| ABC radio interview - What works on the Web? |
Charlie Gunninghan guested on ABC's 'Saturday breakfast with James Lush' radio show on 21st June to talk about how important proper web presence is for businesses these days. In a fast and furious 13 mninute discussion, topics ranged from 'why have a web site?' to 'how do you make money on the web?' to 'how can you promote your site?' Click the '>' (play button) below to hear a podcast of the interview... |
| 91% of home seekers go FIRST to the 'Net |
Thanks to all those that gave us their thoughts on your property searching and which web sites were important, and why. We had a great response, and among some of the results (more fully revealed next month), some highlights were: - Property portals (such as aussiehome.com) rate HIGHEST as the most used when search for property
- 2nd were real estate agency web sites, with press far behind
- 91% of people GO FIRST to the internet (portals and agency sites)
- aussiehome.com ranked HIGHER than realestate.com.au for the most used site
- TOP 3 factors in a real estate portal site are: UP TO DATE info, EASY TO NAVIGATE and FAST TO LOAD
- These 3 factors were ALSO the 3 of 4 main things people liked about aussiehome.com (the other being its WA focus)
Those that filled in the survey were a mix of aussiehome.com real estate agency clients (and non-clients) and users (the general public who use our site). We were amazed (and thrilled) by all the positive feedback, along with some extremely perceptive comments and suggestions. These have already spurned ideas in how we can develop. (Remember, you do not have to wait for us to survey you, for us to hear your ideas, criticisms and general comments!) The largest difference between you, our clients, and our public is that the public users of our site rank aussiehome.com as the best site while our clients rate realestate.com.au first with us 2nd. REIWA rated 3rd, Domain 4th. |
| New billboard campaign in action |
Our new look billboards hit the streets recently, as part of our ramped up promotional campaign for your favourite independent real estate web site : 
There's no truth to the vicious rumours that the recent rise in traffic accidents along Stirling Highway are in anyway related to drivers being put off by these images.
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| Recent Improvements |
In 2007/08 we have engaged in 31 major R&D projects which were aimed at improving the aussiehome.com web site and related systems. This was an almost 3-fold increase in innovation as compared to 2006/07. Improvements made in June were: - Hide on MAP option - for properties that do not map well (e.g. some regional locations, or new roads not yet passed into the official mapping dataset) you can now tick 'hide on map' and then Google Map will not appear on your properties
- Price Display as text option - you can now enter words to show up where the price would otherwise show, and this will feed to realestate.com.au (e.g. "Offers in the High $800,000s" or similar). A numerical price still has to be entered to get the property to feed, and to show up in price searches.
- Force feed to portals - ever had an annnoying 'misfeed issue' where a property does not behave itself on another site we feed you to? Just make sure you have followed all the 'feed rules' for that site, enter the ID number and hit the FORCE FEED button to boot it over to that site again properly.
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| Traffic Report |
Traffic continued to be strong throughout the month of June, and as reported last month, the STAT THAT COUNTS (the stat NO PRINT MEDIA can ever tell you) is HOW MANY TIMES WAS A PROPERTY VIEWED ? This is the stat we send to you every week, and the stat you can download from our 'Client Zone' at ANYTIME. Big/traditional media companies can only tell you their total viewership or distribution (but what good's that? how many newspapers or magazines do not even make it through the door? how many are actually read? how many actually SEE YOUR AD and PERUSE YOUR PROPERTY?!) Some properties on aussiehome.com (such as 'Properties of the Week') receive 500 or more views in a month, some over 1000. The AVERAGE views per property on our site in June was 138. And considering we had 8000+ properties on the site, that's a lot of views (about 1.1 million). You say that's our readership (in volume terms)... but what good is that to the price of fish in Denmark? |
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| Nine years on ... |
The aussiehome.com company turns 9 years young this month. According to health experts, 9 year olds tend to : become 'self-absorbed'develop physical powerbecome more interested in their appearance.develop an acute sense of 'fairness' (Source: Pedriatic Advisor, UMICH 2006) How true. Western Suburbs Weekly covered the aussiehome.com birthday in a recent edition of 'Residential' - click here to read the full article 
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| Winners of Prize Draw |
A dozen folks won prizes in our 'Phil in the Questionnaire' Prize Draw - half were clients of ours, half were the general public (site users). Congrats to the following 6 client winners - who will be receiving gift certificates or wine (your choice!) as well as ultimate fame and happiness... - Jasmine Swift, Mack Hall & Associates
- Fleur, O'Byrne & Assocs
- Karlene Johnson
- Emma Grant, ACTON Mt Lawley
- Louis Carr
- Jo Hughes, Pam Gray We'll be contacting you with news on your prize, and how to collect. And thanks again for ALL who entered ... |
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| 150,000th property - not far now! |
Annoyed you were not one of the winners above? Well, we're sure you don't harbour (harber?) grudges, and even if you do... We're only 500 properties away from the magic 150,000 number - so if you are the person that enters the 150,000th property that has ever been on aussiehome.com, you are set to win a HUGH HAMPER for your office (or just yourself, if you're that way inclined). As 500+ properties are entered every week, we're expecting this prize to 'go off' soon - so get entering, and good luck everybody! |
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