Entegral Blog

Entegral provides a complete mobile real estate solution for estate agents , from listing & contacts & document management using Base , to it's  100% uptime, serverless responsive real estate websites, Flex . We recently got our hands on the latest Samsung Galaxy S5e tablet . One of the best Android tablets you can buy at around R10,000: a slim design, awesome battery life and incredible display. The keyboard cover is what makes this tablet the perfect companion for estate agents who are always on the move and need quick access to listings, contacts or office files. Combine with a Rain mobile unlimited data deal (R250/month) and you are empowering your agents with a true mobile office solution. Here is what Base looks like on the Samsung S5e, editing a property listing: With the keyboard folded away (and in portrait mode), you can still access all the features, here we are capturing a new property listing: Even when you only have access to your phone,...

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 ...

Voice search is here to stay - because it is easier to speak to a digital assistant than typing - so we take a look at three ways you can gear your real estate website towards voice search. To prove that voice search is the way of the future, take a look at these statistics: Voice labs found that there were a total of 33 million voice-first devices in circulation. In a survey of SEO trends for 2017 and beyond , voice search stood at the third spot. In his keynote, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced that one-fifth of the queries on Google are voice searches. REA Group's move into AI with Amazon's Alexa With the increase in the use of digital assistants, optimising for voice search is critical to your SEO success. We take a look at three SEO strategies to help you optimise your website - it is easier than you think! 1. Claim your Google My Business Listing Probably the easiest thing to do is to simply claim your Google My Business listing! The reason why this is im...

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can seem like a daunting (and very technical) task but by avoiding a few common pitfalls you are already increasing your chances of ranking higher on Google’s search results page! Pushing the wrong keywords A few years back generic keywords would have done the trick, but times have changed and with it how keywords are used in SEO. If you want to rank in Google you have to make sure that you’re using the right keywords for every page. If you are a local real estate agency pushing “property for sale”, you’re aiming too high. You should consider something a more specific. It is estimated that up to 80% of searches are long-tail keywords. Long tail keywords are those three and four keyword phrases which are very, very specific to what you are selling. This means content with the phrase ‘Lonehill property for sale’ will fare better than simply ‘property for sale’ when you want to ensure you are getting better ranking in personalised search results. ...

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...

Thinking of getting a real estate website for your estate agency or contemplating whether your current solution will keep up with the ever-changing technology landscape? You will essentially need to choose between 2 very distinct solutions: A) Responsive websites Responsive websites are designed and optimized for a multitude of devices with different screen sizes; they automatically adjust the layout of their content to the available screen size. One site is programmed to cater for all devices. Responsive websites are the latest trend in web design and are seen as an evolution of the older more traditional desktop & mobile websites. Google also recommend it as the best approach to follow. B) A combination of mobile and traditional desktop websites You essentially run a full desktop website and compliment this with a mobile website to cater for instances where your clients want to access your website through their mobile phones (Because your desktop website will effective...

Should you develop a separate mobile website for your real estate office? We think not. And so does Google "...maintaining a single shared site preserves a canonical URL, avoiding any complicated redirects, and simplifies the sharing of web addresses..." Years ago we've developed the 1st mobile websites and have now moved on to provide real estate offices with the very latest in technology: responsive real estate websites . Your website automatically scales to any device. Plus you don't pay separate setup & monthly fees and don't loose any functionality. Our latest offering is Flex Agent websites @ only R999/year, no hosting fees, check it out: http://www.entegral.net/content/p486_Flex-Agent--websites-for-estate-agents-.aspx

  It is easy to shoot down new technology when you don’t have all the facts, or make wrong assumptions based on outdated technology you currently use. Giving wrong advice on mobile websites is easy, when you don’t have all the facts. Entegral has been at the forefront of mobile website development the last few years, and have upgraded our whole offering to our new Flex real estate website framework . 3 years ago we wrote an article on the slow uptake of mobile real estate websites in Southern Africa . Most real estate offices who consider themselves to be on the cutting edge of technology, have since established a mobile presence on the world wide web. Running hundreds of websites including high traffic sites like MyProperty.co.za that have mobile websites, we can provide professional advice for real estate agents looking to upgrade their web presence to the next level. Mobile website usage is on the rise, it’s been on the rise for years. Simply put, if you don’t have a mobile w...

It's here - Flex Agent websites! Websites specifically designed for the professional real estate agent @ only R999/year. Setup in a flash and works perfect on tablets & mobile phones too. Automatic integration with the OMS. Plenty of add-on's. For more information please visit the following link: http://www.entegral.net/content/p486_Flex-Agent--websites-for-estate-agents.aspx

A month ago, Entegral launched a new product called Flex.  Flex is a website product that is build on a responsive web design platform and was developed especially for real estate agents. (Responsive web design  is a  web design  approach aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from mobile phones to desktop computer monitors) - Wikipedia) Since the launch of our Flex product we've been working on the sites of a few current clients who chose to move their old websites over to this new framework.   JVP Properties is one of them and was launched recently. This product is ideal for the real estate market as the search for real estate these days start online especially on tablets and mobile devices. Flex websites are powered by Entegral's Office Management System and can be set up within 24hours providing that all content...

Today's technology has developed in such a way that it is certainly the first source for any one making a decision about buying or selling something. Before a buyer jumps in his car and stops at the next best house with a for sale board on the front lawn, he'd probably done his homework first and browsed for listings on the internet that falls in the categories that he is interested in buying, made a list of his favourites and phoned the estate agent with the most listings in the area.  The same would apply for listings on show over weekends.  Time is a scarce commodity these days and driving around in a suburb (or two) with the hope of finding an on show board on the side of the road, and then finding the property's actual location can be both time consuming and disappointing to the prospective buyer.  Thus, you as the estate agent can provide prospective buyers with as much information possible and help them to make the decision before driving off to no man...

Two weeks ago we launched a new and improved mobile offering to our clients. Basically we upgraded the look and functionality of our old mobile websites.  We've been setting up mobile websites one after the other ever since! We created a template layout that is easily transformable and can be edited to accommodate any kind of branding.  It has the basics needed for a mobile website so that your visitors can easily find properties for sale or to rent near their location or by means of a drill down search function. Your own domain or website address is used so that you alone benefit from the traffic generated.  When someone searches for you on their smart phones, they will automatically be routed to your mobi site but will still have the option of going to your desktop site too should they wish to. Both www.huurkor.co.za and www.aidahartbeespoort.co.za can be entered in to a smart phones' browser and the mobi version of their website will automatically open and...

Following the launch of our brand new mobile real estate website framework , we’ve launched a new on show feature today. Using the phone’s location, it will allow visitors to view showhouses in their immediate area first. It also shows showhouses further away. This is a great feature if someone accesses your website on their phone over a weekend. You can include direction information too through the OMS e.g. ‘follow the on show boards from main road’ or even geocode the property and show the exact location of the showhouse. In this image the screenshot on the left shows the options in the mobi site menu, encircled the on show option. Right hand side: The results of listings in the buyers' area (by means of navigation tool) and all other stock on show shown below. More information on our real estate mobile solution here: http://www.entegral.net/content/p203_products-real-estate-website-mobile-website.aspx

Article by: Adriaan Grove (CEO, Entegral) PROPERTY PORTALS – RISKING ALL TO BE NUMBER ONE? This is interesting... 50% of USA portal Zillow's operating expenses are sales & marketing related, yet they are making a net loss. Both Trulia and Zillow will spend close to R500m this year in advertising whilst competing for the same customers. That’s R1 billion!  Basically, their increase in marketing is outpacing their user and subscriber growth. They are trying to outdo each other in a highly competitive space, by pumping more money into advertising. Both are listed on the stock exchange, so they are driving the revenue numbers for investors. Do we have a similar situation in South Africa: where excessive amounts are spent by portals on advertising, which must be recovered (from estate agents) over the long term?   SOUTH AFRICA – A SMALL SPACE TO COMPETE IN The EAAB lists about 40,000 agents and 10,000 registered agencies - of course the active agents and agencies are far l...

Keeping it simple always seems to be the best way to go about when developing something new, or in this case, giving a feature a revamp. There's no doubt, especially in South Africa, that mobile is one major player in the online environment and you are most definitely losing out if you do not make some kind of effort to put a user friendly platform out there to target or reach your audience on a mobile device. We've had a mobile website for www.myproperty.co.za for quite some time and to be honest did not pay too much attention to it as this was not the main source of our traffic.  Keeping an eye on our stats for devices accessing our sites we realised more and more everyday that the curve on the graph grew exponentially for mobile devices compared to normal PC's. Hence, a new mobi site was launched. It was designed and developed in such a way that we could use this same framework and template for our clients too.        From left to right...

We’ve launched the 1st phase of a new MyProperty South Africa mobile website. Simply visit www.myproperty.co.za on your mobile phone and you will be redirected to our mobile website. The site features an improved user interface and also introduces place search : you can search for property around an road, place or suburb as per the desktop MyProperty website.

Did you know that at least 20% of property searches in South Africa are done through mobile phones? Recent figures from the UK reports 1/3 property searches are done through mobile. Our latest stats from MyProperty shows that property searches through mobile phones increase significantly after 5pm and peaks at 8pm. Interestingly enough is that almost 50% of these visitors are using Blackberry devices (South Africa has a very high Blackberry user base) followed by Android and iPhone (iOS) users. Question is - is your estate agency catering for these mobile users? If not, check out our mobile website solution that can be bolted on your existing website: http://www.entegral.net/content/p203_products-real-estate-website-mobile-website.aspx A great feature is that Users are automatically redirected to your mobile website when they enter your standard website address.

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!