Working with Property Web Sites


In Chapter 4 you learned how to create Web sites that market your services as an agent. So it's natural to use the Web to help market specific properties that you are listing.

What's A Partition?

A partition is a virtual disk on a discthink of it as a folder that only specific equipment can open. Creating partitions is a way of making a disc work in multiple devices. A car CD player, for example, will "see" just the audio CD partition on a CD, while a Windows PC will see the ISO 9660 partition (as will a Mac, unless there is a separate Mac partition on the disc as well).

On a DVD, you could similarly have a UDF partition for a DVD video that a DVD player would see and separate partitions for computer data.

Because most computers can play both CDs and DVDs, computer users will likely see most, or even all, the partitions on the disc: Each partition will appear as a separate disc within Windows's My Computer or the Mac OS X's Desktop.


Present Web Sites or Web Pages?

There are two schools of thought on how to deliver property-specific information on the Web:

  • Create a unique Web site for each listing, using its address as the domain name (such as www.123main.com). Proponents argue that it's easier to remember and shows the sellers how you're marketing their property specifically rather than yourself.

  • Create a unique Web page for each listing, with links from your Web site's home page. Proponents argue that this method increases the chances of people seeing the page because both those interested in the specific property and those who visit your site for other reasons can see the page.

I tend to agree with the second approach, but the flexibility of the Web lets you have it both ways if you want.

One option for having your cake and eating it too is to set up a virtual domain for each listing (such as www.123main.com)and have that domain redirect the visitor to a page on your Website (such as www.grumanhomes.com/123main.html). You would set up this virtual domainsometimes called a parked domainand then redirect in the control panel or other interface provided by your Web host.

Creating a web Photo Gallery

If you decide to deliver a series of pictures as a photo gallery rather than as a slide show, one good way to do this is to show a series of small GIF or JPEG images, called thumbnails, on your Web page (whether it is accessed on the Web or from a disc). Each thumbnail, when clicked, opens a new window with a larger, higher-resolution GIF or JPEG image. This approach lets you put all the photos in one convenient place on your property page and still make the details available to whom ever wants them.

First, save copies of your photos as smaller images, resizing them to may be 75x50 pixels or 100x67 pixels. Use the inverse dimensions50x75 or 67x100for vertical (portrait) images. (Also, be sure to resample all the images to 72 dpi if they're not already at that resolution.) It's best if all the images are the same size. (Chapter 3, "Working with Electronic Media," explains these techniques.)

Second, save copies of your photos (with real names) as large images, resizing them to perhaps 600x400 pixels (400x600 pixels for vertical images), also at 72 dpi. Again, it's best if all your images are the same size.

A photo gallery displays larger images of files in separate windows when clicked.

Third, add the thumbnail photos to your Web page.

Fourth, create links from the thumbnails to the large photos. Here's a helpful trick: Rather than add a link to the actual photos, use a simple JavaScript in the link so that a window opens the exact size of the photo. (Otherwise, each link will open a new, full-size browser window that obscures your property page.) You'll need to edit the link in your Web creation software's code view to do this, but the code is simple:

 <a href="#" onClick="javascript:window.open('photoname.jpg','', 'width=600, height=400');"> 


Replace photoname.jpg with the actual name of the large photo file, and change the width and height as appropriate to match the image's actual dimensions (in pixels). Keep in mind that this code is only the first part of the link. The entire code, including the thumbnail image (the <img src> tag ) and the </a> tag that closes the link, would look something like this:

[View full width]

<a href="#" onClick="javascript:window.open('photoname.jpg','', 'width=600, height=400');"><img src="photoname-thumb.jpg" width="100" height="67"border="1"></a>



Another way is to simply create an index.htm file for the property's Web site that contains nothing but redirect code, which sends a visitor to the property page on your site:

 <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;URL=http://www.grumanhomes.com/123main.html"> 


Just be sure to replace the URL above (www.grumanhomes.com/123main.html) with the URL for your actual property page.

If you create a separate site for each listing or as pages on your site, you should always have links to those listings from your Web site. The Web doesn't care whether links are to pages on your site or to another siteit's still a linkso take advantage of this link flexibility and always make the links to your listings available to your site's visitors.

Your Web host usually provides a control panel in which you redirect one domain to another. Here, I've redirected, or parked, www.galengruman.com to www.grumanhomes.com. Anyone who enters www.galengruman.com will automatically be sent to www.grumanhomes.com.

CD Resources: For redirecting a Webpage to another and opening a new window from thumbnail images, see example HTML code in the Web Site Code Snippet folder.

Recommended Property Site Contents

Whether you create separate Web sites for your listed properties or separate Web pages, be sure to include the following information:

  • A photo gallery, an animated GIF or QuickTime slide show, or a video virtual tour

  • A description of the propertyessentially the key points listed on the MLS and included on your flyers

  • Scheduled open house dates

  • Your contact information

I would not put a link to a PDF disclosure package on the site. Instead, I would note the availability of the disclosure information and ask buyers' agents to contact you for the complete package, so you know who've you've given it out to and can report to your sellers how many people seem seriously interested based on those requests.

As you can see, a property Web site (or page) is essentially a type of flyer delivered via the Web that takes advantage of the fact that you can display more information than available on a printed page and that you can offer multimedia content as well. You can also get really fancy and offer links to local resources, history of the area, and anything beyond the basics you think might be of interest to your clients.

Just be sure that you don't lose focus on the property you're trying to sell. On a property Web page, I recommend that you include only items directly related to the property, such as its history. (Don't include a general resource such as links to community schools, for example. Contextual material should instead be on your main Web site.) If you create a separate site for each property, you might include links to community resources pages and/or other listings to provide more context about the property. But link to these pages on your main site rather than separate copies that you have to maintain on each of your property sites.(This link also helps drive people to your main site to learn more about you.)



The Tech-Savvy Real Estate Agent
The Tech-Savvy Real Estate Agent
ISBN: 0321413660
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 100
Authors: Galen Gruman

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