giosg Blog

PropTech - does it ring a bell?

It’s a fact, as a traditional real estate player, you are already losing rentals, house sales and valuations to PropTech companies.

Much like in all other industries, technology is revolutionising the property space. New technology companies, free from legacy systems have started to pop up, ready to improve a dated, difficult and often daunting purchase journey

Fortunately, real estate incumbents are not yet at a Blockbuster, Blackberry or Kodak point of no return. Yet, it is no longer enough to post a house on Rightmove or wait for a potential seller to reach out to you for a valuation.

As an established player, you have the chance to catch the technology wave, you have the experience, the reputation, the customers- so why let new players snatch your hard-earned market share?

We've officially got under 2 months to go until the new GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) takes effect.

You've probably all got May 25th underlined in your diaries- gearing up to GDPR D day is all every business blog, webinar and publication seem to be talking about these days.

So why the need for yet another GDPR guide? Well, firstly and simply because a lot of our clients have been approaching us with GDPR concerns, and as the date draws closer, we anticipate getting more of these.

But more importantly, because after conducting some research, we found that a scary amount of UK companies are lagging in their prep, especially within the real estate industry.

And since we work with a lot of real estate agents in the UK, we thought this would be particularly relevant.

These days, most house hunters browse for properties online, and they expect to get a response from property companies around the clock, not just during office hours. We work with some of the real estate companies in the UK, including Knight Frank, Connells and Savills, so we were keen to get a greater understanding of the current state of online engagement in the British property sector.

To achieve this, we set out to analyse data from eight of those UK real estate clients, focusing our attention on the website visits of 2,710,592 individuals during a one-month period (May 2017).

The infographic below highlights some of the top findings and conclusions of this exercise. Whilst the data suggests that property companies are off to a good start, it also clearly shows that there is a lot more that they can do to be in sync with the needs and demands of their online visitors.

In 2015, Connells Group, one of the UK’s largest real estate groups – operating across a number of well-known UK estate agency brands, was looking for new ways to drive revenue from its websites. Their biggest revenue stream was the market appraisal bookings for properties but, at the time, website visitors could only book one through online forms or by phoning the estate agency branches directly. As both of these options required a high level of commitment from the website visitor, finding an easier option for the customer to get in touch seemed like the most natural way to increase the number of market appraisal bookings.

After some careful consideration, Connells Group decided to implement giosg solutions on a number of its brand's websites, enabling them to have a discussion with the website visitor via live chat. Eventually, this ability led to a significant increase in market appraisals. But adapting to a new way of connecting with customers wasn’t without its challenges.

Imagine a situation like this: You have just found a new home that you have been dreaming about for quite some time (Yay, great news! Congrats!). However, as this is not your first time moving it doesn’t take long before your excitement slowly starts to wear off as you realise how much stuff you need to get done before you can completely relax and enjoy your new place. Sounds familiar, right?

What if there was a way to make everything moving-related much more effortless? As mentioned in our previous blog, estate agents can connect with the end-customer in real-time with the help of our Network solution on the business partner’s site (e.g. on a property portal site). Similarly, the giosg Network also allows estate agents to offer their business partners’ complementary solutions (in the right context) on their website. More precisely this means that instead of contacting every service provider on individual sites, the customer can start a conversation with, e.g. a company offering relocation services while still browsing on the estate agents' website. 

From the business point of view, this creates a win-win situation for both parties of the partner network. The estate agent can generate extra revenue from collecting access and lead fees and the partner can boost their sales by converting visitors on estate agents' website into customers.

Doesn’t this sound like a good way of creating powerful network effects? And not bad for the overall customer experience either, eh? Then, here’s something to get you started!

In the past decade or so, the way people search for homes has changed drastically as more and more house-hunters now start their search by looking on one of the major property portals. Recent research in the UK showed that 47% of the population had used a property search website during the last 12 months.

Technology will undoubtedly continue to take away barriers to information, so that portal visitors have even easier and more efficient ways to search for properties that match their requirements. Innovations are also changing the role of an estate agent so that the real issue real estate companies need to address is how to be more responsive to potential customers.

Estate agents are apparently always looking to get more listings but how to find those seller leads on property portals? The answer is quite simple: try asking portal visitors if they already have a home that they need to sell before they can buy a new one.