Technology – Page 2 – Help-U-Sell® Connect

Help-U-Sell Real Estate’s New Tablet-Friendly Website

Help-U-Sell Real Estate's New Mobile-Friendly Website — Help-U-Sell Real Estate plans to launch its mobile-friendly website early this summer. Here is a screenshot of the homepage as a work-in-progress.

More than 40 percent of Help-U-Sell Real Estate’s website visitors view the site from a mobile device. With that number expected to grow as more people switch from laptops to tablets, we saw the need to create a mobile-friendly corporate site.

The new site will:

* be scalable to fit any device

* have a simpler design with more interactive video elements

* feature submenus within internal pages

* incorporate new search functionality that will use spatial data instead of city and suburbs.

The new search results page will be a full-screen map with an overlay of the filter options. Neighborhoods will replace cities in the locations field so that users can home in on to the exact areas and even the school districts they prefer. Users also will be able to search any criteria, from a street name to a zip code.

The asking price for each property will show up on the “pin” on the map. Tapping the pin will highlight the thumbnail photo and address of the property on a list to the right of the map.

The map will also update when it is moved or expanded, showing property pins in the newly viewed area.

The search functionality and map will roll out to broker websites when the corporate site launches. The soft launch is slated for spring, with the official launch planned for early summer.

Help-U-Sell Real Estate Develops Real-Time Market Statistics Tool

Help-U-Sell Real Estate has launched a new tool that provides home buyers and sellers real-time information about their local real estate markets.

Called Market Sketch, the tool uses local Multiple Listing Service data to display statistics such as median list prices, average square footage, days on market, and total inventory for the selected city. Users can also choose to view statistics by property type, including land, multifamily and single-family. Once enough data have been collected, users will be able to customize the time frame. Charts compare the number of properties sold per month and the median price per square foot, among other facts.

Help-U-Sell Real Estate's new Market Sketch statistics tool — Help-U-Sell Real Estate's new Market Sketch tool displays real-time local real estate information, including days on market and total inventory.

In addition to graphs and charts, written sections explain the status of the local real estate market. Brokers can personalize certain elements, and the office’s contact information is included.

Brokers will be able to send the information to their buyers and sellers via a direct link, and users can register to receive their local Market Sketch via a monthly email. If the broker wishes to use Market Sketch as a lead-generation registration tool, he or she can opt to require registration before a user can view the most recent statistics.

The broker’s current listings are displayed in the right-hand column to encourage users to browse properties for sale. Dynamic interest rate charts, and daily mortgage and interest rate news show up below the current listings.

See an example of Market Sketch on Help-U-Sell Honolulu Properties’ site.

A Testimonial for Testimonials

Help-U-Sell Real Estate Testimonials — Help-U-Sell Real Estate is making it easier for its franchisees to localize their testimonials pages.

Word of mouth, especially in the service sector, has always been one of the top ways people make buying decisions. In this information age where it’s so easy to share reviews, word of mouth is more important than ever.

Testimonials can and do bring new clients to Help-U-Sell Real Estate brokers regularly. Help-U-Sell Federal City Realty’s Marc Dosik reports that he has acquired buyers and sellers through the power of positive reviews on Yahoo! and Zillow, to name two. Steve Vincent, broker/owner of Help-U-Sell Triad Realty, posts his testimonials to his Facebook business page, and sometimes his clients write their testimonials directly on his page.

Each of our franchisees have a Testimonials page on the broker site, as well. Many are still populated with the national testimonials provided by the home office. We strongly encourage localizing this page with your clients singing your praises, but we know this is easier said than done. To help our brokers get more local feedback, we are working on creating an automated email that will send out a testimonial request form to a seller as soon as the transaction is marked “closed” in the Office Management System. Once the form is filled out and sent back, the broker can review the response and make any necessary changes before posting it on the Testimonials page.

We plan to have this completed in time for the Success Summit in October.

Tell us your success stories that came from testimonials.

OMS Upgrades – Contacts Module

We’ve improved the office contacts module to make it easier for you to manage your buyers, sellers and other people, such as vendors, whom you communicate with regularly.

The redesigned module allows you to sort by first name, last name, contact type, and email address. This way, you can quickly locate a contact’s information or just see all of your sellers listed together.

Help-U-Sell Real Estate Office Contacts Module — The updated Office Contacts module allows you to sort your contacts and to see what they're subscribed to at a glance.

With the addition of the acronym icons, it is easy to tell at a glance who is subscribed to what services you offer. FTK stands for First to Know, the email alerts buyers receive when new properties that fit the buyers’ criteria come on the market. DEC means Drip Email Campaign. S.LGN is the Sellers’ Login that enables sellers to view some back-end information about their listings and to share documents with you.

By clicking the View button to the right of the icons, you can look at the contact’s more detailed information, including phone number, birthday, listing address (if the contact is a seller), search criteria (if a buyer is signed up for FTK), and drip email campaigns. You are also able to edit or add to contact information from this screen.

Have you tried it out yet? Let us know how you like it and if you have any requests or suggestions for further enhancements.

OMS Upgrades – New Leads Management Tool

Several of our franchisees requested the ability to export leads and contacts from the Office Management System. We have just added this functionality to the back-end, in the Reports section.

To access these exports, click on Reports under the Sales tab.

Help-U-Sell Real Estate Contact and Lead Management Tools — To access contact and lead export tools, click on Reports on the Sales menu in OMS.

Once you’ve selected either Contact or Lead export, you can choose a specific category to export. In this example, Sellers have been chosen from the Contact category.

Help-U-Sell Contact Export Menu — Choose a specific contact type (or choose all) to export from the OMS.

There are six options for exporting the generated list of contacts or leads, including Acrobat (PDF), Excel 97-2003 and CSV, which will likely be the most useful.

Help-U-Sell Real Estate Contact and Lead Export Tool — You can export your contacts and leads in six different formats, including CSV and PDF.

If you have any questions about the new functionality or would like to request additional export or report categories, contact us at support[at]helpusell[dot]com.