Property Tools, such as Schedule a Showing and Contact an Agent, automatically assign leads to the agent who listed the property in question. If a lead uses the tools for a property listed by an outside agent, the leads become Unassigned (or are auto-assigned if you have automatic lead assignment turned on in your Settings). Any tool use by leads already logged in results in the activity being sent to the agent the lead is already assigned to, regardless of which property they are interested in.

Check back in often for more software upgrades for property web design!

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.

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

Related Links:

Feature Upgrades for Sequoia Real Estate Websites: 9/28/2010

Related Links:

New Sequoia Real Estate Website Feature: Type-Ahead Search Forms 8/27/2010

Related Links:

Continued Innovation with New Sequoia Features: 6/30/2010

Related Links:

Keep the Upgrades Coming! 6/15/2010

Related Links:

Upgrade to Sequoia from z57

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