Entegral Blog

The last month of 2015 is proving to be just as busy with yet another newly launched Flex responsive website. Our long time client, Properties by Lorraine , not only recently revamped their logo but also launched their new Elegant theme Flex website. For this team operating in the ever popular Northern suburbs of Cape Town , their new website not only allows for potential buyers and sellers to find all the necessary information and listings quickly and easily, but keeps with the agency’s unique branding. When visiting www.propertiesby.co.za from any device you will be able to find the latest listings, sign up for property alerts or request a property valuation. Visit us at www.entegral.net for more information on how you can have your real estate business setup on the OMS , have your own website and feed to major real estate portals within a few working days.

We have received notice from uPrice.co.za that the portal will be discontinued on 30 November 2015: This notice is to inform you that we have taken the decision to discontinue our price comparison business ( uPrice.co.za ) in order to focus on our core eCommerce business at uAfrica.com. uPrice.co.za will be switched off on Monday, 30 November 2015. The listing interface in the OMS for uPrice has been de-activated. Please keep an eye on our blog for new portal partner announcements.

Twitter makes it easy to set up polls. Click here for a real world example (19 November 2015) from our property portal, MyProperty and vote what will happen to the South African interest rates today: https://twitter.com/MyPropertySA/status/667199929350234113 To setup a poll in Twitter, simply create a new tweet, click the poll icon and configure your choices. New polls created runs for 24 hours. For polls to be effective, you need a lot of follower (to vote). So it may help promoting these individual tweets through twitter ads for the day. With Twitter polls, people can weigh in on all the topics they care about, and helps you understand what they think.   Here is more info on Twitter polls: https://support.twitter.com/articles/20174524?lang=en

One of the top selling agents along the Namibian coast, Susan Curtis Estates , joined Entegral to be their real estate technology partner and provider.  This award winning real estate agency boasts with real estate agents with years of experience in the industry and together with her team, Susan Curtis established an agency that specializes in the selling and renting of property along the coastal towns of Swakopmund and Longbeach  in Namibia. Being in the business for many years, Susan and her team understand that the image you portray to the general public is of utmost importance.  They made small changes and added a personal touch to their corporate identity that now clearly showcase their impeccable taste and knowledge of their market.  With their valuable input, it was easy for us to create a responsive designed website, based on our Elegant Flex Theme, and incorporated their vision in to the template.   After much planning an easy to navigate,...

PROPERTY BANNER UPDATES Banners on Flex real estate websites have been tweaked to better align with photos. It will now show Sold, Pending Sale and On Show banners in search results and display more prominently on property details.   CUSTOM PROPERTY FEATURES The OMS allows you to define additional property features , that displays as checkboxes on your listing capture form. You can have distinct features defined for residential, commercial and agricultural properties. Simply add them (comma separated) under your office settings:    It will then be available on your listing capture form: When you select these features, it will now pull through to your Flex powered real estate website. Here are some examples:   These features are also hyperlinks , so visitors can click on them and view all your listings tagged with those features. You can now get creative on your website, we can include a menu link for you to filter for specific listings tagged w...

The OMS now supports larger format photos to the Property24.co.za portal. New property photos uploaded will be sent through in a large (1024x768px) format. (Old listings captured before today will be kept as is).

A very prominent real estate agency in Hoedspruit , Century21 Wildlife , is now also one of the many real estate agencies who moved from having an ordinary website and mobile website to having one responsive website, suitable for all devices.  Headed by Rob Severin , this real estate agency is probably one of our most enthusiastic clients when a new feature or piece of technology is made available to help better market his business.   Century21 Wildlife is a real estate agency based in the bushveld that consists of agents whom has a combined passion for nature, wildlife and property. The Century21 Wildlife team specialises in the selling of game farms and lodges, bush houses, vacant land, guest houses, retail property and small holdings in the Hoedspruit area. www.century21wildlife.co.za When visiting their Flex Responsive designed website, you will find all the information needed about this beautiful wildlife area, the surrounding areas, estates and subu...

New mapping features are being developed and rolled out to Flex websites. 1st off the line is this interactive suburb map available for all flex agent, office and national websites. It places map markers on all the suburbs where you have listings and allows visitors to pan around and zoom into suburbs to view listings: See the suburb maps in action on this website: http://www.remaxliving.co.za/suburb-map   The interactive suburb maps can be activated for any existing Flex powered website for R499 ex VAT . This includes: 1) Link in website menu, e.g. “suburb map”. 2) Replacing one of your existing banners on your home page linking to the map page. 3) Inserting links to the map page on any of your content pages. 4) Setting a preferred default zoom level and location of the map for visitors.   Any custom graphic or content work outside the scope of the above will be quoted for. Please get into contact with our Helpdesk to get your interactive suburb map activated....

Because we only specialise in the development of real estate software and websites, we have seen many real estate websites come to life.  The majority of our client base reside in the bigger metro areas in South Africa but when a real estate business like Guthrie and Theron Properties orders the development of a website, it's like a breath of fresh air. One tend to forget that we live in a beautiful country with many hidden gems that have many stories to tell.   Guthrie and Theron Properties is a real estate business, affiliated with one of the oldest law firms in South Africa, Guthrie and Theron Attorneys.  This real estate company with its various offices can be found all over the Overberg region.  GT Properties sell property in the beautiful Western Cape areas such as Baardskeerdersbos , Franskraal, Hermanus , Pringle Bay , Onrus and Gansbaai . When we created this Elegant Themed Flex website we realised things that one tend to forget about some of th...

Almost from the very day that we've opened our doors, Clockwork Properties was one of our first clients.  They've been with us ever since and we're proud to have been their service provider over the years.  They've since joined the Keller Williams franchise group and are now known as Keller Williams Clockwork .  With the acquisition of the Keller Williams license they had to undergo obvious branding changes and opted to change their entire website to our Flex responsive designed website framework.  Visit  www.clockworkproperties.co.za KW Clockworks' for sale boards can be found in various Gauteng areas, mainly in Edenvale , Bedfordview , Benoni , Boksburg , Germiston , Midrand , Randburg and Sandton . By adding additional features like Property Alerts, KW Clockwork enables potential buyers in this area to register for alerts and to receive notifications on new listings listed by their agents. This product is also Flexible enough to add a...

All estate agents would like to notify potential buyers about a hot new property on the market as quickly as possible - Entegral’s SMS to Briefcase is just the tool to do so. Once you have captured and saved your listing on the OMS and your website has been updated, you can go ahead and notify your potential buyers about the listing via SMS. Perhaps you have a show day coming up for a property and want to notify potential buyers in your contact database on the show date, time and location. From the OMS dashboard you can choose the buyers you would like to notify about the new listing under the Contacts tab, select your buyers which you want to notify of the new listing or show day and send them to your briefcase.  After selecting the buyers in your data base that you wish to target, go to the OMS Briefcase to compile your invitation to view the new property listing. Your chosen contacts will receive your SMS, and in no time you will have a new bat...

We have corrected a bug in the OMS PI Reports suburb report where the Age of Residence graph didn’t display correctly.

1) Property photo descriptions are now pulling through to Property24: 2) The OMS now supports a longer postal and physical address details under office setup. 3) The OMS Login now defaults to a secure HTTPS encrypted connection. 4) External virtual tour links inserted on property details will now appear as a virtual tour tab on your Flex office or agent theme website. Simply use ‘virtual tour’ in the description and the tab with link will automatically be created on your Flex website.

Quality content on your website won’t just help boost traffic to the site, it will also help you to become a go-to agent for your area - especially with out-of-town-buyers. Why write neighbourhood profiles? Neighbourhood profile pages are an excellent lead generator that will build your credibility and reveal you as a market leader who truly knows the area. These pages are the first stop for buyers who are not familiar with the area and because you can provide the necessary information they will most likely choose you to be their real estate agent. Another bonus of a neighbourhood profile is the SEO boost it will provide for targeted areas. How to start Start by making a list of the neighbourhoods or even gated estates that you know best. Your personal expertise makes them easier to write about. These neighbourhood profiles can be added to your news section of your website, which will be delivered to your newsletter subscribers’ inbox automatically. If th...

Established in 1968, Huurkor has grown into an iconic South African real estate brand and just as it has evolved over the years, so has their online presence. With more than 47 years experience in the real estate industry, the dedicated estate agents are poised to ensure the very best service to their clients whether they are a tenant or an owner who makes use of their sectional title management.   Huurkor not only specialises in rentals but also have extensive experience in property sales and operates in all the major areas such as Pretoria , Amanzimtoti , Wilderness and Johannesburg , to just name a few. Huurkor  chose Entegral Technologies to be their service provider for all their online marketing and property management needs.  Their business is run and managed on our Office Management System whereby we linked the system with their brand new Elegant themed Flex website, www.huurkor.co.za . Whilst advertising on some of the major online p...

On the property online marketing page, the reference number to ‘own website’ now links out to your website (if hosted by Entegral). You can configure your website address in the OMS under: Setup / General Settings / Website Address.

We’ve tweaked the commission % and amount fields on the property mandate, to save higher precision values. You can enter the commission amount to the nearest cent, and the commission % will be calculated and stored correctly for future reference.