#website features

[onetruechromosome]

I appreciate this website asking if I’m okay.

Kokobot is an interesting idea, I’ll give it that.

[thelonesgroup]

Creating Connections with Community Pages

As brokers and agents, we are all tied to our communities and there are so many great ways to get involved too. Some of you reading this today volunteer at shelters, support boys-and-girls clubs, are part of a Rotary Group or community lodge, or maybe you care for aging pets or are a member of a local activity group. These are all great things you can do in person that build your presence within the community and expand your sphere of contacts – and help you feel good too! But how do you illustrate connections to your community to people outside of it, like to someone who is relocating from another part of your state?

One of the things that websites (and social media) do for us is expand our presence and message further than they could ever reach without them – and today I want to focus on how you can demonstrate community connections in a way that isn’t just about you, but that gives your website visitor something of value too.

The Evolution of the Community Page

Since my company has been building real estate websites for nearly two decades, I have seen a lot of changes. Back in the early aughts (2003/2004) a community page was, at its best, a brief gazetteer. A paragraph or two, half-a-dozen photos maybe. Ambitious agents would include some market stats, but there wasn’t any automation to keep them current, so they quickly became dated and for many agents it was just too much to maintain data like that.

As time went on, pages got more interesting. Companies like TrendGraphix would create tools to let agents add self-updating market charts to their websites. Social media like Instagram would emerge and give agents a way to stream current photos from their account. A website with an MLS connection could even show current local listings. It was better, but there was a lot of room for improvement.

Today, thanks to the work of IDX companies, huge data brokering services like Atom Data and Home Junction, local review sites like Yelp, Google Maps, Great Schools, artificial intelligence, and more, community pages are easier than ever to create, maintain, and can provide impressive value to website visitors.

Local Maps

This is crucial. Many people don’t have a great sense of where a place is, so whether you are detailing a county or a local neighborhood, include a map. I love interactive maps that let me zoom-in-and-out. Extra points if that map can show me where local schools, parks, and shopping areas are. This is extremely useful for buyers who want to know where they will be able to make a quick grocery stop, to identify the school their children may attend, determine commuting times and so much more. When we build websites, we always include these features!

Market Information

No modern community page is complete without up-to-date market information. Buyers and sellers both appreciate this info. It helps you, the real estate agent, start the process of setting expectations even before you have met. It helps potential referring agents from out of the area identify potential neighborhoods (and you) as viable for their moving clients. Information about recent sales, average price, and home ownership rates are a great starting point. If you want to really provide something of value, offer the option of downloading a full market report. Our websites can generate these on demand, which is a great way to capture potential leads from your website, for a quick handout to mail, or to take to a listing presentation.

Community Description

Of course, every community page should have a description. These days, a short one is just fine since we are going to include a lot more visual info, but if you are talking about a small community then a little more detail can go a long way too. If you use AI to generate your community description, don’t forget to fact check it! We like to include some statistics in our community descriptions, but you have to be careful that they don’t go stale. To keep ours fresh, we use the same data sources that automatically update our market information.

Schools

For well over a decade, we have been able to include school information with websites and without undue effort. Great Schools has made this easy, whether you go-it-alone or have a professional build your website. It’s just as relevant as it has ever been and every great community page should have it.

Demographics

Buyers want to know if a community is the right fit for them. Sellers are curious how their community has changed. For you, the agent, having a reliable source of demographics makes for endless, easy content for sharing online, and adds something to your website that most other agents just don’t have at all.

Local Businesses

Beyond supporting local businesses, which can often use all the help they can get, showcasing local stores and services really integrates you into the community. Locals love seeing their favorite spots featured. Potential clients from further away can get a taste of what is available in your area and maybe even try something out on a visit. We connect our client’s real estate websites to Yelp’s services to showcase popular dining, bars and coffee shops, shopping centers, gyms and self-care, and pet care services.

Other Details

Slideshows or connecting an Instagram stream of local photos have huge visual value. Including a connection to your MLS where visitors can browse inventory is a must – yes, it’s not what brought them to your website, but they will stay longer and search engines love it too. It’s also important to have lots of opportunities for people to connect with you. Season your community page with these opportunities so that as your visitors look around it is easy for them to reach you with a question. If you are blogging about your area, include a section on your community page of recent blog posts. I would put blogs towards the bottom to give visitors something easy to move on to after they have engaged with your community info.

Closing Thoughts

If you have been reading through this and thinking, "I have no idea how I would even start to add some of these ideas," then stop thinking and take action by giving us a call, emailing us at solutions@thelonesgroup.com or by visiting us online and scheduling a free consult. For examples of actual community pages, try here, here, or here. Your community pages are a powerful, critical part of connecting with new clients online and illustrating your local connections and knowledge.

By Denise Lones CSP, M.I.R.M., CDEI - The founding partner of The Lones Group, Denise Lones, brings nearly three decades of experience in the real estate industry. With agent/broker coaching, expertise in branding, lead generation, strategic marketing, business analysis, new home project planning, product development, Denise is nationally recognized as the source for all things real estate. With a passion for improvement, Denise has helped thousands of real estate agents, brokers, and managers build their business to unprecedented levels of success, while helping them maintain balance and quality of life.

[autisticaradiamegido]

day 179

this is it. the pesterlog where the polycule got me

[beetledrink]

im one of those people who for some reason fully believes that the second i stop being hard on myself and go “maybe i did a good job this one time”, someone is going to descend from the heavens with 1000000 hours of experience in the thing i thought i did well and tell me in detail how im not only a dumb ugly narcissistic idiot, but i am going to hell for my crimes as well, and none of this would’ve happened if i’d just kept my fucking mouth shut and kept telling myself i did a bad job

[godbirdart]

i've been so tired of google's new legal liability bot sitting on top of the existing highlighted result, taking up page space and either parroting exactly what the highlighted result said or offering completely unrelated or incorrect results, that i actually cheered when this came up:

"oh but AI is experimental -"

the bot told people to eat glue on pizza. you can talk yourself blue in the face about the bot's learning curve and how "it'll be improved with time", but maybe a bot being touted as the latest and greatest in scouring the internet for accurate information should not come with a permanent glaring disclaimer of "it's still learning / results may not be accurate!" as the generative AI ouroboros continues to keep on chewing.

[triptrippy]

heres a couple more loose drawing of these guys

[front-facing-pokemon]

[anti-ao3]

if you still donate to ao3 even though:

ao3 censors any support for palestine

they barely improve the website despite surpassing their donation goals every single time

they do not see anything wrong with RPF that sexualizes REAL minors

they excuse racist fanworks, they actually suspend anyone who does not feel comfortable with pedo/incest shippers, or literally anyone who labels themselves antis or anti p/roships

they also don't see anything wrong with ai generated stories that most likely steal from real writers that put their heart and soul into their works

and perhaps a lot more things they do that i might be forgetting

seriously.

if you get mad at marginalized ppl calling out ao3, and you act entitled when your fandom interests are being threatened, then you're a privileged asshole. if you call everyone "puritans" or "stupid kids" for being critical of ao3, you're a privileged asshole. this is not about you. this is about the actual harm ao3 does to real people. your favorite fanfictions should not be your priority. especially if you want to keep supporting palestine or people of color in general, you can't just get mad when they point out the flaws of ao3 and stop supporting them when they're not convenient to you.

[nosferatu-del-fanart]

I accidentally pressed down arrow and apparently you can input negative years. My age? I was not born. Now let me in. XD

[april]

man i hate apple i feel like 99.9% of the misunderstanding around community labels could be solved by just having the default setting for mature-labelled content be "blur" instead of "hide" but the fucking app store policy on mature UGC is literally:

If your app includes user-generated content from a web-based service, it may display incidental mature “NSFW” content, provided that the content is hidden by default and only displayed when the user turns it on via your website.

and i'm certain they know, they know that the majority of people don't change settings for things. but they're apple and it's their app store, and the number of people using iOS is too high to ignore, and the only browser (currently) available on iOS is quite frankly the worst one still in common usage, so your options are:

shoot yourself in the foot financially by not having an iOS app (after having already shot yourself in the other foot by starting a social network in the first place)

comply with apple's decree and make your entire platform behave the way they want it to

sucks man.

[beelzeebabe]

neocities layout template

DRAGGABLE WINDOWS WITH TASKBAR

[grymmdark]

honestly, the tumblr website on mobile is so good it kinda pisses me off. like the app sucks ass compared to the website

[liquidstar]

see, i think boops should be a forever feature BUT i also think they should be limited as a forever feature (rather than a one day gimmick, where going balls to the wall makes more sense) so you can only do two or three per hour. not because i mind the boop spam (its great) but bc the IDEAL version of the feature would make it so you can tell your friends and mutuals and such "im saying hi ^_^" and if there are too many the message will be harder to get across. however i do think on april fools unlimited boops should be allowed, even in conjunction with future gimmicks. thats my opinion.

[duckydrawsart]

ngl the only thing I like about sharing art on instagram is that you get to add music to your posts