That's right, today is Real Estate Webmasters' fourteenth birthday!  It has been yet another amazing year here at REW and, as I sit here on a plane bound for the T3 Summit, I have time to reflect on just how far we have come. More importantly, I get to feel the excitement of what I know is yet to come in our future! Here are some of the highlights: In the past year: Launched the industry's first 360 photo / video-enabled virtual reality website Launched REW Leads iOS and Android full platform Signed and launched #1 Team according to REAL Trends Largest RFP - 150 pages Largest Enterprise Customer - 10,000 users Largest Project - 25,000 development hours (I believe this to be the largest undertaking for a single project by any real estate tech…

Curious to know how you're doing compared to most real estate agents? We were too! Real Estate Webmasters has the pleasure of working with some of the best real estate agents in the world. Our clients are passionate, enthusiastic, and often quite successful. But we wanted to get to know the entire real estate population better, and have a stronger understanding of what the average agent looks like. To achieve this goal, we hired an independent market research company to survey 300 active real estate agents across the United States and Canada. These agents were then asked questions on a wide variety of topics to gain insight into their demographics, marketing activities, and technology investment. We thoroughly investigated what today's real estate agent…

Google told the world that it was going to transition to a mobile-first index in the coming quarters, and it looks like that time has come. Last week, Google announced that they have started to transition websites onto the new mobile-first index. Let's talk about what that means for you. What is the mobile-first index? Google has only ever had one version of its index, which is the database you're browsing every time you do a search on Google.com. This index is a super-directory of every website out there and Google maintains it using bots that crawl all the sites on a fairly regular basis. Historically, Google has crawled and indexed websites based on the desktop version of a site, browsing websites as if they were a person sitting on their computer.…

It's my pleasure to announce that REW's third winter release is complete and ready to be deployed! This mobile-focused update includes the formal unveiling of REW Leads for Android, a brand new feature for REW Leads for iOS, and new bug fixes for REW CRM. Let's break down each of these new benefits in a little more detail... REW Leads for Android is released Android users rejoice! We took REW Leads for Android out of Beta this morning and have officially released it into the wild via the Google Play Store. The convenient REW Leads mobile app is a companion to REW CRM (and 4.6+) that allows agents to work leads while on the go, using their smartphone or tablet. REW Leads is one of the fastest and most intuitive ways to manage leads, and it has quickly…

If there's one universal truth about Google, it's that their search engine and web tools are constantly evolving. Yet, until recently, one tool had remained the same for far too long. It's been a delightful change to see that Google has started to roll out big changes to its Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools) over the past few months, and it sounds like what we've seen so far is only just the beginning. Old Search Console: New Search Console: In addition to a sleek new look, Search Console's new Beta version shares info differently than in the past and has also amped up the notifications. Let's review some of the changes we've seen to Search Console and talk about what they might mean for your REW site. Increase in 404 alerts & other…

It's crowded. There's a lot going on in the online world, with a lot of voices trying to carve out their slice of the territory. It's easy to get swallowed up by all the websites, advertisements, offers, and noise. Yet, there are real estate agents who stand out from the crowd. They don't blend in. People know who they are and want to do business with them. Let's talk about how this can be you too. In today's post, we're going to share 5 tactics you can use to stand out online. 5. Invest in a mobile app for real estate If you really want to find a way to stand out from the competition, it's time to start thinking about mobile apps. This topic is a whole blog post in itself (literally), but it's worth mentioning again. When you get people onto your real…

One of the coolest things we've ever made at Real Estate Webmasters is the REW Leads app. Full disclosure, I'm the lead developer of REW Leads for iOS, but that just means I know how powerful it really is in helping real estate teams conquer their lead follow up. REW Leads was built with one goal: to make lead follow up faster and easier. That's it. That's all it's meant to do. But that simple goal is a ridiculously huge advantage for real estate teams that use the app properly. It means your team is connecting with people before your competition and staying in touch with significantly less effort. That's a beautiful thing. If that alone is convincing enough, let's talk about 5 more reasons your team should be using the REW Leads app: 5. Get push…

Disclaimer: Real Estate Webmasters is sharing these opinions based on our interpretation of WCAG 2.0 compliance guidelines. This does not constitute legal advice in any manner. We've dedicated this week of our blog to talk about the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 and how they apply to our clients' websites. So far, we've covered the two largest principles: Perceivable and Operable. Today we're going to talk about the last two principles, Understandable and Robust. The WCAG 2.0 guidelines help developers and content creators craft a web experience that is accessible for people with disabilities and beneficial for everyone else. In many ways, WCAG 2.0 follows the common-sense best practices we already see employed across the web. In…

Disclaimer: Real Estate Webmasters is sharing these opinions based on our interpretation of WCAG 2.0 compliance guidelines. This does not constitute legal advice in any manner. This week we're going to be talking about each of the Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) principles in further detail, to help you create websites that are friendly for everyone. We started talking about WCAG 2.0 last month in our ADA Compliance for Real Estate Webmasters clients post. If you haven't had a chance to check it out, it's a good time to go back and take a peek. We talk about the American Disability Act's role in website compliance, go through a quick overview of each principle with some examples, and ultimately conclude why an accessible website is in…

Disclaimer: Real Estate Webmasters is sharing these opinions based on our interpretation of WCAG 2.0 compliance guidelines. This does not constitute legal advice in any manner. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 is a series of recommendations that help make the web more accessible to people with disabilities. There is a wide range of conditions that impact a person's ability to use a website, including physical, visual, speech, and neurological disabilities. On Monday, we went into detail about the Perceivable principle from WCAG 2.0. Today, we're going to dive into the Operable principle and talk about how it helps make websites that are better for everyone. What does Operable mean? W3.org explains the Operable principle as, "User…