Web-box | Estate Agency Websites

Blog

We continuously refine and add new features to our websites. See our blog posts below.

JAN 2020 15

WhatsApp Agents From Your Website

15 JAN 2020

Don’t you find it much easier to WhatsApp someone instead of calling or emailing? With 300 million users worldwide, WhatsApp is the most ubiquitous messaging service around. Since we want to make it as easy as possible for buyers to contact you, they can now WhatsApp your agents directly from the property page of your website.

WhatsApp agent from website property page.

This is now enabled for all our websites. As these messages can’t be logged in your admin consoles monitoring tab (as the texting happens in WhatsApp), we understand if you would like us to disable this for you - just let us know.

We hope this works for you, and you get lots of WhatsApp leads from your website.

Please contact us if you have any feedback or questions.

OCT 2019 24

Group Your Subscribers

24 OCT 2019

You can now group your subscribers and send a different newsletter to each group. Some people want to receive your newsletter, but not property alerts (or vice versa) or you might have an investor newsletter and a homeowner newsletter which you would want to send to different people.

Subscriber Groups feature in your admin console.

You can add or remove subscribers from any group.

Add or remove subscribers from a Subscriber Group.

Your subscribers are also able to subscribe or unsubscribe from any group themselves by clicking the link in the property alerts or newsletter email which takes them to the screen below.

Subscribers can add and remove themselves from groups.

We are sure you will love this new feature - please give it a try and let us know what you think.

Please note that newsletters are only available on standard and premium responsive sites.

SEP 2019 19

Track What’s Happening On Your Website

19 SEP 2019

Activities happening on your website can be tracked in the admin console by going to the monitoring menu dropdown. From there the principal can easily see what is happening on the website, what their agents are up to as well as website communications to and from their agents.

Admin console monitoring menu dropdown.

Sent (Records of emails sent by the agency using the website.)

Owner Emails - List of all Owner Emails sent from website - showing owners their property on the different portals.
Emailed Properties - All property detail emails sent manually from the admin console. (Not to be confused with Property Alerts.)

Received (Records of emails and SMSes sent through the website to the agency.)

SMS Agent - Logs of any SMSes sent to your agents. (If you would like to buy more credit at 65c per credit, please email us.)
Enquiry Forms - All Enquiry Forms completed on your website.
Property Enquiries - A list of all Property Enquiries received by your agents.
Owner Email feedback - Logs any feedback received from owners to the Owner Email that was sent.

Misc

Quick Notes - List of all notes made on properties.
Stats - Details a history of your website visitors, as well as where they are coming from.

We are sure by checking this tab you will be able to run your business even more effectively, allowing you to focus on getting listings and making sales!

Don’t forget that we’re just a phonecall away if you need any help.

SEP 2019 05

Bulk Upload of Email Addresses

05 SEP 2019

Did you know you can send us a list of subscriber email addresses to do a bulk import into your admin console for you? How easy is that!

We do this because we want to help you get your property alerts to as many people as possible.

The property alerts are an incredibly powerful tool for a number of reasons:

Enables buyers to be immediately notified whenever you have new properties for sale.
Enables you to present properties to hundreds or thousands of interested buyers.
They happen automatically - no extra work (phone calls or emails) or costs (phone calls) are required to get your new properties in front of all of your interested buyers.
They happen fast - go out automatically at 7am the day after the property is uploaded or you can send them immediately (see how here). Sending them out immediately is especially important if its an open mandate as it could mean you are presenting it to the buyer before another agent … and therefore making the sale!
They ensure that all of your interested buyers are notified - there is no human error where you or one of your agents could forget to present the property to a buyer.
Builds brand recognition - people know you are professional and active.

A property alerts email.

We have noticed that agencies that have great success with their website are often the agencies with a lot of subscribers. These agencies continuously add email addresses to their website subscriber lists.

By using the following 3 simple sources for subscriber/buyer emails you will be surprised at how quickly you can build up your subscriber list and increase your sales.

showhouses
when talking to potential buyers over the phone
from your incoming emails

And don’t forget you should be uploading all your properties to your website as soon as you get them - so that they can automatically be emailed to your subscribers.

Please let us know if you have lists to import by contacting us. We love hearing from you so if you have any questions please let us know.

JUL 2019 25

Save Your Properties As Drafts

25 JUL 2019

Have you ever wanted to start uploading a property but didn’t want to publish it on your website yet, or wanted to remove a property off your website temporarily? Maybe you didn’t have all the information, time or the property wasn’t yet on the market.

We are pleased to tell you that you can now do so with our new ‘draft’ feature. A property can now be saved to a draft before being pushed live on your website, or a live property can be moved to drafts thereby removing it from your website.

Save to draft from upload property screen.

Your saved draft properties will be accessible via the Properties dropdown menu.

Access draft properties from admin console.

So no more uploading a property when it is not 100% ready and no more losing work that you started but unexpectedly could not finish. We are sure you will find this new feature very helpful.

As always, we love to hear your feedback so please contact us.

JUN 2019 14

Call Directly From Quick Notes

14 JUN 2019

Our Quick Notes are a great “on-the-run” tool for agents to make notes on each property. You can record things like viewings, owner interaction and commission splits.

Quick Notes for a property with clickable phone numbers.

Now, while viewing a Quick Note on your phone you can click on any phone number and your phone will call it. No need to copy and paste or try to remember or write it down before typing it into your phone - this will be much easier and no longer so frustrating!

For a refresher on how Quick Notes work you can read the initial blog post.

Hopefully this is another way your web-box website makes your life simpler so you can focus on making more sales!

Please give our Quick Notes a try and let us know what you think.

APR 2019 29

Improved Search Function In Admin Console

29 APR 2019

We have refined the search in the admin console properties page by removing the general search box and replacing it with a search field for each column.

New search in the admin console properties page.

This was done because the previous search sometimes gave unexpected results. The new search addresses this and gives you more precise search results as it is limited to one column.

It also gives you the ability to do searches like ‘show me all houses in the suburb birch acres’ as shown below.

Multiple column search.

These filtered results can then be downloaded as excel, pdf or printed - enabling you to create multiple report variations.

Download or print search results.

As always, if you need further assistance with this (or anything else) please contact us as we would love to help.

JAN 2019 31

New Portal: PropBay

31 JAN 2019

We are excited to let you know that RentBay, one of the current free portals we automatically feed your rental properties to now has a for sale section for residential and commercial property - propbay.co.za

New portal.

We have enabled the feed so your for sale properties will automatically be copied to this portal. Like the other free portals, you don’t have to do anything - it happens automatically. The link to the property on the portal will appear alongside the other portal links in your admin console.

Link to Propbay in your admin console.

We hope you get great exposure from this new portal and would love to know what you think so please contact us.

NOV 2018 29

Feature Reminder: Document Management System

29 NOV 2018

We recently introduced a new document management feature for our standard and responsive websites. These documents can be either for your own internal use.

Documents in your admin console.

Or you can make them available for visitors to the website to download.

Documents on your website.

Click here for a full guide on how it works. If you would like this enabled, please contact us.

OCT 2018 03

New Feature: Send Property Alerts At Any Time

03 OCT 2018

Exciting news! You can now send property alerts yourself as soon as you’ve listed a property. No more waiting for property alerts to go out the next morning.

Property alerts are an excellent marketing tool to send your properties to as many people as possible, and now you can increase the chances that you will be the first person to present the property to buyers. This is very important in the case of an open mandate as buyers could be working with multiple agents in the area so the first agent to present the property to the actual buyer will get the sale.

After ticking the property alert box when editing or uploading a property, select this option in your admin console.

The list of property alerts to be sent is shown in your admin console.

It is important to keep adding as many subscribers as possible to your database by collecting emails at show days, email enquiries and other personal interactions. Please be sure that you only add valid email addresses and only add email addresses you collected yourself.

If you have a large list of subscribers you would like to add, please email support@webbox.co.za and we will gladly add them for you.

Please give this new feature a try and let us know what you think.

SEP 2018 06

Feature Reminder: Owner Emails

06 SEP 2018

Owner email example.

The owner email is a great way to let sellers know how hard you are working to sell their property. This email shows the seller what their property looks like on the various portals and can be customised with your own personal message to them.

Sending an owner email is easily done from your admin console and is sure to impress the seller.

How to send an owner email from your admin console.

If you have any questions on this please contact us, we would love to help you.

AUG 2018 23

Feature Reminder: Additional Users / Multiple Login Function

23 AUG 2018

Did you know you can add additional users with their own logins to your website’s’ admin console? This means agents can upload and edit their own properties, but not those of other agents. You set their permissions so you decide who can manage and view properties, agents, subscribers, the portal feeds, your website stats, enquiries and others tabs in the admin console. This will free up your time, as well as give you a good overview of your agents productivity in terms of how many properties they are uploading.

Manage users in your admin console.

The first 10 additional users each cost R21 + VAT per month, thereafter R16 + VAT per month. If you would like us to enable this feature for you please contact us

Please note this is only available for standard and responsive websites.

JUL 2018 05

New Document Management System

05 JUL 2018

Exciting news! You can now upload documents to your admin console to share with your team - no more storing documents in places nobody can find. This will save you hours of hunting around for the documents you regularly use in your business.

This feature also allows you to make documents public on the frontend of your website so your clients can download documents like rental agreements and tenant application forms. It's quick and easy to manage.

To access this feature, login to your admin console and select “Documents”:

Manage documents from admin console.

When uploading a document, you can choose to make it public on your website as a download, or keep it private for internal use only.

To make documents visible or not on your website.

Documents on your website.

To enable the “public” document function please contact us.

We would love your feedback about this new feature. (Please note this is only available for Standard and Responsive websites).

JUN 2018 07

Features - New and Existing

07 JUN 2018

It’s time for a quick update on a new feature and a reminder of one you might have forgotten about or are not using yet.

New - Webmail Link

We have added the link to your webmail mailbox to the bottom of every page of your admin console. Quick and easy to find:

Link to webmail in admin console

Reminder - Property Capture Sheet

This complete property checklist can be downloaded and printed so all information needed to list a property can be captured in one go - no need for any back and forth about items you might have forgotten to check. To download the capture sheet, follow the steps outlined in the pictures below:

Click on "downloads" in the admin console help section

Click on "Property Capture Sheet" to download it

Enjoy these features and if you have any feedback or questions we would love to hear from you.

MAY 2018 24

Match Your Banner To Your Corporate Colours

24 MAY 2018

You can now change the colour of the banners (for sale, to let, sole mandate) across the property pictures on your website to match your corporate colours.

Updated banner on property listing page

If you would like this to be done, just contact us and we will do it for you at no charge. Enjoy this latest improvement to your website!