Background
Over the past year, we have focused heavily on reducing early churn. To achieve this, we piloted and scaled the premium site build program with the help of our third-party website designer community. This program allows customers to enhance their sites with more content, improve their brand representation, and seamlessly integrate it into the onboarding process.
The program has proven to be beneficial, as we collect 1.5x more payments compared to legacy wizard builds. However, it has not had the desired impact on first-year customer retention.
Currently, 75-85% of sales are premium site builds ($250 per site). On a monthly basis, this premium website build program incurs approximately $35k in build fees. Despite its clear benefits, the financial and operational costs are not sustainable.
The proposed solution is to provide an in-house version of the premium site build program. This will allow Real Geeks to capitalize on growth opportunities without incurring upfront costs.
Pros + Cons of Current Premium Build Solution
PROS
Differentiating Value Prop
Real Geeks premium site build puts you in the best position possible to start generating organic traffic in your area.
Product Quality
I can count on the premium builds to deliver on a website that the customer is going to like.
Level of Service
If the customer needs something, I can call up the builder.
CONS
Timing Consistency
Real Geeks premium site build puts you in the best position possible to start generating organic traffic in your area.
Ops & Communication
Multiple points of contact often confused customersInternal frustration due to issues with client tracking, transparency and billing
Margins & Cost
Costs $10’s of thousands of dollars to set up websites each month.
The Solution
Let agents generate a Premium website instantly
New Setup Wizard
Clients will be prompted to complete the website wizard with prompts for more information about their markets/popular areas/and content for the website.
New Client Wizard Sign Up "Flow"
New clients can sign up on new.realgeeks.com with the promo code "premium" to get instant access to the premium website wizard.
Clients can quickly and easily get a fully functioning real estate site by using the promo code "premium" during the signup process on new.realgeeks.com. Completing the signup form will immediately launch the premium website wizard for the client to begin making adjustments to their website.
The wizard will prompt the customer through the setup process. If clients cannot complete the wizard right away, their progress will be saved for up to 15 days. The form can be found by returning to their website backend (www.website.com/admin)
Troubleshooting Notes:
- The wizard was built using Typeform and the Typeform API. This allows us to make changes to the wizard at any time without developer intervention.
- This process involves converting the data provided by the client and using the existing wizard code to populate the client's website data.
- During the sign-up process, hidden URL parameters are passed from the form to the client's website wizard to personalize the setup experience.
- The Typeform Requirements + URL Builder spreadsheet lists the hidden fields and explains how they are used in the website wizard. The second tab provides URL builder parameters for generating unique URLs for auto-generated pages on the website.
- It is important to fill out all hidden fields, with the UUID being particularly critical. The background image library and color palettes are manually coded into the form. If there are any future updates to these elements, coordination with Typeform is necessary.
- The wizard was designed to be used once, but it can be re-enabled upon client request. Existing content on the website will be appended or replaced if the wizard is ran more than once, so it is important to remind the client about this caveats.
Screenshots
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Welcome Screen
Website Editor
Company Information
Dynamic Area & Market Report Pages
The website generates custom area and market reports for searchable markets from the client's MLS. These reports are based on the Location field located in the client's Advanced Search on their website.
For example, if a client only includes county and city in their advanced search, we will generate pages for their available counties and cities in their market.
Please Note
This process relies on getting area data from the client's MLS board. However, we are limited by the structure and data given to us by the MLS. Some boards may not have a consistent way of naming areas in the market. This means that there may be misspelled, inaccurate, or duplicated data input by agents on the MLS that we have no control or ability to adjust on our end.
Featured Area Pages
Area Pages provide a comprehensive view of different areas in a client's market. They cover zip codes, counties, or regions for a broader understanding, or target more niche markets like cities, subdivisions, or neighborhoods.. These pages are dynamically created using location-based data from the client's MLS board.
Troubleshooting Notes:
- Area pages are dynamically generated and not stored anywhere. As a result, these area pages are only available if there are active listings available in that market. If there are no listings in that search, the page will provided a 404 error
- The dynamic area pages utilize /listings/ as a designated namespace. This means all of these pages will include /listings/ in the domain. Example: www.website.com/listings/city/dallas
- This means clients will not be able to make new content pages using this in the future. This is only for pages moving forward. Existing pages using /listings/ in the domain will be unaffected
- All page content is indexable and crawable for SEO-purposes
Screenshots
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Accessible in Site Backend > Sitewide Elements
Featured Area Screen
Featured Areas Wizard
Dynamic Area Pages
On each area page, the premium website builder will generate a list of niche "sub-pages" to promote different segments of their market. These pages showcase popular listings in the market and contain SEO-optimized content. They also use carefully selected long-tail URLs to generate more organic traffic on the website.
Dynamic Area Pages utilize specific data types to develop custom page criteria. Below is a list of the data types that can be used to generate pages, along with common examples:
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Search Criteria DataExamples
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Dynamic Area Page Titles
- Browse San Diego homes with .5 to 1 acres
- See Albuquerque Condos for Sale
- View Sacramento Homes with a Pool
- Browse Portland Waterfront Homes
Screenshots
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Featured Area Page
Dynamic Area Page Suggestions (Sidebar)
Dynamic Market Report Pages
Dynamically generated during the Premium Wizard, these market report pages provide an overview of of the client’s market. These pages are dynamically generated using location-based data pulled from the client’s MLS.
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Dynamic Market Report Page
Dynamic AI Content
These pages are all generated using dynamic AI to draft content copy for the pages on the client’s website. The topic will always be centered around the targeted market, and offers a wealth of background knowledge of the area to attract organic leads, and entice leads as they visit the website.
The generated content is created in real-time, which may result in longer loading speeds for first-time visitors to the page. However, after the initial load, the content is cached (stored) for future visits, resulting in faster load speeds going forward.
Content generated by our AI technology will vary by client. The purpose is to make sure every client offers unique content to avoid duplicate content.
Editing Dynamic AI Content
Content can be personally customized page-by-page. Visit Dynamic Pages under the Pages section of the Website Backend to update your page content. Search/select the name of your Dynamic Area Page and customize the content avaiable.
Please Note
If, for any reason, the AI service is unavailable, the website's content will revert to a default mad-lib style paragraph and will attempt to load again on the next page refresh. Furthermore, as the AI did not generate any content, there will not be a corresponding page in the backend.
Screenshots
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AI-Generated Content (Example)
Dynamic Area Page List
Edit Dynamic Area Page
Enhanced Property Detail Page
We have improved the learning experience for leads when they visit a listing detail page on our client’s website. These changes help educate leads on the market data presented to them on the website, and provide additional ways to engage with the website/agent.
Market data
Market data is sourced from realtor.com and is available at the zip code level for US only. If the property has a zip that doesn’t match a value the section will not display. This widget is connected to a feature flag: “Enable Market Data Widget” and can be toggled on/off at the site level.
Great Schools widget
GreatSchools is the leading nonprofit providing high-quality information that supports parents pursuing a great education for their child, schools striving for excellence, and communities working to diminish inequities in education.
Walk Score widget
Walk Score is the only international measure of walkability and the leading provider of neighborhood data to the real estate industry. More than 30,000 websites display Walk Score and we serve over 20 million scores each day.
Additional Improvements
Home Page CTA
These buttons help leads navigate the website easier, and discover popular areas of the website. These cannot be edited, but they can be turned off in MCP > Feature Flags.
Featured Agent(s)
Anna Modern Only
Features 1 or More agents on the any sidebar on the website. this is designed to help leads connect with their realtor, and get instant access to the agent’s profile page.
Screenshots
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Featured Agent (Home Page - Anna Modern)
Featured Agent (Sidebar View)
Dynamic Sitemap
How it Works
Google uses sitemaps to know what pages to crawl and index. Since the pages are dynamic (and don’t technically “exist” in a database somewhere) the website uses a dynamic sitemap that populates as pages are visited. We will also remove pages that previously worked and start to return 404s. Most users won’t notice, ask or care. You’ll know though…you’ll know…
“Browse All Areas” Page
This page is used as a directory to display the top-level location criteria found on the client’s Advanced Search. This typically means that it will feature “Counties” or “Regions”, typically, since that is the top-level criteria for most MLS boards.
The link to this page exists in the footer where the secondary bottom nav used to be.