| aussiehome.com wins SMART AWARD (again) |
Welcome to our all-new look monthly enewsletter - coming to you on as always on the 1st working day of every month since August 2004.  Big news right off the bat - for the 2nd year running, your favourite local independent real estate web portal (that's us) has taken out a national SMART COMPANY Award.
Hundreds of Australian companies are nominated for these Awards ever year, and last year we were one of only 3 WA companies to make the finals. Smart Company Awards are based on innovation, company growth, ethics, leadership, risk-taking and overall success of the business. At a ceremony on 12th September in Melbourne, we will find out where we are placed. |
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| New aussiehome.com web site goes live |
A cleaner, sharper, faster aussiehome.com web site went live in August. You would have seen how we have thrown out those flashy ads, and have also moved from verdana to arial font (like this newsletter). 
We've made the top search bar thicker and put more accent on our unique keyword search (enter anything here, not just suburbs or ID Numbers)... 
The search results page is much improved - you can throw results onto the map, refine the search, start again, add to favourites or sign up for alerts; and reorder the list using refine filter options... 
We've had great feedback from our users and clients. Thank you. Loads more features are coming soon... What's great about the web (and your site too) is how you can continually develop, tweak and adjust over time, bringing in new ideas. Anything you see on our site can be done on yours (we use our site as testing ground before offering them out to you). New ideas month>>- BLOGGING, Google Street View mapping, Refine tabs filters as on aussiehome.com... ASK US if you'd like to know more! |
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| Front Cover - WA Business News |
 WA Business News recently held a Forum for seven local online entrepreneurs, with Charlie Gunningham (MD, aussiehome.com) invited along.
Most attendees were in fact members of 'eGroup', an invitation-only mix of local e-entrepreneurs who meet regularly to discuss issues of common interest. Charlie is a co-Founder of eGroup. The discussion at WABN lead to a front cover featuring the aussiehome.com Managing Director (see right), and 7 stories in the paper last week. You can read the articles here. |
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| Street View mapping on aussiehome.com |
Sometime around November last year, Google sent cars all around Perth (and around Australia) taking photos of every street in a 360-degree direction. Each car carried 8 multi-directional cameras set in a roof-top globe. On August 5th this year, they went live with their 'Street View' mapping product, now part of Google Maps (go to http://maps.google.com and enter your address). The very next day, aussiehome.com had Street View maps on every property on the site. 
Discussion raged in the press (the traditional media love to bash online media when they can) raising the issue of privacy. Google have been very clear and reasonable in their responses (and were already in touch with privacy groups well before launch). You can ask them to wash out any image; and car number plates and people's faces are already out of focus. Zooming in on the house provides far less detail than photos of houses on real estate internet sites. It's a public place after all (the middle of a public road); but now you can virtually stand in front of the property and look around you. A flat 2-D photo can never do that. Already we have perfected the technology and are putting it on client sites. CONTACT US if you'd like STREET VIEW Mapping on your site (one off coding charge). |
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| LATEST INTERNET STATS |
Every month we will put relevant Internet Stats here for you: 1. MORE LISTINGS, LESS RENTALS Over the past 4 months, we've noticed a 3.5% increase in properties for sale - 
but a corresponding 7% fall in available rentals... 
2. DOOM & GLOOM? NO, BUT YES IN PLACES In response to last months' 'Is it really a doom and gloom market?' question, we had a variety of opinions. While most agreed that any talk of 'crash' was very much 'media-driven' and you wished they'd all shut up about it (!) some of our clients agreed that in their areas property prices had fallen 15% or more, and if that's not a crash, then what is? 3. AUSSIEHOME.COM #8 IN COUNTRY (Nielsen) In more Stats news, we were delighted to see aussiehome.com make the TOP 8 Residential Real Estate Portal List in the latest AC Nielsen research for July 2008. This list is by traffic (unique browsers, page impressions and total time on site), and for a niche portal in Perth to make the Top 10 nationally is amazing. The list (remember, this measures national figures, and some sites here are State-specific only) can be viewed here (opens BLOG web site, PropertyPortalWatch.com). |
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| LATEST INTERNET ADVICE |
Every month, we will put snippets of advice and guidance here! 1. PROTECT YOUR DOMAIN NAME! Every month, we hear of someone who's site (and emails) go down because they have let their domain name expire. Don't let it happen to you! - Do you know which domain names (web addresses) you own?
- Do you know when they EXPIRE?
- Do you know how to RENEW them? and how much they cost to renew?
- Do you know where to buy new ones? and how much they cost to buy? Any answers 'NO', please contact Charlie - he can help you find out. 2. DON'T WANT THE MAPPING (OR STREET VIEW) TO SHOW? Sometimes, you do not want to show where the property is (a bit of a problem when our site has been map-based since day one!). We will soon have TWO new tick boxes to help you - on any property, you can hide the street view mapping and/or all the mapping (including travel directions) on our site. At the moment, you can hide on map only... 
Have a great September (it's SPRING!) and if there's anything we can do, please let us know. |
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