I see this post has now been featured on the AR homepage. Don't forget folks - if you have questions, by all means post them here, I will be happy to answer them for you.

Thanks to AR for sponsoring the post.

Hey there Heather (Tag you're it)

Next week I am out starting Wednesday (my first week off in several years woohoo!) but Monday or Tuesday we could most certainly chat or when I get back as well (I will be back on the 8th of July)

In terms of your question regarding templates - there is most certainly a manual listings manager for agents to add unlimited listings, however if you take advantage of the built in spiderable IDX product, you don't need to manually enter your listings as you can simply query them by your agent ID, or feature ANY listings (not just your own) via MLS number and broker reciprocity.

Do they flow through other sites? I have to think you are referencing syndication here (to trulia, zillow etc?) - and by default no, they do not and for intentional reasons - our user base is very tech savvy (those long term members of REW) and the concensus is generally that by feeding the large aggregator sites such as trulia you are in essence strengthening your competition in the SERPS - thus we have chosen not to incorporate syndication into our platform. Certainly if you choose to have your listings syndicated to trulia (and automaticaly from the IDX) it's as simple as posting a work order (I think that would take an hour of programming time) but again, that's something you should really consider before you do it.

There is a recent thread here with more info: http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/thread35489.html

Heather,

In terms of "rankings" or SEO performance, there should not be to much difference between a template, LEC or custom site - all of our sites are coded in a search engine friendly manner. Do a Google search for "Fort Lauderdale Real Estate" for instance and you will find http://www.johnsabia.com at the top of the SERPS - this is a site that is an REW template with just a CORE IDX. A couple minor mods and a blog and that's about it (Oh wait, let's not forget that John has worked his butt off from a content and link building perspective to get and stay there) - but the point remains, you can rank a template just like you can rank an LEC -

The main difference is CONVERSION! - Templates if you are lucky will convert between 3-5% with registration enabled on an REW CORE IDX. Whereas to ranked LEC's will convert anywhere from 5-12% so you get a ton more leads (per 1000 visitors) with an LEC. Just 1 extra deal justifies the difference in price in vitually all markets. (BTW John is on the docket to upgrade to an LEC shortly :))

Wesley - the LEC's out-of-the-box come with a ton of our most common upgrades (in fact in virtually all cases very enhanced versions of them) so in upgrading to LEC's often times you will not have to re-order items if they were on the "common" list.

For example: LEC 2 includes - featured listings, quick search, Blog RSS, multi user blog, REW Control panel, 6 IDX search types, featured areas callout.

So if you had any of those features added "after market" to a template, you would get them again at no additional cost in your LEC upgrade because they are part of the package.

That being said, if you had anything "custom" added to your template, CORE IDX etc that is not part of the LEC, then you would have to pay for the re-implemenation if you wanted them moved to the LEC - keep in mind, going from template to LEC is a "replacement" not an "upgrade".

So for example - you might have paid for a custom mobile IDX search to be coded on your template - perhaps you paid for 15 hours in total to get that done. You decide you want to upgrade to an LEC (which doesn't have that feature stock) then you would have to get an estimate to move your custom code.

It's not like you would have to pay full price to have the code "invented" again - we will now know what it does, how it works etc, so "moving" or "re-implementing" should cost far less time than originally building it - in this example moving that 15 hour project might take 2-4 hours to bring it over to the LEC. Does that make sense?

Honestly, this thread was featured for a day (thanks AR) but a featured post really doesn't get all that many views - AR stats say it received a little under 500 pageviews, but I don't think the actual number of unique eyeballs is anywhere near that (I have an image tracking the actual stats that I may publish in another blog post) - point being, you don't get a lot of comments if you don't have a post in front of a lot of people.

That being said, I would like to see more "tough questions" as well - that was the whole point of this post was to introduce REW products and services, and I did expect a lot more comments than this - but hey whatever, that just means you few that have participated have me all to yourselves, so feel free to shoot with your own "tough questions" I am happy to assist.

With the "Core IDX" solution in the template site would one be able to have pages for specific communities or even several pages for each community such as Murfreesboro Condos for sale, Murfreesboro Single Family Homes for sale, and Murfreesboro Foreclosure listings?"

What you are describing here is the REW snippet technology which IS included in CORE IDX. Breaking down content pages and incorporating listings (or creating sub pages broken down by main property types) is completely doable. Example from Jim Olenbush's site with city = lake travis and property type = residential http://www.jimolenbush.com/laketravis.htm - That being said, the CORE snippets are limited to certain elements (city, main prop type, min beds, min baths etc) so something like "foreclosures" which is not common to all feed types would have to be custom setup for you to use if in fact it was available as a field in your feed - "foreclosure" is not a standard or CORE snippet field. (But it can and is often done and usually takes between 15-30 mins billable time to accomplish)

Your next question has underlines but I am not sure if they were supposed to be links to examples, but it "seems" that you are asking if "building name" is a CORE element, and not it is not, but once again (if it is available in your feed) we can custom code it into the snippet framework within 15-30 mins in most cases. So yes it can be done, but it is considered a custom or non standard element.

As for lead management / CRM - very few (less than 1% of our customers use an external CRM such as top producer that I am aware of. Typically they will use the REW built in lead management system (included at no extra charge with all sites) and their favorite mail client (outlook / thunderbird or Gmail) - our system captures significant lead intelligence especially when you have an IDX with us as well and allows for drip email, saved searches, auto property updates, tracked visits the list goes on and on.

Does that answer your questions in sufficient detail? I would be happy to schedule a live demo of the REW backend for you if you are so inclined. Feel free to contact my assistant Carrie Baker at 250-753-9893 if you would like a guided tour. Cheers PS sorry for the late reply, I was on vacation (technically still am heh)

Just so everyone is away - this promotion is closed.

thanks for your interest