Entegral Company Blog | Web Technology Simplified!

MyProperty celebrating 1 year in the Cloud!

2012-01-31T10:46:00.001+02:00

How time flies! Exactly 1 year ago two of our key property portals, MyProperty South Africa & MyProperty Namibia went live on our new AWS Cloud platform.

It was a big step for us filled with lots of technical challenges and late nights that would make for interesting conversation over a few beers!

Looking back it has been a remarkable journey in the end that led us to (confidently) move all our real estate products and client websites to the Cloud. The team stuck together and made it work. Effectively we have created Africa’s first real estate cloud platform.

Being an early adaptor of ground breaking technology means taking risks, having confidence to stick it through and proving to your clients that it works. We have proved our critics wrong and in the process opened new doors for us in the medical field. The cloud technology platform constantly challenges us to think more out of the box.

So today we are really celebrating freedom:

Freedom from dedicated server environments with all its limitations.

Freedom from high bandwidth and other costs.

Freedom from old technology.

Freedom from set server specs that you cannot scale on demand.

Freedom to explore and innovate more.

Maybe we should call this special day, ‘Entegral Independence Day’?

To all our clients who stuck with us through this time, a big thank you! You are helping to shape the future of real estate in Southern Africa.

Mobile real estate development – sneak peek

2012-01-12T13:04:00.001+02:00

Our Entegral USA team has been hard at work developing mobile application solutions for the US’s leading fee-for-service provider Help-U-Sell.

The iPhone mobile application includes the standard map and listing views and also a streetview option on listings. It is further enhanced by icons on property listings in the Streetview. This allows the user to navigate through streetview and view listings for sale or rent. Clicking on the house’s icon brings up all the listing details. Cutting edge stuff!

IE looses ground and Chrome overtakes Firefox as 2nd most popular browser on Entegral real estate portals

2011-12-18T10:14:00.001+02:00

The latest Google Analytics stats shows how IE lost grown to Firefox, Chrome and Safari on Entegral’s real estate portals like MyProperty. It is interesting to see the historical trend of browser usage since 2005. Bottom line: make sure your real estate website is optimized for all the major browsers: IE, Chrome, Firefox and Safari.

November 2005 browser stats

IE had a massive 93% market share. At that time it was perfectly fine to optimize your real estate website for IE and forget the other browsers. It was also still acceptable to display a message on your site, saying that it is optimised for IE. This made the work of web developers easy.

November 2010 browser stats

2010 is a different story, and real estate web developers had to ensure they optimise sites for IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari with The 2d,3rd and 4th browsers taking up about 25% of the browser stats for visitors. Fail to optimise your websites for these browsers and you loose out on about 25% of your leads.

November 2011 browser stats

IE now has 2/3 market share of browsers on Entegral powered real estate portals. Interesting is that Chrome overtook Firefox but all of them increased their share.

2012?

Safari is likely to close the gap on Firefox and Chrome will continue its exponential growth. IE is likely to loose a bit more market share and probably command 60% of visitors on Entegral powered real estate portals.

Global browser stats according to StatCounter is as follows (showing the worldwide usage share), and shows a similar trend we are observing on our portals:

At the end of 2011.

2011-12-14T09:58:00.001+02:00

This could have possibly been the busiest year in the history of Entegral Technologies. We came across some stiff competition in the real estate market, took them head on, got some great opportunities in the health industry and thus far made a huge success out of our efforts! Hello Doctor crossed our paths and we’ve learned a lot about medicine ever since. Our pride and joy, the OMS or Office Management System for real estate agents also proofed this year that it can indeed set the benchmark for the rest of the systems out there.

Along with the management systems build for various industries came the websites. Lots and lots of real estate websites were built, launched and upgraded. With the systems built for the Sunday afternoon health show, hello doctor, Entegral created an interactive website for the general public to get those health Q&A’s going, get more info on the show’s latest topics and just be informed about health issues in general.

For our real estate clients we’ve integrated sites with available tools from Google, launched self service free virtual tours, launched some great new templates for the RE/MAX group, moved over to the ground breaking cloud technology, took a few blows in the process and recovered in great fashion! More to come in the next year is the integration with Lightstone and some awesome partnering with other portals. Not forget to mention the footprint that we have in the United States with our real estate management system is growing and growing!

The Potato Foundation

Since there has been so much to be grateful for within our company we decided to give back to our community and no better way than to start with the little ones. We approached a Centurion based foundation, The Potato Foundation, whom focuses on the children in our community that are less fortunate. Their mission is simple:

GIVING is very much like a potato - its roots are hidden and the growing effect thereof is not visible until the potato is harvested. The Potato Foundation aims to be exactly that - the roots within our community sustaining and nurturing assistance to uplift and empower children and give them an opportunity to take their rightful place within society. –The Potato Foundation

It was our great privilege to supply some of the kids supported by the Potato Foundation with a complete new school bag and stationary for the new challenge that they will face in primary school. A special thanks to V&M Kelders for joining us in this project and helping us to contribute to this great cause.

For the festive season

To those of you reading this blog, have a great festive season, a well deserved break and lots of fun with your loved ones.

Thank you and Regards from all of us at Entegral!

Real One Real Estate Group launches franchise website.

2011-12-12T13:05:00.001+02:00

Property and business guru Rothea Olivier created her own successful real estate group in 2010, Real One Real Estate Group. The company consisted out of a single office at first with the vision of creating this business into a franchise. Today and within a very small time frame she managed to successfully launch 7 offices in the northern regions of Gauteng that form part of her now, real estate group.

Entegral recreated her old single office website into a website suitable for a real estate franchise, consolidating all offices’ listings on to one website. They make use of our Office Management System, managing their business and website at the same time.

The majority of offices are situated in Pretoria/Tswhane, you will find offices from the Real One Real Estate Group in the following areas:

Faerie Glen & Surrounds

Garsfontein-Moreleta Park & Surrounds

Highveld

Moot-North East

Pretoria North West

Real Estate Midrand Estates

Realty Pretoria South East

If you are looking to buy property, whether residential, rentals, commercial or new developments, in Gauteng, the southern parts of Limpopo, Cullinan or Rayton visit this new franchise group’s new website @ www.realone.co.za

World Estates new at Entegral Technologies

2011-12-12T10:24:00.001+02:00

One of the most successful estate agencies in Plattekloof and Goodwood near Cape Town, World Estates International, approached us to create a brand new image for them online.

Owner, Suzann Botha and her team trusted us to create a custom solution for them, they are using our OMS system to manage their own website and also making use of our ability to feed listings to all other partner portals.

To view all their exclusive listings visit their new website @ www.worldestates.co.za or contact estate agents in either the Goodwood or Plattekloof office.

Property listings for sale by them can be found in popular areas like Plattekloof, Goodwood, Blaauwberg, Parow. Look out for their for sale boards near security estates Baronetcy, Kleinmeer, Villa Caponero, Little Rock Villas, Leopard Rock.

Yahoo Real Estate still tops USA real estate portals

2011-11-27T10:52:00.001+02:00

Here are the top 20 USA real estate websites for October 2011 accordin to Hitwise.

No single property portal has more than 8% market share with only the first 15 having more than 1% market share.

Invest in a good camera and wide angle lens for your property photos

2011-11-25T10:39:00.001+02:00

We all know that a good photo can sell a house, or at least, get that all important new buyer or seller lead.

Wide angle lenses provides a wider angle view of a room as can be seen in the following 2 photos, and it all makes for better first impression when buyers view your listing:

A good place to start your camera search with wide angle lens is on www.sacamera.co.za

They recommend the following 2 entry level digital SLR cameras which comes with wider angle lenses:

Sony NEX-5N with 18-55mm and 16m f2.8 lens for R7631

http://www.sacamera.co.za/product/1027413//

Nikon D5100 with 18-55mm VR lens kit for R8772

http://www.sacamera.co.za/product/1022443//

Photo stitching software

Another way to achieve wider angle photos with a standard camera is through the use of photo stitching software (log into the OMS and look under Help/Virtual Tours for a free copy or to start making your own free virtual tours).

Have a look at the standard photo on the left and then the stitched photo on the right using the iphone4s mobile phone and Microsoft Photosynth software downloaded and installed on the phone. No you decide which looks better?

Industry first: unlimited bandwidth for real estate websites

2011-11-18T14:43:00.001+02:00

In an industry first, Entegral today announced that all its real estate clients will enjoy unlimited bandwidth on their hosted websites.

This includes all Entegral website packages; namely National Websites, SEO profile, template and custom websites.

Entegral founder, Adriaan Grove, says that the cost savings are significant for national groups who normally generate excessive traffic every month. For most large South African national real estate groups, the cost of bandwidth can total up to significant amounts and can easily total to 50% or more of their IT bill.

Entegral already provided a bandwidth cost which was around 40-90% cheaper than competitor offerings. With the launch of our cloud computing infrastructure (another industry first) this year, we have managed to bring the bandwidth costs down to insignificant amounts and today announced that all clients will enjoy unlimited bandwidth for websites hosted through us.

Cost savings through the Cloud

The costs savings are made possible by Entegral's new cloud computing platform where resources are scaled dynamically depending on the load through systems. It provides industry best hardware failover systems, firewalls and backup systems. Through the cloud computing platform, a real estate organisation can also drive green IT initiatives while staying on the forefront of the latest technology developments.

Another unique feature of Entegral's cloud hosting infrastructure is that no traffic bottlenecks can be generated normally associated with dedicated or virtual server environments. Entegral spent 2 years doing research, prototyping and live testing on various cloud platforms before launching their platform at the start of 2011. Clients can take advantage of these cost savings through the use of Entegral's real estate products, or an outright hosting option where Entegral engineers manage all the complexities of cloud computing for them.

Increase your online leads with the savings

Grove says that larger groups can use these cost savings and pump it straight into online ads like Google Adwords. Entegral are experts in Google Adwords setup and management and can easily double or triple a company's online leads through the bandwidth cost savings.

The unlimited bandwidth offer is also open to any new clients. Entegral can do a free analysis of a real estate organisations IT costs and advise where they can save or are paying too much. As part of the confidential assessment, we estimate the number of extra visitors we can drive to a website by applying the cost savings to online marketing ads.

Entegral has opened the offer to the real estate industry but says it is also willing to consult with companies in other industries that generate significant traffic or have high bandwidth costs.

Note: The unlimited bandwidth option includes other Entegral services including email. Entegral offers a ValueMail solution plus an industry leading 10GB Cloud Mailbox solution (PremiumMail) for estate agents.

Going the solo route without a property portal?

2011-11-18T13:51:00.001+02:00

Property portals assist real estate organisations in marketing their property listings on more websites and therefore get more exposure and leads.

This is an interesting story from Edina Realty, a USA based agency who is going the solo route and pulling their property listings from 3rd party portals like Trulia.

According to Edina Realty:

“…Third party aggregators are not brokers. They get listings for free from brokers around the country and then display them online, collecting and distributing leads for profit. We believe it makes the best business sense for our agents and Edina Realty to control our own listings in order to ensure that:

• Our agents don’t lose future business opportunities because a non-listing competitor pays to present themselves as the contact for your listing.
• Our agents don’t have to pay – directly or indirectly – for leads on their own listings.
• Our sellers can be assured that leads on their listing are being handled by an expert – The quality and accuracy of your listing data is assured.
• Potential buyers are provided with fast, knowledgeable responses via the listing agent or our seven-day-a-week customer service department…”

This is certainly a very brave step and the question is whether the savings in subscriptions to portals and the elimination of issues such as outdated listings advertised is enough to keep this company going and increase it online lead generation. Effectively they are saying that they would rather invest in their own brand and build long term traffic to their own website. Will it work? Time will tell.

Google’s latest algorithm update impacts 35% of searches – impact on Real Estate

2011-11-04T11:39:00.001+02:00

Google announced a new search ranking algorithm that will impact about 35% of searches.

Google says that the new search algorithm knows that different types of searches have different “freshness needs”, and will weigh them accordingly.

“Different searches have different freshness needs. This algorithmic improvement is designed to better understand how to differentiate between these kinds of searches and the level of freshness you need, and make sure you get the most up to the minute answers”

Google will start ranking results based on their ‘freshness’ but there are plenty of cases where results that are a few years old might still be useful for you – e.g. recipes.

Impact on Real Estate?

Nobody knows Google’s secret ranking formula (and it is based on a large number of factors) so it is difficult to estimate the exact impact on real estate websites. Based on the above ‘freshness’ info however, there is likely to be some kind of impact on real estate, as properties for sale and to rent are time based – and falls into the ‘freshness’ criteria. Google wouldn’t want you to find a property listings loaded 12 months or 2 years ago as it would likely be outdated.

We therefore assume that Google will indeed start to rank current listings higher than older ones. For estate agents, your best bet would be to ensure that your listing stock is up to date and new listings ar loaded as soon as possible.

Time will tell. Like us on Facebook to stay up to date with Google’s ‘freshness’ update and other up to the minute real estate technology news.

Who owns your real estate data?

2011-11-02T22:48:00.001+02:00

I recently had an interesting meeting with a prominent agency where we reviewed a contract from a potential service provider. I was left a little rattled (and the client even more), so I thought I'd share this info with you.

Ever cared to look into the fine print of your service providers terms & conditions? You'll be surprised that some claim ownership of data YOU entered into the system. This includes seller, buyer, listing and sales data. Some of these contracts often contain pages and pages of legal jargon and, in the case we’ve looked at, stipulated that the service provider can use the data entered by the agency as they wish.

Do you realize that your data (sellers, buyer,tenant info) is one of the most valuable pieces of information your business thrives on and should be protected at all cost? Protection your clients personal data is also critical for building long term relationships, required by the new consumer protection laws in South Africa, and ... running an ethical real estate business!

Entegral’s terms & conditions state that all data entered by our clients, are the property of our client. We will not under any circumstance sell or provide personal data to any company. Entegral is an independent company and you can therefore be assured that your data is in safe hands.

Just something you need to check up on and ponder if you have a growing real estate organisation / agency!

New sites for RE/MAX & Aïda Hartbeespoort

2011-10-27T13:34:00.001+02:00

For some time now we’ve had this idea of creating individual office sites for franchise offices belonging to a bigger brand. To much amazement the agents out there realized the potential of having their own website with area specific content and the advantages of directing your buyer to a more focused website themselves. Head Office sites are great and an absolute must for this industry but with office sites you can gain so much more exposure on the major search engines and assist the buyer so much better if the listings that he’s interested in are all on one site and not diluted amongst listings from areas not interested in.

A few month’s ago we designed an built a prototype website for RE/MAX offices. Entegral has lots of loyal RE/MAX clients with their own websites – some of them due for a change! The latest developed was for an estate agent from RE/MAX First in Bloemfontein, Alta Fourie. Alta chose the same template that we used for RE/MAX Two Summers in Phalaborwa.

Visit both these sites at www.alta-remaxfirst.co.za and www.remax-twosummers.co.za

For more info on our templates designed for RE/MAX send us an email: support@entegral.net

Aïda Hartbeespoort also approached Entegral to design and develop a prototype website for them, the Hartbeespoort office being the first to test the OMS together with the website. Have a look at our design and template site available for use by other Aïda offices too. We used all the elements of their corporate identity and combined it into one beautiful-looking property website.

All of these sites contain social media integration and make use of Google Maps and Street View. Visit Aïda Hartbeespoort at www.aidaharties.co.za

For those estate agents out these not linked to a real estate franchise and strutting their own stuff – you can also take advantage of our Template Website offering. It’s cost effective, looks nice and has all the features needed at your disposal. Belinda Oosthuizen recently had her own real estate website developed by us. See Belinda’s template for properties for sale in Pretoria: www.boproperties.co.za

Key upgrades & new mobile web application for Help-U-Sell USA

2011-10-20T23:30:00.001+02:00

The Entegral USA team has been quite busy with major upgrades in the OMS and client websites. This includes an upgraded property details view for America’s premier set-fee real estate company, Help-U-Sell, which features a cleaner design with tabs and related properties. Current features like the map, Google streetview and school reports were moved to tab views at the top of the listing.

Ground breaking Cloud MLS technology

Further optimization work were also done on the Help-U-Sell cloud technology platform specifically build for Help-U-Sell’s national franchise network. The system imports a massive 1,000,000 MLS Listings daily and distributes this to its network of franchise sites in record time. This would have been a very difficult task without the use of cloud computing services – one of the key benefits is that the processing power can be scaled to fit the exact needs of the MLS imports. This places Help-U-Sell at the forefront of real estate cloud technology innovation in the US by being one of the only companies that directly syncs their data with MLS service providers nationally.

iPhone & iPad apps

Also to be released soon is custom Apple iPhone and iPad web apps that makes searching for homes on your phone or tablet a lot easier. It will make use of GPS mapping technologies and pinpoint homes on an integrated map. See the preview screenshots below:

Have a good real estate domain? Use it for improved SEO results

2011-10-17T08:28:00.001+02:00

So you have secured a couple of good real estate domains. Now what?

Well one option is to build a website for each which is a time consuming and expensive exercise. Entegral provides a quick & easy solution to use your real estate domains more effectively through our SEO Profile real estate websites.

With a fee of only R165/year for .co.za, .com or .net domains and no monthly fee, it provides the most cost effective & quickest solution available for estate agents to setup a website.

It features your property listings loaded through the OMS or imported externally through our GRID solution. It features advanced SEO features as found in our template and custom websites. E.g. search for ‘Menlyn Properties’ and you’ll notice feature on Google Page #1:

The domains need to be hosted through Entegral. There is no limit on the number of domains and sites you can setup, so try find domains with prominent keywords in the domain name e.g. property,real estate, house, for sale etc and your area e.g. pretoria, cape town.

We can also register and setup any available domains for you. Start using your domains today: Order your SEO profile website today.

Amazon’s revolutionary cloud-based web browser

2011-09-28T18:23:00.001+02:00

Today in New York, Amazon introduced Silk, an all-new web browser powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and available exclusively on the just announced Kindle Fire.

With the release of Silk, they have reinvented the browser and basically bundled incredible cloud based power into a very cost effective tablet.

Amazon is the leading innovator in cloud computing and certainly pushing the boundaries with their new tablet and browser.

Entegral’s real estate and medical products and services all run on the Amazon AWS Cloud. We will keep a close eye on details and availability of the new Kindle Fire and Silk Browser for future compatibility. Imagine – your whole real estate offices running from a $199 tablet using the OMS!

More info here: http://amazonsilk.wordpress.com/

Now search surrounding suburbs with MyProperty’s new search

2011-09-05T11:11:00.001+02:00

Last week we’ve introduced a brand new search on MyProperty. Some of the key features include:

1. Enter multiple suburbs or towns in your search criteria.

2. A keyword suggest is available, as you type matching towns/suburbs are shown.

3. You can now include surrounding suburbs within a specified radius. Visitors can now pick an area and include nearby suburbs in a specific radius. Quite useful if you don’t know the area or want to compare properties in nearby suburbs.

4. You can pick the main property category including residential, commercial or agricultural.

5. You can pick the price range and status (for sale, rental or auction).

The new search will allow for more accurate and faster searches to be performed, while the ‘surrounding suburbs’ feature is unique to a South African property portal.

New property partner, Junkmail.co.za for all Entegral OMS clients

2011-07-21T14:49:00.001+02:00

How does 750,000 unique monthly visitors sounds to you? This is the number of people visiting South Africa’s leading classified website, JunkMail on a monthly basis, making it one of SA’s top most visited websites.

How would you like to target this massive visitor base?

Now you can with Entegral. A new partnerships with JunkMail allows property listings from the OMS to be automatically advertised on SA’s leading classified website. JunkMail now forms part of our extensive range of partner portals.

The JunkMail portal is available exclusively to agents listing their properties through the OMS. We are currently advertising the latest 10,000 property listings on a daily basis with plans to increase the number of listings on a weekly basis. The additional exposure is free for OMS clients until further notice. We will only interface quality listings, your listings should include photos & description.

Property listings on JunkMail links directly to your listing on MyProperty.co.za for inreased property views.

About JunkMail

Junk Mail Publishing Group is the leading Classifieds Publisher in South Africa. Junk Mail provides a medium whereby Private & Commercial Advertisers, Buyer & Sellers, Job seekers & Recruiters, and Love seekers can connect though print, online and mobile. Over the past 18 years Junk Mail has earned the reputation, "The King of Classifieds".

Advertise your properties on one property portal? Think again!

2011-07-14T11:30:00.001+02:00

Recent statistics from the USA online real estate market reveal some interesting facts.

For May 2011 the top 20 USA real estate websites show that the percentage market share difference between the various websites is very small – in fact none of them could achieve more than 7% market share. The top 20 real estate websites were:

1. realestate.yahoo.com (April ranking: 2) – 6.51 percent market share
2. realtor.com (1) – 6.46 percent
3. zillow.com (3) – 5.69 percent
4. trulia.com (4) – 4.77 percent
5. realestate.msn.com (8) – 2.42 percent
6. frontdoor.com (10) – 2.38 percent
7. rent.com (6) – 2.35 percent
8. homes.com (7) – 2.20 percent
9. realestate.aol.com (5) – 2.13 percent
10. apartmentguide.com (11) – 1.61 percent
11. ziprealty.com (9) – 1.44 percent
12. apartments.com (16) – 1.16 percent
13. rentals.com (13) – 1.16 percent
14. remax.com (14) – 1.06 percent
15. weichert.com (15) – 1.06 percent
16. mynewplace.com (12) – 1.05 percent
17. forrent.com (17) – 0.96 percent
18. homeaway.com (20) – 0.93 percent
19. apartmentfinder.com (31) – 0.93 percent
20. loopnet.com (18) – 0.89 percent

It just shows how stiff competition there is between these websites. Agents advertising listings on only one or two of these websites are effectively missing out on a lot of other potential leads. South African estate agents face the same fate. List your listings on one website and you potentially loose out on a lot of valuable real estate leads.

Listing syndication is the answer.

It allows you to list your property listing once, and advertise it on multiple websites without re-capturing.

Entegral is at the forefront of this technology with our relationship with large property portals. Clients working through Entegral have 2 options which allows property listings to be distributed to multiple websites:

1. OMS (Office Management System)

Listing in the OMS automatically advertises your listings to multiple free and paid portals.

2. GRID interface.

If we import your listings from your own management system using our GRID interface, we can also distribute your listings to multiple portals.

Watch out for an important announcement to be made on the Entegral Facebook page about a new partner website!

More Google Streetview towns for South Africa

2011-07-12T09:35:00.001+02:00

Great news for all our clients is that Google has just released StreetView for more South African towns. Entegral was first to launch Google Streetview for a property portal in South Africa +- 12 months ago and have since rolled the functionality out to national and office clients.

Estate Agents can Geocode their properties for maximum effect, full instructions here. The result of the latest Google streetview enhancements, is that streetview may be available in your area and you can use it to your advantage for securing listing mandates.

Read the full Google press release here.

A wide array of imagery is now available for Limpopo, Western Cape, Northern Cape, Free State, North West, and Mpumalanga provinces. The southernmost tip of Africa has made its debut on Street View, with the addition of Cape Agulhas, the notoriously hazardous place for sailors where the Indian and Atlantic oceans meet.

Coastal fans can take a drive through the beautiful West Coast National Park, check out imagery ofSaldanha Bay, an important natural harbour and port town, or visit Port Edward.
For those who are more interested in our urban centres, check out Polokwane - capital of Limpopo Province, Mokopane - one of South Africa's richest agricultural areas, Mthatha - not far from Mandela’s home village, or Harrismith - a wool producing district that is also home to the largest truck stop in the Southern Hemisphere!

Some great QR codes ideas for Real Estate Agents

2011-07-06T13:43:00.001+02:00

We’ve had a great response so far from our clients on the new industry first QR codes integration into our OMS product: http://productblog.entegral.net/2011/07/introducing-property-listing-qr-codes.html

We were also the first SA website to integrate a QR virtual business card on MyProperty.co.za on every agent’s personal details : http://productblog.entegral.net/2011/07/new-qr-code-business-card-on-myproperty.html

So here are some cool ideas we’ve gathered on how to use QR codes in Real Estate:

1. On the back of your business card: a no brainer really. People can scan your business card QR code and your contact details are instantly added to their phone. A time saver for your contact.

2. On your car. Someone snaps your QR code in traffic and have your details. Plus you will look super high tech!

3. On property flyers. Want more info on a particular property, just scan the QR code.

4. Yard signs (for sale / rental). Get more details on a property by scanning the QR code on your sign.

5. And lastly, on your clothing. OK this is way out but hey, if you are desperate for some extra referrals where ever you go this is the one. You can can put something like “Scan me if you want to sell” on your shirt.

New templates launched in June ‘11

2011-07-05T15:35:00.001+02:00

During the month of June we had the pleasure in of launching a host of new templates and other property-type websites. We’ve blogged just how popular our template based sites are in the past and comes to show this month we’ve launched 4 template based websites and a mobile template site.

Our newest clients to Entegral whom ordered a template is Arlon Properties from Pretoria (www.arlon.co.za), Start Properties from Roodepoort (www.start-properties.co.za), Venti Properties also from Pretoria (www.ventiproperties.co.za) and Daphne Swanepoel Properties form Namibia Swakopmund (www.dsprop.com)

Read more about Entegral’s template website offering on: http://www.entegral.net/content/p180_products-real-estate-website.aspx

A long time client of ours, RE/MAX Living from the Atlantic Seaboard and City Bowl became one of the very few estate agencies that have yet to invest in a mobile website. Since South Africa is one of the countries with one of the highest increasing internet usage rates via handheld devices it’s clear that you have to invest in such a site to reach a broader target market. What we’ve done – and few others have yet to implement this – is to route the original URL i.e www.remaxliving.co.za which would normally display the website on the mobile phone to the actual mobile website. It' fits the device’s screen perfectly, it’s simplified and definitely creates more pleasant user experience than with a normal website being browsed via a mobile phone.

www.remaxliving.co.za or mobi.remaxliving.co.za when entered into your handheld will now look like this:

While on the RE/MAX subject, we have a bunch of loyal RE/MAX clients that have been supporting us from the day that Entegral opened it’s doors. RE/MAX Two Summers from Phalaborwa had a site as old as Entegral and it was time for a proper face lift. We designed a few templates especially for the RE/MAX offices and Two Summer chose this new and fresh design:

Visit RE/MAX Two Summers’ new website at www.remax-twosummers.co.za to view their latest listings in Phalaborwa.

Real Estate mobile website take-on very slow in South Africa

2011-07-04T08:46:00.001+02:00

There seems to be an ignorance for mobile real estate websites in South Africa, this in a country where mobile is king. Every estate agency should have a mobile website, just have a look at the insight Google provides on mobile usage.

Locally there are about 2,000,000 mobile searches performed every day in South Africa, representing about 25% of the total search market and rising to 65% on weekends! Clearly it is a huge opportunity lost for real estate agents in generating new leads when property buyers and sellers are not in front of their computers.

Looking at major real estate players in South Africa, none of them have mobile websites including RE/MAX, Seeff, Harcourts, Rawson, Century 21, Aida, ERA, the list goes on and on. The exception to the rule is Pam Golding and our own clients like www.realnet.co.za who looks to be the first and one of the only franchise groups in SA to have launched a mobile website quite some time ago.

Entegral provides real estate mobile websites for an incredible R50/month. It showcases all your property listings from your website in a mobile site where the content is optimized for smaller device screens. Should someone make an enquiry, the contact details of the person is SMS’s plus emailed to you. The sites can be setup within 24 hours for existing clients and new clients (providing you supply us with a property listing feed). There is no additional fees and unlimited bandwidth is provided. What’s more, the mobile websites are hosted on our ground-breaking new Cloud platform, providing better uptime and performance.

More info here: http://www.entegral.net/content/p203_products-real-estate-website-mobile-website.aspx

New faces for Suzelle Estates, Property Voyage, Maximise, Ronnie Matthews

2011-05-26T14:56:00.001+02:00

Since the 2005 and the beginning of Entegral Technologies we still have some very loyal and valued clients making use of our systems today. It was time for a new face for our clients and we re-build and optimized some of the websites to help our clients stay ahead of what the online world has to offer for our clients. Our famous templates did the job for most of them. The Property Circle chose a custom design instead. Here are some of our old-new faces which we are very proud of – set up within 1 working day, fully functional and boasting with features like Google maps and Streetview:

The Property Circle, owned by Gert Meyer from Hibiscus Coast, www.thepropertycircle.co.za

Maximise, owned by Andre Augustyn, www.maximise.co.za

Property Voyage, located in Pretoria, www.propertyvoyage.co.za

Suzel Estates whom operates and sells property in Gauteng, North West, Estern Cape and Mpumalanga

Ronnie Matthews Estates from the Western Cape also opted for the custom designed site, visit them at www.ronniematthewsestates.co.za

Property 100 Group rejoins Entegral Technologies

2011-05-26T11:55:00.001+02:00

A well known Estate Agency group that operates in Gauteng, Property 100, rejoined Entegral Technologies as their website developers and hosts and is also making use of Entegral’s OMS.

The group appointed Entegral a while ago to re-create and develop an new brand image for them, which we did. After business relationships ended with previous service providers, Property 100 decided to rejoin us again. As starting point they chose our template which we use for national groups – we applied the famous green and blue colours to the template and they were able to operate their own site via the OMS within days.

Welcome to all Property 100 estate agents, managers, office admins and owners – we are delighted to have you back on board with us! Visit www.property-100.co.za for property for sale by Property 100 in your area.