What should we build next? Your chance to participate in the evolution of Renaissance

[Morgan]

This past week, we just launched RealEstateWebmaster.com on Renaissance (now we’re on the same framework as you!)

We optimized the heck out of it and got perfect scores… perfect 800 baby! (first time in history)

And you know what? I am freaking psyched!!!

I cannot remember a time where I’ve been this excited about REW’s marketing and R & D.

I’m literally bursting with ideas, and the level of motivation I feel right now… the level of INSPIRATION I feel right now from working these past few months with the REW team it’s almost overwhelming.

So let’s build some stuff! Care to join me???

Today is a travel day (a LONG ass travel day!)
Nanaimo > Vancouver > Vancouver Montreal > Montreal > Miami > Miami > Lido Key.
Leave the house at 4:30 AM - get to Miami at midnight.

Thank god I have wifi!!

Let’s dig in.

Here’s how I think I’ll do this. On this thread, I’ll just go straight up stream of consciousness (share whatever ideas come to my brain).

I encourage you to riff off of them, share your own, tell me they suck, I’m crazy, it’ll never work << that will make me want to build them more haha, but seriously - any of the ideas that seem to have legs that you want to dig into more, I’ll spin off into specific threads, so that we can really dive deep into their potential.

Also, tell us about any features you wish we had. Or cool things you’ve seen out there that might be awesome on REW CRM or Renaissance.

I’ll make a list of links for each thread so that we can use this post to stay organized. I’ll also grab some of the recent ideas, and those in progress so you are aware of and comment on those as well.

So how about it… Who’s with me? Want to build some cool stuff?

When you see a comment below you like, please use the “quote” function in your reply so others know which idea you’re talking about.

It’s super easy, just highlight the text you’re interested in, and then the quote button appears

Example:

Cool stuff list (ideas that are being sent to R & D for consideration)

• Netflix Of Real Estate (new videos module)
• Dialer
• Intranet
• Automation for texting/emails. Creating rules for pausing campaigns or action plans for both emails and texts based on client responses (future state additional rules engine if / then actions)
• Custom avatars . messaging fly out’s in CRM. Create your own custom messages and put in custom images wishing CRM fly outs.

[Morgan]

Ok, where to start?

@Brian was asking about Chat in the improving your own WPO thread here:

How to increase your page speed (WPO), Accessibility and Technical SEO on Renaissance

I figured once we posted that RealEstateWebmasters.com upgraded to Renaissance and we managed to performance tune it to a perfect 800 (a perfect 100 on all categories of Google’s page speed, ada, SEO, and best practices) we’d get customers asking us how we did it Here’s the announcement thread: How can you improve your CORE Web Vitals, Speed, and Best practices? That is exactly what this specific forum: #websites:page-speed is for! (We have one for #websites:accessibility as…

A couple of suggestions or ideas came out of that.

#1: Create an “module/application wide” spot where you can put footer code.

For example the “IDX search” is a module, the Blogs are a module, “details pages” are a module.

This way you could drop in code like javascript on “just” those pages.

The use case here is to get more granular with how you use elements like pixels or chat. You can keep your fast pages fast, but high value conversation pages you can test things like chat etc.

Seems like a quick win, easy to code.

Thoughts? Helpful?

[Morgan]

Custom tagging blogs to CMS pages (or even listings details pages!)… or other blogs… .and and???

This is actually something we already coded (sort of) for RealEstateWebmasters.com (and it’s really cool and helps for SEO!)

The premise is super simple:

REW Blogs natively support something we can “tags”

Historically these were used to allow you to navigate (on the blogs) to other blog posts on the same topic. Helps users discover new content that is related, and helps search engines spider blogs.

Good stuff!

What we did was take this a step further.

We custom built a feature in the backend that allows you to query the blogs on a “per page” basis, allowing for extremely powerful targeting.

It looks like this:

In our case it’s pretty custom. You can select various themes, it supports multiple tags and you can set the limit (how many) you show. They will then show from newest to oldest up to that number.

On the front end, I went a bit more custom and had the design team create me a really nice / high impact design element that incorporated my tags (which are also doubling as extra keywords on the page) as well as pulling in preview images, titles and description snippets.

It looks like this:

I’m on the fence though about the “read full post” as it is not SEO friendly anchor text, and is replicated several times on the page. The SEO in me wants to add another feature in the blogs to allow me to set “anchor text” or “button anchor text” there. Hmmm. I think I should start a thread for this one.

What do you think? Is this of interest to you? Do you want me to start a thread and explore further?

[GFeldstein]

Awesome Morgan! Congrats on that achievement. I really like netflix idea and rules for pausing action plans when a lead responds!

Thanks for the updates. It’s great to see what is in the works.

[Morgan]

Speaking of blogs - (specifically here at REW but also for Renaissance).

One of my favourite blogs to read (and one of the best-optimized blogs on the planet) is the Hubspot Blog

I already have @AidanC (a member of our inhouse SEO team) following it and reverse engineering any of the content that seems to work really well (testing all sorts of posting styles, CTA’s, video embeds etc).

But content aside, let’s take a look at their posts and see if there are some other features we could become inspired by. Shall we?

Let’s take a look at this post on ADA for websites (it’s also a great article for Realtors® to read)

First, just the styles themselves (we have already optimized our own styles, but we need to do it on Renaissance default too).

So we’ll get that on the list.

But what about this thing that just popped up?

Kind of a cool CTA, no? It’s one of the things I find lacking in all blogs (effective calls to action). So we should be exploring how to have more CTA’s (default styles customers can use without paying for custom) for blogs.

One thing I “don’t” like on Hubspot blogs is when they use images that have white BG’s (like this)

Visually, it just feels sloppy and I’d prefer to have a class I could apply to my images that gave it a slight bg colour or outline around the edges to help it stand out.

Hmmm, what else do they do well?

Share icons? These are nice.

But now that I’m on that topic (at the bottom of the post, but before the footer) - I think we should have a global snippet that could either be enabled or disabled (on a per post basis) that “appends” whatever code is in the snippet.

That way you could update whatever it is you have at the bottom of the blogs globally, but also have a way to disable it on a specific blog post if you wanted to (@Rebecca this has some nuance, so we’ll definitely have to create a custom thread for it

And then the last thing that I like is their “related articles”

It’s really nice and clean, visual CTA’s, and promotes search engine discovery.

I love their pagination dots as well.

We actually already have a deck here at Real Estate Webmasters that would work for this, just needs arrows and pagination dots (I keep wanting to write “pagination balls” but that sounds weird.

This is the deck I’m referring to

Sooo… going on the list?

[Morgan]

Adding REWPert AI to the Content Management System

imagine having the power of Open AI / ChatGPT + custom prompts specific to real estate right in your CMS or blogging platform?

Open up a new page, ask AI to write it for you. BOOM! Instant content!..

But…

Don’t just use it as is. This is about creating a base / framework. You need to edit it, optimize it, fact check it and enhance it.

Still, let’s have REWPert do 90% of the heavy lifting for you.

Anyone want this?

[Morgan]

What about augmenting the CMS to assist with creating content pillars?

This would riff off of the blogs tagging a bit, but what about listings as well?

If you’re not familiar with REW’s pillar structure for SEO, here is a visual (lots of threads on here on it).

Right now though, you have to have REW’s programming / SEO team handle the dynamic linking from properties to other pages.

What if we build a dynamic linking manager that allowed us to connect pillar pages with their corresponding listings (and the reverse), sub pages with their corresponding listings (and their reverse), listings with their corresponding blog posts (and the reverse)

Etc.

Will take some big brain work to think through the UI and the scenarios, but it could be pretty cool (and useful).

Lot’s of ways to think about it. For example if you “tag” a blog with a city name, it could automatically get associated (and linked to from) any details page that had that city name (and vice versa)

Or if you “tag” a content page, the same would apply.

But do we leave the tagging of listings details pages dynamic (reliant on certain reliable fields such as city name or property type)

Or do we go a step further and build a tool that allows you to specifically map out the various relationships of IDX data to other content? (That would take a lot, but be pretty wicked awesome).

Hmmmm - I think I need to geek out this one a bit more…

[Iggy]

Agent Created Custom Searches

that can be saved and used for multiple new leads.
Explanation. Many new leads want the same search criteria- ski in- ski-out, backs to National Forest, a certain area map based search.
Please can we create custom searches and save them in a Saved Search Directory so we can attach that search to a new lead or client?

[Iggy]

Multiple Polygon/Circle Map Area Search

Please can we create and save a map based search with multiple polygons?

[pstaley]

I think all of these ideas are cool! I have no particular preference as I am a newbie to all of this!

[Morgan]

@Iggy

Please can we create and save a map based search with multiple polygons?

interesting. Can we not do that now? Makes a lot of sense

Is it a venn diagram situation (where homes only show in the overlap of the multiples?

Or is it any home in any polygon?

Great suggestion Iggy (PS welcome back, it’s been 2 years!)

We have lots of new members, would love it if you would pop by the introduce yourself thread and tell us about yourself

Introduce yourself 2023 - get to know the REW Community members!

Hi everyone! My name is Aly and I’m a part of the Customer Support team here! I am currently back in my hometown Calgary after living in Houston, TX for about 8 years. I do have to say, I really miss the warm weather and I get a little jealous talking to some of you who are a little further South. But I still love being back home because I get to spend my time with all of my family and friends. At the end of most days you can find me at the gym, cooking a home meal (avid foodie here) or painti…

[Morgan]

@pstaley

I think all of these ideas are cool! I have no particular preference as I am a newbie to all of this!

Thanks @pstaley (that is always the challenge isn’t it? Lots of great ideas, hard to pick?)

But this isn’t just about my proposals - is there anything you want?

You don’t have to be a coder, or have a design background or anything like that.

In fact, sometimes the best features / ideas come from someone going “I have no idea how to do it, but I just wish I could do x in my system”

We’re here to solve problems through collaboration - what’s your biggest problem or challenge when working with your website / online leads today?

[Morgan]

@Iggy

that can be saved and used for multiple new leads.
Explanation. Many new leads want the same search criteria- ski in- ski-out, backs to National Forest, a certain area map based search.
Please can we create custom searches and save them in a Saved Search Directory so we can attach that search to a new lead or client?

@Iggy - Andrew, can you not just do the search on the front end now, and just hyperlink it?

Not sure I understand how this request is different than just

Step 1: go to your IDX
Step 2: Do a search
Step 3: Capture the URL
Step 4: Paste / share it somewhere

Can you expand on this?

[pstaley]

“Readng the full post” is something we are used to but it would be good to do something different.

[judyorr]

Since you’ve got texting and are working on a dialer, would you consider adding voice mail drops? I use it sparingly but it would be great if I could combine it with a text/email campaign. There are several CRM’s that have all 3 of these priced around the same as REW’s text module.

[Morgan]

Hey Judy, we can certainly look into it. I’ll ask the phone team about it.

[Morgan]

Hmmmm @judyorr night have a problem with that one after all

[judyorr]

I’m already using it although I’m hoping that the programs I use will change it to ring once, as that is what I read the FCC wants - unless they don’t like that either. Most people don’t answer their phones anyway, but it’s so much easier to send out a few VM drops within a campaign of texts and emails. Also, don’t leads consent to us contacting them when they register? I don’t remember exactly what the registration says.

I realize I’m looking at this differently than the FCC, but these would not be unsolicited bulk robocalls. They would be going out in intervals to basically one lead at a time. Personally, when I see I have a voice message I don’t know if the phone rang or not as I don’t always check immediately.

[Morgan]

@judyorr

but these would not be unsolicited bulk robocalls. They would be going out in intervals to basically one lead at a time.

Can’t say I agree with this.

It’s an automated system (that is the “robo”) part.

If you want it to ring, then what happens if they answer? Chances are most realtors aren’t actually there and prepared to have a conversation they are dropping these in the hopes for a “call back” or a text that they can service when convenient for them.

It’s not a great user experience for the consumer either way (someone called me, I picked up, they weren’t there).

This might not be your exact use case Judy, but we need to consider the most common use case of an application, and that will typically be people will try to use this tool as a way to scale (mass voicemail drops).

I’ve done some more research, and even though there are companies out there that offer this service that does not make it legal. They are just likely too small to catch the ire of the FCC or haven’t been taken down “yet”.

I think we’re going to put this one on hold as it requires far more discovery and definitely is not a quick win.

Here is another quote for example:

Ringless voicemails are not legal. Unless of course, you had provided them with legal consent authorizing them to make telemarketing calls to your phone, which in that case the telemarketing company must then provide you with an easy mechanism of allowing you to opt-out at any given time.

[judyorr]

I understand Morgan. Like I said, I use them sparingly and never in bulk.