When I decided to redesign my Colorado Springs real estate site, I didn’t realize it would take as long as it did. I demo’ed pretty much every web design & IDX product on the market, and ultimately landed on Displet. When making my IDX decision, there were a few “must haves” that Displet met, which is why I chose them:

  • The IDX had to integrate well into a custom website. I wanted the ability to heavily integrate the IDX into the site through a quick search, featured listings, and most importantly, targeted landing pages. Today’s internet browser/consumer are Internet savvy and certainly have the ability to recognize the exact same template with a different color, which is why it was extremely important to me that my site stand out.
  • Customize the look of the idx: this seemed to be the hardest to find. Again I wanted to have the ability to change most everything when it came to how the information of the listings was displayed. I was determined not to have exact same look as everyone else out there, minus the logo. This was a big one to me, this is where the browser spends the vast majority of the time and more importantly this is where the lead capture point is. Control and the ability to change the search criteria, search layout, the list (results) page and details page was extremely important to me. In most everything I found this could not be changed. I went with Displet’s “Pro Custom” solution, which meant they customized the system for me. Each of their systems seem to be very customizable but ultimately I went totally custom and let them do the actual work.
  • I had to have an indexable idx solution. There is a lot of longtail traffic to be had through indexable listings. My SEO campaign is still in the very early stages, but I already see a decent amount of traffic for direct keyword searches & MLS number searches.
  • A company who understands the real estate business. Sales and coding (techie) are two qualities that are not commonly found together. This is easily proven when you hit a commerce site and go “whhhaat”, “why would I”, “where do I” or “how do I”. Though I am not Zig Ziglar I know the real estate industry and know lead capture as well as the sales process but unfortunately that information and process is tough to convey to someone that has never made prospecting calls (aka: tech people). It was obvious when I first inquired with Displet they understood that I ultimately wanted leads, and ultimately wanted sales. When I provide feedback or ask questions, they already speak the “real estate” language which is extremely refreshing.

I purchased a custom website from Displet, which includes their “Displet Pro Custom” IDX product (their “A” product customized by them.) We’ve been live for about a month, and this is what I’ve found:

The pros:

  • System integrates into a custom WordPress design
  • Customized idx
  • Integrates very well with a WordPress site
  • Ability to create great landing pages
  • Extremely prompt and great communication
  • Good guidance & tutorials
  • Flexibility (crm choice, adding chat, API mapping, etc)

Note: I am sure there is more but this is what I was looking for.

The cons:

  • Customizations sometimes created issues I didn’t anticipate, and then they would have to fix.
  • Newish system. We ran into a bug after launch that had to be rectified.
  • Backoffice is efficient but needs polish. Right now, I integrate with Realtiva to take care of this piece

Summary

Even though Displet was new I moved forward with them because of the four major pieces of criteria mentioned above and the fact that Eric and the whole group over there at Displet have been prompt, extremely knowledge and offered guidance through the whole process. In going custom with very limited (and no knowledge in many areas) this was critical.

We collectively share our dos and don’ts when it comes to call to actions, lead capture and conversion which is nice especially when you have the people running the company (making the decisions) actively participating in the discussions. I also love the videos. Each time they add a new feature (Facebook login, Googe+, etc) they have a two minute short video on how to implement the new feature…good stuff.

I have had a minor bug that they jumped on to correct but nothing critical. I certainly don’t want to incur these often but in order to have the ability to modify most anything (site, idx, etc) I can easily deal with an occasional glitch.

Case and point on customizble idx: I have not ramped up any seo on my part as of yet (still finishing my content) but I am getting some traffic, some minor keyword traffic but a great deal of longtail hits (addresses). I called Eric and we discussed how to capitalize and leverage this traffic that is landing on the detail pages. We agreed that this is different traffic than someone searching targeted keywords ( “real estate”) but we went into detail on identifying who this browser is and are now looking at how we can set up the appropriate call to action. Now an indexable idx offers some great benefits but this traffic is one of the first and biggest punches you will see and the great news is for the first time I will have ability to modify the idx portion to convert this and more traffic.

All in all, I’m very happy with my decision. We’re rolling out a modified version of the WordPress site & IDX theme on my Colorado Springs property management website. As the leads keep coming in and we start closing them, I anticipate investing more into the sites, possibly launching more sites, and likely working with Displet.

Note from the Editor: Not sure what Geek Build 2012 is? It’s building a few real estate websites from scratch publicly with the help of the Geek Estate Community and overseen by an experienced steering committee. Read more about Geek Build 2012 here, or view all posts related to Geek Build 2012 here.

**Geek Build logo designed by Dominic Morrocco at M Squared Real Estate.