Nest Realty Web Site Update: A Behind The Scenes Look

We’re always working to improve our services to improve our clients’ experience at Nest.  We launched Version 1 of our web site in February of 2009 and, based on feedback from clients and agents, have been tweeking and improving our site ever since. On Friday, we rolled out an update of our site…including a fresh home page and some great new features.  Here’s the breakdown:

New Home Page
Thanks to our friends at Google Analytics, we’ve gotten some great feedback on who clicks where and what was interesting to our web users.  So, we’ve simplified the home page by removing a bit of content and focusing the home page on 4 major pieces…

1. Home Search – it’s the ultimate reason why people come to real estate sites, so we’re putting this even more front and center than it was previously.  (We’ll talk about these search options in a second…)
2. About Charlottesville – besides searching for homes, people want to know about the area they are searching, right?  We think so.  So, we’ve kept our ‘Area Guides’ accessible…making it easy for you to take a quick snapshot of our 13 Areas or dive in more if you’d like.
3. How’s The Market? – We wish this question was easier to answer now…but we’re still tackling it head on.  If you’ve read our blog, The Nest Report, you know we like to dig into the numbers.  But we’re integrating auto-generated monthly charts and graphs to give you more of a snapshot of the market.  (This is currently just a quick market snapshot, but stay tuned for some pretty sweet searchable graphs…coming soon!)
4. About Nest – We may catch a little grief from the web design gurus for putting our story front and center on the home page, but we actually think the belief system of a brokerage and their agents is important.  At Nest, we’re different.  And before you choose an agent, you should know a little about their brokerage and support system.  The video is 3 minutes and 47 seconds…maybe a little long for some…but if you watch it, you’ll probably know if we are the right firm for you. (And that’s a pretty good use of 3:47.)

Home Search Improvements

Ultimately, users on real estate web sites want to be able to search for homes.  We think search is done poorly on most brokerage sites. Most sites have one way to search and it’s clunky and not intuitive.  At Nest, we want to put the options in your hands – everyone searches differently and we’re aiming to offer as many search options as is possible.  We allow you to search by price, beds/bath, county, zip, street name, acreage, home type, mls number, area, neighborhood, and school.  And now, you can search by homes with price reductions and also by homes listed in the last 1, 7 or 14 days.  Want to search for 3+ bedroom homes, under $500k, in Forest Lakes that have been listed in the last 14 days?  Go for it.  Or how about condos in Charlottesville with a recent price reduction?  You can do that, too.

How’s The Market?

If you are selling a home in Charlottesville or Albemarle County, you probably don’t want to know.  But guess what?  We’re going to tell you anyway.  Our Market Reports section is in Phase I right now – just a quick snapshot of the Total Sales, Days on Market, and Median Home Price by City or County.  But, as we mentioned earlier, we’re expanding on this shortly.  Soon, you’ll be able to see trendlines and charts for these stats…and also search the charts for 1, 3, and 5 year charts.

We get asked a lot: why are you giving clients and web users all of this data?  The answer is simple: because they want it….and it’s helping them to make informed decisions when they buy and sell homes and investment properties.  The days of hoarding information is long gone.  At Nest, we believe in empowering our clients with the right information and guidance to help enable them to make wise real estate decisions.

That’s it for now (but definitely stay tuned for the next phase of Market Reports).  We’ve got some more plans to not only improve our web site, but the overall experience of our clients when they work with a Nest agent.

Market conditions aside, it’s going to be a fun next few months at Nest Realty.