We are continuing to focus on listings as we overhaul the look and feel and the usability of our listing solution. In the process, we are continuing to re-evaluate and find new, more creative ways to expose as many listing tools to our clients' web visitors as possible. The idea is to provide enough incentive for anonymous web visitors to sign up to become users of the Virtual Office Website tools offered by MyRealPage websites (where available). The lead generation remains the primary focus of all the ongoing listing updates.
The new Virtual Office Website (VOW) toolbar and favorite toolbar have been improved in the way they look, read, behave and advertise their capabilities. We hope our clients' web visitors will find them easier to understand and use. Please read the official announcement on MyRealPage company website:
New MyRealPage VOW Toolbar Updates
5 comments:
As a new user I really appreciate your product and I believe it will be good for my business but including a button for a feature that won't function without a sign up seems a bit sneaky to me. I don't care for it.
Norm, thanks for your feedback.
Our motivation for the inclusion of VOW tools in the public searches (Reciprocity) was to boost lead generation venues on our websites. We have followed fairly standard web usage patterns in this respect. For example, YouTube and Trulia readily come to mind: if you try to rate a movie on YouTube, you will be asked to sign in; and if you try to save a listing on Trulia, you will also be prompted to sign up or login. Of course, many other websites follow the same usage patterns, so we believe they should be familiar to the web public.
Please note too that VOW tools do not navigate away from the current page or change the visitor's web context in any way: they simply ask that the user logs in or signs up and the users can easily cancel and continue with what they were doing before.
We are listening and analyzing our clients' feedback, so feel free to post your vision of how you would see these tools functioning.
Kind regards,
--Bill Skrypnyk
Bill,
Thanks. I know that the motivation is absolutely sincere. I'm just frustrated because I can't find a search solution which gives me absolutely everything I want. :)
The favorites button is far from the worst example I've seen. One broker in my market has me doing 8 clicks and walking right through the search process before I'm told I must sign up.
On a different topic, but in line with suggested improvements; I had ideally hoped to find a search solution which would allow me to display all of our MLS data fields, only reserving features like "favorites" and "notifications" for sign ups. When I was initially researching MyRealPage I thought I had come across at least one Vancouver reciprocity search that was displaying more data but I must be mistaken(?).
Hello Norm,
As it stands, the public searches (Reciprocity) of MLS properties in Canada are governed by the rules of the MLS board that provides the data. These rules are most likely different by region and can be even contradictory at times. However, we need to follow these rules as our data feeds depend on it. Typically, in Canada, the rules regarding what is allowed to be displayed for a property are tied to what can be seen on realtor.ca. We can't change that (perhaps, what you are looking for then cannot be gotten w/o changes in your MLS board rules). Our Vancouver public reciprocity searches are all governed by the same rules, so you shouldn't be able to find differences in listing attribute displays. (You may have seen "My Listings" or "Office Listings" pages which do indeed show all the listing data; that's true for all regions)
I think I understand now where you are coming from in terms of features that require sign-ups. In MyRealPage listings product, there are 2 ways to get to search for listings: Reciprocity and VOW (well, actually you can use same search forms for agent and office listings: that's a less known feature we offer too). (Typically, if VOW is available in a region, so is Reciprocity). Hence, it can be left to the account owner to choose what "strategy" they want to follow. If they would rather display search results and then advertise sign up options via tool "lead-ins", then they should feature Reciprocity search forms as they will always show results. If, instead, they prefer to "lock down" and get users to sign up before they can see listings (again, this can be a preference), then they would feature the VOW forms.
Hope, this clarifies things a bit. Aways good to hear feedback!
Best regards,
--Bill Skrypnyk
Bill,
Thanks for the reply. Your comments have me thinking, but I don't wish to high jack your post any further as I've already taken it way off topic. Would you drop me an email at norm(at)royallepage(dot)ca so that I can send you some additional thoughts?
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