RealBird Blog

New Property Slideshow Widget Launched

We just updated the RealBird single property slideshow widget: Instead of the legacy Flash player, the new version is now using HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript to automatically create a beautiful slideshow for your listings on RealBird. It is now compatible with Apple's iOS and with most modern smartphones and desktop browsers as well, including the old but still in use IE7. See a few examples below:

Example 1:

Example 2:

Example 3:

How to get yours:

The existing "Slideshow" link on the Listing Management page will bring up the new slideshow code generator. Similar to RealBird's Craigslist embed code generator, it lets you set some options and preview and generate the code for as many versions as you wish. For this particular RealBird widget, the width and the height are the customizable options currently.

We suggest to use the maximum width of 800px and maximum height of 600px and do not create smaller slideshow than 300/300 pixels. But again, you can preview your settings before you post your slideshow code on your sites, so go ahead, log into RealBird and generate the code which fits your requirements. Here is an example screen of the RealBird slideshow editor:

Here are few things to remember :

• Your slideshow widget is cached for 5 minutes for performance reasons. In other words, it may take up to 5 minutes for your changes in RealBird to appear on the slideshow.
• You can upload unlimited photos for your listings on RealBird, but the slideshow widget rotates the top 30 photos only - again, for performance reasons. 
• Works in most major browsers including the still in-use, but really old version of IE 7 and 8. The slideshow should work identically in the rest of the browsers as well including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, IE 9 and also on modern smartphones.

These slideshow widgets are automatically generated for your properties in RealBird. Just simply publish your listing as usual and the ever growing visualization goodies are instantly generated for you.

Enjoy !

-- The RealBird Team
http://www.realbird.com 

Big numbers: 1,007 mobile real estate sites in 2 weeks and over 100,000 property websites since the beginning

Just in two weeks, over 1,000 mobile real estate websites were created on RealBird. That's more than amazing. Thank you all for making this happen !

In the meantime, another milestone has been reached. Actually it was passed without us noticing it a few days ago. We are pleased to announce that the the 100,000th RealBird single property website was created on March 13, 2011 6:24AM. The current count is now at 102,478. It's been growing fast ever since. This count includes both US and Canadian listings.

Over the weekend, we also launched a new feature for the mobile real estate websites. Besides your active properties, your mobile website now shows your pending and sold listings as well. If you had an active listing published via RealBird which is now pending sale or was sold recently, you can change its status through the Edit page. It only takes a few clicks. It will  not only show up on your mobile site under the Pending or Sold category, but doing so will also imrpove your SEO: by maintaining that page for longer period of time and via the cross promotion with your listings that are currently on the market. 

Stay tuned, more updates are on their way...

Thanks again for all of the RealBird members who made this happen.

-- The RealBird Team
www.RealBird.com 

Mobile real estate websites for smartphones and tablets launched

We are very pleased to announce that the first version of the RealBird Mobile Website is now available for RealBird PRO members. 

Features and compatibility

• The RealBird Mobile Websites are optimized for smartphones and tablets that support HTML5 and CSS3 
• Branded for you
• Your own vanity web address
• Shows all your RealBird listings
• Single QR code for your mobile website
• Shows your photo profile with link to your outside website, blog.
  Your clients can call you simply by tapping on your phone number
• Your recent blog posts are automatically showed under the "Real Estate News" section
• Built-in inquiry tool for your visitors to schedule showing and request more information on any of your properties

Below are the platforms that the RealBird Mobile Real Estate website is compatible with

How does it work?

The RealBird Mobile Website is available for RealBird PRO members. Existing PRO members can log in and reserve the city domain name by following the onscreen instructions. It takes less then a minute and your mobile site is up and running. The QR code is automatically generated for that Url and is ready to be used.

For new RealBird members the steps are easy as well:

1. Register / Login at RealBird.com
2. Upgrade to PRO - upgrades are instant via PayPal or call us for alternate payment method
3. Visit the Mobile Site tab on the top blue navigation bar 
4. Create your Mobile Real Estate Site instantly by reserving your domain name. Just enter your subdomain in the textbox, hit submit and if the vanity Url is still avaiable, it will be reserved for you instantly
5. Head over to the Listing Management section and start adding your current, active for-sale and for-rent listings. It takes only a few minutes per listings to create stunning listing presentations with syndication, single property websites, Facebook Listing Pages, social media sharing and now with mobile real estate marketing. 

Well, we hope you like it. Domain names are first come, first served, so head over to RealBird, log in and follow the on-screen instruction to get started. It only takes a simple form submission to reserve your domain name and your mobile real estate website will be created instantly. 

-- The RealBird Team

 

Real estate property websites on mobile devices

Did you know that RealBird has been providing an iPhone optimized presentation for your property websites since 2007? Chances are, not many of our new members know that the RealBird single property websites render differently on iPhone than on regular desktop browsers; mainly because we did not promote this feature much. We had a few recent discussions with some of our members regarding adding more support for mobile listing presentations and the time has come to put priorities on these features. 

We will post a poll on our Facebook Page shortly to see which smartphones do you want us to focus on.

There are two segments of users to consider: 

1. Supporting the majority of smart phones that consumers use who may end up looking at your listing presentations on their mobile devices and 
2. Supporting the platforms that are widely used by real estate professionals who could benefit from these mobile features at listing presentations

Below is a pie chart that shows the distribution of the mobile devices used to access the RealBird single property websites in the last 90 days (I assume the chart represents mostly consumer traffic)

 

As expected, iPhone and Android rules the pie, followed by Blackberry. There is nothing surprising here, but it's worth noting that Blackberry is either 1) less used by consumers or 2) less used for browsing for homes for sale or 3) both. Also, Clicky did not show any stats for iPad, I am not sure why, not even one view over a 3-month period and I am sure there were some (like myself). 

There is no special link or action that is required to see the special iPhone version of your listing website. The same Url will render the user interface differently on an iPhone and on a desktop browser. So if you have an IPhone, just pull up your regular RealBird listing websites (e.g. email it to yourself) and see the iPhone layout.

So here is the poll question: Which smartphone do you use?
Just add as a comment here or on our Facebook Page

Thanks !

RealBird.com

See your RealBird property websites traffic data on your iPhone

Clicky - our favorite web analytics service - released an iPhone version earlier today. As you may know already, the RealBird Listing Publisher single property website builder and syndication platform integrates with Clicky allowing you to have a detailed view of how your property websites perform online. With this new release, you will be able to see your property website statistics using your iPhone (and iPod Touch). Even better, you can show it to your clients and at listing interviews for new sellers. Together with the iPhone support of RealBird, you are now able to demonstrate your listings and the web analytics information as well, without ever having to open and boot your laptop again.

To get started:

1. Create a RealBird single property website


2. Create a Clicky account


3. Add Clicky to your RealBird service. Instructions in the member area (Visitor tracking)

-- Zoltan
RealBird.com