Entegral Blog

Invitation Homes, a joint venture between the Rabie Property Group and Kloof Capital South Africa, recently launched a brand new responsive website powered by our industry-leading Flex framework . Our team of highly skilled developers worked closely with the design team of Invitation Homes to create a custom-built Flex website for them.  The site is not only branded according to their corporate identity but is also armed with leading, custom-developed technology which will enable them to provide an online presence for their business. The website embraces responsive technology, secure browsing, and optimal UX design to deliver a unique browsing experience that is based on the latest design and industry trends. A lot of attention has been paid to make the property search experience as fast as possible. The website’s custom-built search functionality allows a user to search according to the various developments in particular Cape Town areas owned by the groups, ensuring that vi...

Creating a professional online presence has never been more important and to ensure that we offer the very best to our clients, we continuously work on not just the way your website works but how it is presented to visitors. With that in mind, our designers and developers have made it possible for clients to choose from new themes that adhere to the latest design trends without losing what makes our Flex product unique in its offering. As always all our websites are responsive, hosted on the cloud and backed by our unrivaled tech to produce a 24/7 lead generating machine. Starter Theme Our Starter theme no-frills, no-fuss cost-effective real estate website solution you have been looking for. We have worked tirelessly to create a product that would offer real estate agents the perfect base to get started from in the digital landscape. Our new Starter theme boasts with all the basics you would need to get started and will be available as either the Normal Starter theme or as ...

Mobile traffic is not new and in years gone by a mobile version of a desktop website would have been enough, however, in the age of smartphones, tablets and an agile society that wants information right now responsive design is the only way forward. You can argue that a mobi-site is suffice for your business but you would be wrong. Not only is responsive design a key element in a strong SEO strategy, it is also a deciding factor for many consumers on whether or not they will make use of your services. Here are the latest statistics that prove that you can no longer wait to switch your site over to a responsive website: As mentioned before - mobile traffic is not new, in fact  Statista has found that it has been ahead since 2015, however with the technology behind smartphones improving turning mobile phones into mini laptops and the increase in mobile traffic, websites that aren’t responsive are losing progressively larger portions of their audience each year. The ...

Finding worthy topics to write about can be a difficult task, especially if you are already managing a very busy day. But it doesn’t have to be - all it takes is a bit of planning! Before get to the actual blog writing part, we have to mention that for most people browsing social media from their phones, a responsive site is a must. If you are writing compelling articles, why wouldn’t you want to make it accessible to anyone no matter on what mobile device they are? You can find out more about our responsive packages by visiting www.entegral.net/flex and more about the importance of responsive design here: Mobile-First Indexing Plan ahead To ensure you have some copy ready for the year, plan ahead. Think seasonally and around holidays. Provide gardening tips, or winter home maintenance guide. Home safety around the holidays is another seasonal topic that is always welcomed. Write these articles now, that way you have them ready to publish when the time comes around. Weekl...

No doubt you’re providing the best service, but how do you ensure a quality experience translates into a positive review online? Getting a customer to take the time to share his or her thoughts can seem challenging, but there are a number of strategies you can utilize to increase the odds that reviews will be posted. Why do I need online reviews? Consumers are increasingly relying on the Internet to obtain information about businesses. Reviews not only serve as a guide to customers but also provide free advertising. Your customers can be valuable references for people they don’t even know, just by posting their experiences on your public profiles. Get followers on social media Having a following on social media speaks wonders for your brand. A strong digital following shows that customers are satisfied with your business and more importantly, they want to continue that relationship. After you’ve worked with someone, you should think about reaching out on social media to thank...

With more than 13 years of experience in the property industry, Kainos Properties, are industry leaders that have built and expanded their brand from the Northern Suburbs of Cape Town to now include the breathtaking properties along the Western Seaboard. www.kainosprop.co.za Situated in the picturesque Welgemoed, Cape Town affords the dynamic real estate agents of this busy agency a unique understanding of the old saying that you are not buying a home but the neighbourhood - they know that finding the right home also means finding the right lifestyle. With this in mind, their newly launched Entegral responsive Flex website is not only a showcase of their latest listings but also an online marketing tool for their agency and the areas they work in. From here they can market their for sale properties, feature their recently sold listings and attract tenants on the hunt for new rental accommodation on any screen size without compromising on design and most importantly functiona...

The look and feel of your marketing materials can influence your business a lot more than you think - but how do you know whether or not it is time for a boost? The simple answer - if you are looking at your marketing materials and they are not reflecting your brand now or even worse if they are sporting outdated information it is time for a boost. If you have outdated information on your marketing materials it is fairly obvious where you should start, if however you just need to refresh your brand to fit with the times, figuring out where to start is a bit like a simple science experiment. This means that you should have a look at your marketing materials and find the problem - is your brochure too cluttered, do the colours feel bland or overpowering - once you have identified the problem, you can use the guidelines below to boost your brand. Less is more : Do not try to tell everything about you and your business in a tiny space; this clutters the design and suffocates th...

Established in January 2017, Mikaya Real Estate has grown in leaps and bounds, expanding their real estate footprint in Bloemfontein and with that came the need for a cutting edge real estate website that would reflect their brand and showcase their latest listings. www.mikaya.co.za With years experience in the real estate industry, the dedicated Mikaya Real Estate are poised to ensure the very best service to their clients whether they are on the hunt for a rental property, new family home, an agricultural property or commercial real estate. Mikaya Real Estate chose Entegral Technologies to be their service provider for all their online marketing and property management needs.  Their business is run and managed by our Office Management System (OMS) which is linked to their brand new Momento themed Flex website . Not only do they now boast with a fully responsive website, but is also one of the very first of our clients that have taken advantage of our new theme! Visi...

Mobile IS the future, there is no denying it. Countless studies can back this up - and now the most popular social network, Facebook, will penalise sites that aren’t optimised for mobile. Facebook announced a few new tweaks to its News Feed algorithm -- most notably, perhaps, was the announcement that links to sites that aren't optimized for mobile viewing. Facebook will now start taking link loading speed into account when deciding how to rank posts in the News Feed, to improve user experience for more than half of users who access the site via mobile devices. While you might think that Facebook is not that important, consider that there are 1.15 billion mobile daily active users for December 2016, an increase of 23 percent year-over-year.  (Source:  Facebook as of 2/01/17) This is hugely significant and shows the dramatic growth of mobile traffic on Facebook.  Mobile advertising revenue represented approximately 87 percent of advertising revenue for Q2....

Many business-owners believe that the first website they invest in will stand the test of time, and that is simply not how it works. It has been said that a website can become almost obsolete after approximately three years. When was the last time you updated your website? Think about your top website from three years ago - does it still look the same? Chances are that unless they have undergone changes and updates, it is no longer the website it once was. The reasoning behind website updates should be obvious, however so many real estate agents and agencies continue to hang on to outdated sites. As technological innovations dictate trends, websites have to evolve to keep up with users’ demands. Things such as SEO is a continuous evolution and minor tweaks to searchability are always at the forefront of our development work, this is to ensure that minor tweaks do not become major redesigns. However, things like interface design may simply become outdated over time. For in...

The real estate game has always been about building lasting business relationships and in the digital age, this has become not only an in-person reality but also a digital actuality. Word-of-mouth marketing has (and still is) one of the most important tools a real estate agent has to gain new clients and in the digital landscape, word-of-mouth marketing presents itself as recommendations and testimonials. So how do you get your online reputation to match your offline reputation? We take a look at a few ways you build a formidable online reputation. Make it easy for people to give reviews Facebook remains one of the biggest social networks and also the easiest way for your clients to review and recommend your services. Therefore it is vital for you to have a Facebook business page for your agency and to display your social media icons on your website. Your Entegral responsive Flex website makes it easy for you to display your social media icons to ensure visitors can find...

At Entegral, when we recommend something to our clients, we make sure that we would apply our own advice to our business. Using a special #ThrowbackThursday example, we will show you just how important it is to have an up-to-date website for your real estate agency. As we have said before, perception matters in business, in fact, Stanford’s Persuasive Technology Lab found that almost half (46%) of people say a website’s design is the number one criterion for discerning credibility. Throwback to our website in 2005 Back in 2005, our Entegral website was considered trendy but would now look completely out of place. Our website today is responsive, sleek and easy to navigate - everything consumers (and Google by the way) holds in high regard. If we hadn’t updated our website, would you trust us with your business? And while you might think that the same rules do not apply to real estate, it does. Perception matters no matter what industry to you are in. An outdated website...

Google has said that its mobile-first index may not have a single launch day - and that means the quicker you become responsive the better. In November 2016, Google announced their mobile-first index initiative. Since then Google has been working out issues with launching the new mobile-first index and although it might be some time before it goes live, Google has urged users to convert their mobi-sites to responsive before it happens. The rationale is that right now, Google has a desktop-first index.  Currently, Google doesn’t really index your m-dot (mobi-site); they just annotate the m-dot URLs, but there is no true indexing of your m-dot content. So if you did a migration from m-dot to your main www now, Google doesn’t have to index anything, it just updates those mobile annotations to say the main website is mobile-friendly because it is responsive. If you wait to do this after the mobile-friendly index rollout, then Google will fully index your m-dot content and URL...

We have been saying for a while that mobile is the future and the 70% of South Africans who used their mobile devices to browse the internet in 2016 agrees. You might think that 70% isn’t such a large number, but considering that this number grew 15% in the space of one year should give you an indication that people are not only more connected than ever, they are also getting more connected faster than ever. This is according to the 2017 Mobile Report that surveyed 4 993 South African mobile internet users from November 2016 to January 2017. The survey not only revealed how much people use their mobile devices but also what they searched for the most from their devices. The first interesting statistic shows that whilst making and receiving calls are still at the top with 59% and 44% respectively, accessing the internet is not far behind with 40%. Clearly, browsing the internet is an important part of users daily mobile activities. In the graphic below you will see the most se...

A unique property group needs a unique website and office management system solution and with the launch of their new Flex website , DBC Property not only has a cutting edge website but also a truly paperless office management system. www.dbcproperty.co.za As one of six divisions in the DBC Group, DBC Property needed to reflect the brand it is part of but also needed to cement themselves in the property landscape with a website that would showcase their unique approach to real estate and their plethora of listings. With their background in law, the website not only provides their latest listings but also has separate pages to explain the legal process of buying a home and other legal requirements when you buy or sell a property. Every Flex responsive website launch is unique and we revel in finding the right design template for each real estate agency, however with DBC Property, we set out to develop a brand new ‘savings calculator’ for this agency that prides themselves on ...

Operating across Namibia and specialising in beautiful coastal properties, Reef Break Realtors Namibia CC is a real estate agency that lives and breathes their slogan of “converting transactions into relationships” by providing quality service with a personal touch. www.realtorsnamibia.com Their goal of using the latest technology to market their client’s property is aided by the use of our Office Management System (OMS) and cutting edge Flex responsive real estate website solution . With the launch of their new website, Reef Break Realtors, now has a website that adapts itself to any screen size it is viewed from. This means that there is no longer a need for a separate mobile website. Not only is this cost-effective but also helps with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and according to the latest from Google, responsive websites will count in your favour when websites are ranked in search results. The new Reef Break Realtors website is based on our Elegant theme , boastin...

You might not think that your website has a large impact on your business but you would be wrong - perception matters and outdated websites could spell trouble for your real estate business. An outdated website - which includes not having a responsive website - creates a negative perception of your business. We take a look at some of these perceptions and how you could address the issues before they affect your bottom line. They are going out of business An outdated website creates the perception that your real estate business is going out of business - this goes as far as updated news or press releases displayed on your website. If you have old news or press releases on your website, customers are going to think that you are either going out of business or even worse that you are already out of business. Luckily, with Entegral’s Office Management System (OMS) you can easily load news and press releases that will feed to your website. You can even schedule the news so you don...

You are marketing your content and listings on social media but what more can social media do for your real estate business? The answer - BRANDING. We take a look at how to use branding on social media to promote your business. With so many real estate franchises and independent agencies using Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn it is easy to become lost in all the noise if you don’t have a strong brand presence. As a franchise you are already geared towards using brand presence to your advantage if you know how, but independent agencies shouldn’t feel discouraged - building your brand online is easier than you think with these tips. There are three basic tips: stick to brand colours, maintain consistency, leverage cover photos. Stick to brand colours As mentioned before, franchises come with the advantage of already having a brand identity which includes a colour scheme. Now it might seem a little trivial but colours are the most important part of your social me...

Here at Entegral we are not just constantly tweaking and upgrading the technology that powers your Flex real estate website - we also like to spend time developing new themes for you to choose from. Putting our designer hats on we came up with three new templates for you to choose from when deciding on the look and feel of your new responsive website, namely Focus, Bold and Simplified. This brings the total of themes you can choose from to nine. All of which adapts perfectly to the screen size of the device you are browsing from. Each of the new themes includes the standard features on Flex such as featured properties, an on show section, property search, property details, bond calculator, news, contact us, meet the team, individual agent profiles, unlimited photos on properties, Google Map integration, favourites and advanced SEO. We can talk about how much better responsive website design is for you or you can see how fantastic our product is by visiting the sites a...

No strangers to the real estate industry and one of Entegral's first clients, RE/MAX 2000 recently launched a new Flex responsive website that not only proudly showcases the well-known brand identity but also allows users to experience cutting-edge real estate technology first hand. Visit the RE/MAX 2000 Flex website The new website features Entegral’s unique Flex responsive website technology which enables the site to be viewed on any device screen size, eliminating the need for an additional mobile website. With integrated features such as a map search, property alerts, and a news section to just name a few, the team which operates in West and Northwest Rand areas, can share their vast property knowledge as well as their property stock on a website that is reliable and efficient. The website is further backed by the Office Management System (OMS) that allows them to manage all their stock, documents and contacts in one easy place, whilst updating their stock to leadi...