Entegral Blog

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 ...

By offering competitive industry tools, supporting an agent's personal brand, and investing in a collaborative workplace culture, agencies can make themselves indispensable to their agents and future talent as well. Invest in technology that makes agents better According to an Inman report, real estate agents overwhelmingly support tech tools provided by their agencies. The vast majority of agents at franchised agencies and independent agencies use tech products either on a daily basis or at the very least, a few times a week. Additionally, they have come to rely on their agencies sharing the costs of these technologies. Investing in technology that aids in their productivity will help you retain your current agents and will also become a great selling point for agents considering joining your agency. Here are a few examples of technology that will aid in productivity in your real estate agency: Document Management Contracts, inspection checklists and other real estat...

Real estate agents should not only have an updated and responsive website as an online marketing tool but also have other avenues of marketing to maximise their online marketing impact. We take a look at some tips in our latest blog post. By increasing exposure through online marketing efforts, you can boost performance, raise the profile of the site and its brand, and stand out from your competitors in new and exciting ways: Launch a newsletter Email marketing isn’t dead and still, shows a high response rate. Not only does a regular company newsletter allow you to stay in touch with your most valuable prospects and customers, it provides a means to showcase the activity of your company, offer valuable free information, and build a relationship that transcends the anonymity of your website. Find out more about our automated newsletters Get active on LinkedIn  LinkedIn has built itself into one of the premier networking platforms for various professionals over the ye...

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. ...

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...

Operating in various cities across South Africa, the real estate agents from Hamptons Realty Group needed a website that not only reflected their brand but would also promote their listings - both residential and commercial - as well as their other services. http://www.hamptonsrealty.co.za/ With our industry-leading Flex real estate website solutions you are not just getting an online home for all your listings but a marketing tool with all of the latest technology backing it. The responsive design allows for the website to automatically scale itself to the screen size it is viewed on - this means that the site will never lose its functionality whether you are viewing the site on a smartphone, tablet or laptop. This counts in your favour when it comes to Google ranking and you can find out more about that here:  Responsive vs Mobile websites, which is best for your real estate agency? The Hamptons Realty Group chose our Franchise theme which boasts with all the standard F...

If you need a website that can not only showcase your property stock but also provide vital information or helpful calculators to potential home buyers than our Flex responsive website solutions are just what you need. www.kristall.properties For Kristall Properties, their Vision-themed Flex website is a one-stop solution for all their business needs. Not only are they able to advertise their stock in areas such as Woodland Hills, Somerton Estate and Wild Olive Estate they can also provide vital information in their property news section, and help potential clients work out their affordability or bond repayments with easy to use calculators. They also boast with an interactive suburb map search to further enhance the way people search for properties. Backed by countless hours of development, their Flex powered website can do all of this no matter what device you are browsing on. This means that they do not need an extra mobile website and that the website will adapt to the d...

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...

When you are tackling hyperlocal advertising by ways of focusing content on your website on a certain area, keywords are a vital component of every post. But how do you know which keywords are the best for the area you want to target? Enter our nifty little Google hack! Google autosuggest might just become your new marketing secret weapon! Google Suggest will suggest (the name says it all)  something when you start entering a search term. We used Bedfordview as an example to show how it works. Once we entered Bedfordview into the search bar, Google Suggest shows us a few results. The top one being “postal code” as per the image below. However, if we look at the third suggestion we can start forming an idea of what we can write about if we want to focus on Bedfordview. ‘Primary School’ suggests that the lifestyle will be focused on families and children. So how do you use this information to your advantage? Taking in consideration that the third suggestion was for a sch...

Considering how easy it is for people to get the information they want online, writing a mediocre blog post just for the sake of creating content (because you know content is king) is not only harmful to your online reputation but also your search engine rankings. In order for you to create the best blog post you can with the time you have, we’ve created a little checklist of things your blog post needs to be both comprehensive and useful to your readers. Headline If you want to grab a reader’s attention, you will need a compelling headline that will make them want to click and keep reading. Remember how short their attention spans are? Read more about the 15 second rule and how to grab them before they leave. So how do you write the best headline? Don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the right title before you write the post, start with a working title. For example, the title of this post before we published it was just “Content Creation” not really catchy! But after...

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...

Your business accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are all branded according to your real estate agency but should your agents be using a set branding guidelines when posting on their business profiles? We have already discussed how important branding is for your agency accounts on social media platforms - and if you want to maximise your branding impact, your agents - whether you are part of a large franchise or independent agency - should be using the same set of guidelines you use on your agency profiles. What is a brand guideline? Developing a consistent brand starts with creating a brand style guide. These branding rule books help graphic designers, marketers, web developers, community managers, and even product packaging departments all stay on the same page, and present a unified vision of the brand to the public. Why a guideline? The best brands stick in our minds because their presence is defined by the repetition of the same logo, fonts, colors, and imag...

Believe it or not but psychology is actually one of the best tools to have in your real estate marketing toolkit - this has been proven time and again by the social proof concept. We take a closer look at his concept and how you can use it to drive traffic to your real estate website . Firstly, in simple terms, social proof refers to a psychological phenomenon where people mimic the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior for a given situation. So what does this mean for marketing? Well this boils down to when a potential client sees great reviews of your brand, they are more likely to use your services, or at the very least follow you on social media and engage with your website content. We are really not making this stuff up - YotPo conducted a study on the consumer decision-making process of 500 different sites. They found that when those sites added social reviews to their website, their traffic increased 50% on average over the next three months. | ...

Websites have become an important part of the make or break success of a real estate agent and as we have seen time and time again, a responsive real estate website will always win out in terms of user experience and search engine rankings. However, for a user what you can add to their overall experience online is just one part of the story. What you can offer them offline is the other. With newsletters and property alerts you are adding to their overall perception of your agency, and with our automated features, you don’t even have to do anything to help you market your properties and agency. Newsletters have been around for years, although presentation and industry best practices have changed to allow them to stay ahead of the curve, used correctly they are still a very powerful marketing tool. With Entegral’s Flex websites you are able to create automated newsletters that are not only beautifully designed but also (and most importantly) branded. Clients stay updated with th...

An engaging real estate company profile is a great way to connect with your prospective clients by portraying a professional image and establishing and building your brand further. Your Flex responsive website offers you the space to present your agency to visitors in the ‘About Us’ section of your website. And by keeping a few things in mind when you set out to write the profile you can ensure that you put your best foot forward. Provide useful information Where are you based, in what area do you operate, how long have you been in business or are you a specialist rental agent? These are just some of the questions you can answer in your company profile. Also, mention awards that you might have won - who wouldn’t want to work with award-winning real estate agents? Infuse some personality Don’t just give the cut and dry bones of the business - infuse some personality into the profile to attract potential clients. If your agency is really involved in the community me...

Operating from the friendly capital city of Namibia, Windhoek-based Kay Real Estate, opened their doors in November 2016 with years of experience in the real estate industry. With the launch of their agency, the need for a reliable website arose and backed Entegral’s Flex responsive website solution , they now have a powerful online marketing tool available to them. www.kay-realestate.com With the launch of their new website, Kay Real Estate, 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 Kay Real Estate website is based on our Elegant theme, opting to add an integrated map search. Kay Real Estate also makes use of our Office Management System (OMS)...

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...

Launched in late 2007 by Janene Potgieter, longtime clients Prestige Properties, is a unique real estate business that allows registered principal estate agents to operate in association, without being bound by the restrictions usually present in the traditional franchise business model. Visit Prestige Properties For an agency that operates as an alternative to the traditional, nothing but an industry leading solution such as a Flex real estate website would do! Powered by hours of careful development and groundbreaking Cloud Infrastructure their new Folio-themed website is not only a showcase of their property listings, but also a reflection of what they stand for. The key feature of their new website is its responsive technology that allows the site to adjust and adapt to any screen size it is viewed from, without compromising the aesthetic and most importantly functionality of the website. This eliminates the need for an additional mobile website and also assists with SE...

It is no small feat to grow a team of two agents and a principal into a team of fifteen knowledgeable and dedicated agents over the span of six short years, but that is just what the Garden Route based Kurios Eiden has done since their launch in 2010. Visit the Kurios Eiden Website With slowing down nowhere in sight for the team from Kurios Eiden, our Office Management System (OMS) and Flex responsive website solution made perfect sense as both of these products will grow and expand with the agency without compromise. Backed by the OMS, the team can list all their properties once and watch as it is published across all major property portals, as well as MyProperty and their own - themed Flex website. Customised to fit their needs, their website is not only a showcase of their listings spread across areas such as Hartenbos , Mossel Bay , Dana Bay and George , but also a place where you can learn more about the picturesque area they operate in or request a valuation o...