We Like to Move it, Move it
Welcome to the all-new Real Estate Webmasters website!
Well, ok. Not entirely new. You may or may not have noticed the changes and that's because they were largely on the backend. We moved our site over to our own Renaissance platform and we want to share with you all the exciting features and improvements that we've packed into our newly renovated home (many of which are available to you if you're already a Renaissance client).
So without further ado, let's dive into the details and see what's in store!
Why the Move?
You might be wondering why we decided to invest over 1,000+ hours in migrating our website away from the old framework to Renaissance.
Well, here are some of the main reasons why we made the very-worthwhile move:
Improved Performance: Our new website is built on Renaissance, which comes with the best Web Performance Optimization (WPO) features around. This means our site is now lightning-fast, ensuring a smooth browsing experience for our visitors and improved search engine rankings.
ADA Compliance: Accessibility is important to us, and Renaissance comes with built-in ADA compliance features. As a Canadian company, REW is not bound by the Americans with Disabilities Act, but accessibility is a core design principle of ours and something which we are committed to delivering for clients.
And on top of that, it just makes sense! Why wouldn’t you want more people to be able to use your site?
Content Overhaul: With 19 years of history, REW has accumulated a lot of old content, pages, and media on our site that needed to be cleaned up.
Our team has worked to cut irrelevant content, update useful content, and add a bunch of new features. This is an ongoing process, but one made easier and more impactful by the fast and functional platform on which it is based.
Exciting Features of the New Website
Now that we've covered why we made the move to the new site, let's take a closer look at some of the exciting features that you'll find on our new website:
The "Edit Page" Button: This might seem like a small detail, but for our team, it's a game changer! With thousands of pages on our website, finding the right page to edit in the backend used to be time-consuming. But with the Renaissance "Edit Page" button, we can now jump to the page editor directly from the page itself, saving time and reducing frustration.
Insertion of Schema markup: This feature really opens up some exciting possibilities for those with a more technical SEO focus. Renaissance allows users to insert code directly into the head section of any page, making it easy to add schema markup that normally requires special access to that section of the page’s code.
New CRM features: As we're also moving to REW CRM, our automation workflows are even more powerful and efficient. This particular step involved leaving third-party vendors Salesforce and Pardot behind. A big move, but well worth the effort. We can now continue to iterate and improve on our own CRM to the benefit of ourselves and our clients.
Improved Blogs: We've made several improvements to our blog, including separating the page slug from the title and adding more configuration and SEO options. These improvements make it easier for our users to create and optimize their blog content for maximum impact.
Moving Custom Features: We've also migrated our must-have custom features from the old website to Renaissance. These include proprietary tools like the Commissions Calculator, which is a front-end tool for consumers to calculate their PPC ROI, and our PPC Keyword Generator, a proprietary tool which we use to auto-generate keyword lists based on data from hundreds of thousands of keywords.
A Jet Engine
Aayaam Kapoor, REW's Vice President of Product & Agency, had this to say about the project:
"Our business mandate was very clear - build the fastest, most accessible, SEO friendly website out there BUT keep our original design, configuration and content as is. In simple words, let’s put a jet engine under the bonnet of our car that we already love so much. Luckily for us, we just happened to have such an engine: our award winning Renaissance platform. 12 weeks later, I am glad to say that our teams pulled it off and built this incredible website."
Exciting Times Ahead!
With our new website live on Renaissance, we're looking forward to an exciting future at Real Estate Webmasters.
We're proud of the improvements we've made and the features we've added.