Blog
We continuously refine and add new features to our websites. See our blog posts below.
Happy holidays to all
Our offices will be open over the festive season (apart from the public holidays). However, our developers will be away from the 15th December 2021 to 10 January 2022, so if you want any updates done to your website please send them to support@webbox.co.za as soon as possible.
Development Listings
You can now upload a development to your site in the same way you would upload a property. You will find this new “Add Development” feature on the Properties dropdown in your admin console.
Doing it this way means you can create and update developments yourself without asking us to do it for you.
Much like the property pages, the development is displayed in a professional and consistent layout.
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| Developments will show as a menu item on your properties dropdown. |
The development upload page allows for images, floor plans, marketing brochures, videos, and show days. You can also allocate agents to the development.
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| Professional and consistent layout of a development page. |
Search by reference number
Visitors to your website can now use your website reference numbers in the search bar to find a property. See below.
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| Search by reference number in the search bar. |
Subscriber emails double opt-in
Earlier this year we set up double opt-in for all new property alerts and newsletter subscribers on our client websites. This was to be in line with POPIA requirements.
How it works is when a subscriber signs up or is added via the admin console, they receive an email with a link for them to confirm they want to sign up.
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| Double opt-in email. |
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| Non opted-in subscribers in the admin console, with the number of opt-in emails sent and the date of the last one. |
Updates to Lite Sites
We are always working hard to ensure we provide our clients with the best websites. To this end, we have recently upgraded our Lite Site template to include the following:
- An About Us Page (to enable please send us the text and a picture if you have one).
- An Our Team Page showing your agents (it will appear automatically if you have added agents via your admin console).
- A map on the Contact Page (we have set this up if your address was presented on the Contact Page).
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| New Lite Site About Us Page. |
Property Brochure PDF downloads
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| New property brochure interface in admin console. |
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| Brochure PDF shared on WhatsApp. |
South Africa unrest
We have all seen the looting and destruction of property in KZN and Gauteng, as well as the reports of the ongoing Taxi violence in the Western Cape. We empathise strongly with our clients and everyone else who has been affected and hope things get better soon.
We have been saddened to hear that some of our clients have had their premises looted, and we would like to help them. Please let us know if this happened to you.
Things do seem to be getting better and we at web-box hope the rebuilding across communities continues.
The web-box team
POPIA and Property Alerts/Newsletters settings
We have implemented emailing only opted-in subscribers by default as per our blog post POPIA and Property Alerts/Newsletters. This ensures that your website is by default POPIA compliant.
The agency principal can override this default through the settings page in the admin console. To remain POPIA compliant this should only be done if consent has been obtained from the subscribers.
Your admin console subscriber screen will now by default show the subscribers your website is set to email. You can toggle this view via the drop-down shown below.
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| Updates to admin console subscriber screen. |
Opt-in subscribers are those who signed up via the front end of your website or confirmed that they want to continue receiving these emails through an email opt-in confirmation like the 3 email opt in process.
To see how each subscriber signed up we have added 3 new columns to the admin console subscriber screen:
- website opt-in: signed up via front end of website
- email opt-in: opted in via email confirmation
- opt-in: true if website opt-in or email opt-in
If you have any questions on this please contact us, we are here to help.
POPIA Privacy Policy
We have updated your website with a POPIA Privacy Policy, which shows as a link in the footer. This was written by legal consultants, TVDM Consultants, who have been providing POPIA services to the property industry.
You have the option to override this Privacy Policy by sending us your own version. If you have already provided one, it will be kept as is.
There will be a further POPIA related post in the next couple of days. And in case you missed it, see our previous post about POPIA and Property Alerts/Newsletters.
If you have any questions please contact us.
POPIA and Property Alerts/Newsletters
POPIA states that from next month all direct marketing and related emails must be opt-in.
To adhere to this we will by default, from next month, only send Property Alert and Newsletter emails to subscribers who have signed up via the front end of your website (website opted-in subscribers). Not to subscribers who have been added via your admin console or you have requested us to add for you.
You will be able to override this default and send to everyone by checking a box to say that you wish to email all your subscribers and have consent to do so.
You can now see how many of your subscribers are website opted-in vs not at the top of your admin console’s subscriber screen.
If you want to try to convert admin console added subscribers to opted-in subscribers, we can send them emails asking them to opt-in to carry on receiving Property Alerts and Newsletters. This will be done by sending 3 emails over the next 3 weeks. Be aware that the conversion could be low. There will be a R500 + VAT charge to set up and run this process. Please let us know if you would like us to do this for you.
We will update you on further POPIA compliance for your website in the next couple of days.
If you have any questions on this please contact us.
Refer-a-friend policy reminder
We want to remind you of our ongoing refer-a-friend policy.
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| Refer-a-friend! |
If you send a friend our way and they sign up with WEB-BOX, both you and the friend you referred will get a 50% discount off your monthly subscription fee for 3 months. All your friend needs to do, for you both to benefit from this amazing offer, is to let us know that you were the one who recommended us.
We hope this perk will help you boldly share your love of web-box!
If you have any questions, please contact us.
Feed your properties to Facebook
Don’t forget you can feed your properties from your admin console to your Facebook Business Page. We have seen that this generates significant traffic to our client websites.
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| Admin console link to feed to your Facebook business page. |
You can easily keep track of which properties have been fed to Facebook via your admin console, plus click through to view them there. Just like your feeds to the property portals. Plus a link to the property on Facebook will appear in your Owner Email.
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| Admin console link to view property on Facebook. |
Feeding sold properties to Facebook is the best way to show that you make sales.
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| A sold property on your Facebook business page. |
COVID-19 link moved
We have moved the Government Gazette mandated COVID-19 link from the top to the bottom of all our clients’ websites. It looks a lot better there, while remaining fully compliant with the regulations.
We hope you like the change.
Please stay safe. Stay healthy. Be patient and kind.