As a real estate agent, you know all about relationship building and ensuring accuracy, accessibility, and availability of your product – real estate property.
Technology Solves Real Estate Agents’ Biggest Problems – Time and Efficiency
Imagine a world where neither you nor your fellow real estate agents had a digital footprint. Your real estate business would be based solely on traditional marketing methods like word of mouth, newspaper advertisements and other print media. Think of the amount of time it would take to keep listings up to date, accessible and readily available. How would information be shared? Would you be able to manage the maintenance, marketing, and MLS while showcasing and selling your product?
In the early 2000s, the process to maintain your listings and showcase your products was limited and inefficient. Technology innovation was introduced to support your business growth and allow more time and efficiency for you to sell and showcase your product. One such technology was IDX.
It was the need to minimize the time investment and increase efficiency for real estate agents who discovered the power of an online presence that led to the creation of Internet Data Exchange (IDX). Today, IDX continues to serve as the backbone of real estate websites.
Use of IDX Increases Your Brand Visibility and Credibility
What does IDX provide real estate agents? IDX refers to data exchange mechanisms used to power real estate websites. An IDX is typically comprised of data transfer protocols and data licensing fees. In other words, information is transferred from an MLS to your website at a cost; however, the benefits of collecting, storing and updating data in a centralized way outweigh the cost.
Imagine for a moment that keeping your real estate website current, accurate and accessible required manual updates of listings. Given the pace with which real estate is added or removed from the market, you would likely need a full-time staff working 24/7, monitoring the MLS constantly to keep up. If the information regarding your product is inaccurate, or worse inaccessible the result could be diminished trust in your brand and credibility.
Enhance Your Online Presence with Technology that Works FOR You
IDX acts as your 24/7 full-time staff, automatically updating listings on local, regional and national websites directly linked from the MLS. Have you ever heard of Zillow or Trulia? Those sites utilize IDX to connect with hundreds of MLS databases nationally. The data or property listings you see are updated constantly and yet remains centralized for consumer accessibility.
Use of IDX integration in your website can enhance your web presence in several ways:
- Automated creation of single property websites
- Increased search engine optimization due to increased page quantity generated by each MLS listing
- Branded website links for buyers and referrals to review
Additionally, there is the time savings that is resultant from maintaining listings on your real estate site automatically versus manually.
Choosing the Real Estate Web Solution that Enables Time Freedom
Most real estate website solutions require you to add on an IDX option. Our Agent LITE package option allows you the choice to enable or disable IDX integration in the creation of your custom real estate website. This means you can choose to manually update your listings or pay your MLS board’s data licensing fees for automated updates and IDX integration. The choice is yours.
Which choice will you make today? We suggest starting by choosing to manage your brand and create your online presence apart from your broker. Then, contact us to begin your website project with our Agent SITE team of experts and choose the package that either maximize IDX integration or minimizes ongoing IDX licensing fees.