Benson Koh, a Singapore Realtor - It's All About The Experience » PropertyGuru

Does PropertyGuru Deserves a Renewal on Premium Account After a Year?

Benson Koh — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 17:02:42 +0000

I’ve received an email reminder from Sherlyn, PropertyGuru to inform me that my premium account is due for a renewal next month.

Let’s recap PropertyGuru’s review that I’ve done donkey months ago on how it’s affecting my review to the service it provides for both agents and consumers. Since then, PropertyGuru has massively transformed from a new player in the property market place to a veteran with a huge spike in internet traffic.

The Positive Changes So Far

All the minuses that I mentioned previously in my article was taken care of (and I wonder does the PropertyGuru team actually reads my article, and if they do, good call )

+ AgentNet Login is being really obvious now with the big blue icon
+ Since I’m on premium, I have no complains with ~~their photos limit of 3~~ unlimited photo uploads limit.
+ New segments such as MarketPlace that allows more agent features, Wanted Leads that brings you direct clients with requirements.
+ Ask Guru still remains strong for property searchers to ask and for agents to showcase their knowledge.

Something New
+ SMS text message sent to your phone on enquiries by prospecting buyers, you get to call them right away. How’s that for customer service?
+ Listing of properties has became more friendly over the months, with new suggested search for condo listings, quality score, watermark feature and extending expire ads.

The Traffic War

First, let’s look at how much traffic it has picked up since the last review done a year ago.

PropertyGuru has breached the 150,000 Alexa rankings since last year and is top 40,000 sites of the world. It's a feat.

Even Alexa has changed dramatically with a facelift over the year. PropertyGuru has shed 120,000 ranks and is now at 39,000 (The lower, the better) ranked site in the world. PropertyGuru’s site penetration has one of the best for our locals, followed by South Korea, China and India.

The 3 reputated Singapore Property Portals (ST701, iProperty and PropertyGuru) showhand in Alexa’s comparison chart.

ST701, iProperty and PropertyGuru Shootout

PropertyGuru emerged the winner among the 3 sites, considering ST701 was the market leader previously (again it’s not fair to judge with ST701 being a portal which is directly competing with classified sites like 88DB and Mocca, which means PropertyGuru did considerably even better than expected)

Testimony from Benson Koh

It works, I’ve some deals that has been closed with fellow agent friends and direct buyers coming. Why do I know? I have premium accounts with most available effective portals that we’ve mentioned previously and I always do ask my leads on where did they get to know me to keep track the effectiveness Return On Investment (ROI) tool I have, PropertyGuru scores undoubtedly high in that department.

Is it worth to pay for a premium account?

Hands Down YES.

ps. Tsk, if you’re thinking that PropertyGuru is paying me for such a review, maybe that SHOULD

No related posts.

When Internet Property Listing Isn’t Selling For You

Benson Koh — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 17:39:57 +0000

Property agents (local Singapore agents especially) have this rookie mistake in web marketing; getting a website to list their property listings and not doing anything about. Most, especially the less internet savvy agents would be muttering to themselves on the few hundred dollars spent on companies who tried to market their listing products and just forget that they have an existing potential marketing tool that they haven’t exploited.

Photo Credit: CarbonNYC

What went wrong?

Imagine a television channel that has no one knowing its existence. The channel keeps rolling but there’s no viewership to support. No matter how good the variety shows, the movies or the entertainment channel is doing, no one is watching it at all.

Eventually the people that’s churning out the contents got tired since there’s no viewership to sustain the cost of running the channel; it dies.

The above is just a metaphor of what is actually happening with an agent just listing his/her properties online on their own website without letting people knowing its existence. No or very little effort is being placed to emphasize that they have a marketing site. Soon, they think that ‘internet marketing’ is a waste of time and stops updating their site completely.

The truth is, internet marketing isn’t as simple or as automatic as it seems. TARGETED TRAFFIC (note my emphasis) is the key.

Targeted Traffic?

People always argue the fact that traffic is the key to internet marketing. They’re only 1/4 right. The 3/4 that really and exactly convert sales would be targeted traffic that stays on your listings and actually read what you have to offer.

You can drive loads of traffic to your site. But without people actually browsing and giving what they are looking for, you’re simply again wasting your time and money, without any Return on Investment (ROI) that you have spent on your site.

So what if you have a personal MLS (multiple listing service) that has little to offer on information of your marketing property? They either

Leave your site in 5 seconds because it’s boring
Leave your site in 10 seconds because they can’t find the information they want in your site
Leave your site in 15 seconds when they realise you have nothing to offer, not even a photo
And not calling you because they’re either phone shy, or can’t even find a way to contact you through a online form even if they have keen interest in one of your listing.

What should Rookie Internet Property Agents do to Market Online?

Find Supportive Real Estate Agencies

We can’t underestimate the power of selling through internet now, so I would say it is absolutely necessary to understand the necessity of establishing a good online prescence. If you’re worried about setting up your own website for now; join existing agencies that could give you guidance on web establishment support such as Knight Frank or OrangeTee.

A Quick Start By Paying The Correct Channels

To get a quick start and bang for your buck spending on internet marketing for properties, start paying for subscriptions to PropertyGuru and ST701 where they have targeted traffic already established.

The audience that you are looking for are with the two market leaders of Singapore real estate portal at the moment. So spending about $1,000 a year on their pro subscriptions gives you an edge over people who’re not mulling over how much their pro accounts can do.

Understand what is SEO and ROI conversions before starting a personal MLS site

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Return On Investment (ROI) are basic and necessary terms to digest in internet marketing. They should be part of your ‘what’ and ‘how’ in converting relevant traffic into prospective leads and finally sales.

An SEO-ed site can drive the right people to look at possible relevant landing page and funnel them into a process to eventually contact you (we can’t convert sales that easily like selling an e-book online, but you can make the whole lot process easier for your potential client).

With understanding ROI, you can spend the minimal (or maybe just optimized) amount of money for maximum relevant exposure on your site to convert your readers into valuable leads which might lead to sales. The higher the ROI on the amount spent, the better.

I’ll touch more on these topics as I go by optimizing my site as an example of how to soft-sell and capture the correct audience to your website.

PropertyGuru Wins CNBC International Property Award

Benson Koh — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:46:47 +0000

Congratulations to PropertyGuru for winning an international Property Award from CNBC

PropertyGuru.com.sg Scoops Prestigious CNBC International Property Award

The results of the CNBC Asia Pacific Property Awards 2008 have just been revealed and AllProperty Media’s www.PropertyGuru.com.sg website has won an award in the category of “Best Property Portal Singapore”. The award will be presented at a glittering gala dinner to be held at the Marina Mandarin in Singapore on 20th July 2008.

Now in its 13th year, the International Property Awards are the largest real estate event recognizing the industry’s leading property professionals from around the globe. Hundreds of residential property-related firms from over 56 countries in Asia, Europe and Americas were evaluated by a senior expert real estate panel as part of CNBC’s annual International Property Awards process. In the case of the “Property Portal” category, firms were assessed against key criteria including Strategy and Website Design, Structure and Operation, Online Presence and Innovative Features, Breadth and Depth of Property Services, and Strength of Online Marketing.

“We have worked hard to build PropertyGuru.com.sg into Singapore’s leading property portal and are delighted to be recognized by our industry peers. It will spur us on to continue to innovate and provide even better service to Singapore’s consumers, real estate developers and agents.” said Jani Rautiainen and Steve Melhuish, co-founders of AllProperty Media and PropertyGuru.com.sg.

Having been given this high recommendation, PropertyGuru.com.sg is now entitled to display the CNBC Asia Pacific Property Awards’ logo with pride. This symbol of excellence will be recognised and appreciated by the public who are increasingly well informed and discerning about the properties they seek to buy.

Entries were judged by a panel of professionals whose collective knowledge of the property industry is second to none. Chaired by Eric Pickles, British Shadow Secretary of State, this year’s judges included Helen Shield, editor-in-chief of International Homes magazine; Peter Bolton King, chief executive of the National Association of Estate Agents; Phil Spencer, property expert and presenter of Channel 4’s Location and Relocation TV shows; Imtiaz Farookhi, chief executive of the National House Building Council; Christopher Hall, past president National Association of Estate Agents; Wilhelm Harnish, Master Builders of Australia (MBA); Thijis Staff, International Consortium of Real Estate Agents Association (ICREA); Santiago Herreros de Tejada, SIMA; Kirkor Ajderhanyan, French Real Estate Federation (FNAIM); Graham Norwood of the Daily Mail; David Hoppit, property writer; Paul Wyatt, head of design for LYCOS UK; Geoff Cohen, design director at Aukett Fitzroy Robinson architects; Jill Keene, editor of International Homes magazine; Diana Yakely, chairman British Interior Design Association; and Tad Zurlinden, Association of Relocation Professionals.

The award will be officially presented at a glittering gala dinner in Singapore on 20th July 2008 at the Marina Mandarin, attended by senior representatives from the international real estate industry.

About CNBC International Property Awards:

The annual International Property Awards recognizes the industry’s best residential property professionals from around the globe. Now in its 13th year, the awards have seen steady growth and the support team has grown from just two people to a team of 12 over the period and with entries from across the globe with firms representing 56 different countries. The awards are now established as the biggest in the world.

Winners from each country are re-judged and up to five are nominated within each category for the chance of being chosen as the Best in the World. In 2007 we held the grand final gala event at the internationally famous Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. Winning companies were also showcased at the world’s largest real estate professionals event organised by two of our sponsors – NAR and SIMA. 30,000 property professionals attended this in November 2007. In 2008 Gala events are planned for Singapore, Dubai, Madrid, London and New York.

The annual International Property Awards are judged by a panel of well-respected experts representing well-established professional bodies from different countries.

Now that’s another good way to bang your bucks for advertising if you’re a fellow Realtor.

ST701, PropertyGuru, iProperty Will Be Fighting For the Spot

Benson Koh — Sat, 03 May 2008 16:06:41 +0000

After the recent major huge Google Pagerank and Alexa Internet traffic rank update, it seems that these three online classifieds, ST701, PropertyGuru and iProperty are gaining grounds and should be fighting for a really good spot for Singapore Realtors to reach out to our local community for real estate listing.

And as of recent Mocca changes if you didn’t notice, they have already started charging for property and car ads. Makes me wonder when are they starting to charge for everything else.

Wish there’s a Gumtree, Olx or a Craigtree version solely for Singapore which is totally free and is pretty effective for marketing.

I’ll be trying the premium service for the above mentioned for a year to see the effectiveness, coupled together with my own expertise in SEO for this domain to bring REM (Real Estate Marketing) in Singapore to a new height.

Watch out for my review.

The Singapore Property Search – Review, PropertyGuru

Benson Koh — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 05:21:12 +0000

We continue our Singapore Property Search shootout on the next website, PropertyGuru.

Ease of Listing

Registration process is okay. It would be better if there’s a registration tab on top just for agents, especially the logging in for their “AgentNet“. Bookmarking it would seem to be the only easiest way to access the listing area since I can’t find the link to it on the index.

The AgentNet index is fancy. You can promote yourself by answering questions. I think Howard Teo (Dennis Wee) is doing pretty well as compared to the rest of the Singapore Realtors in this segment. Agents who’re knowledgeable can score well with queries coming from the public and leaving their contact behind so that they can clinch some new leads.

Are you a Property Guru?

Options to list a property are comprehensive, but you can’t seem to expire a listing. Also, some properties do have more than 3 bathrooms, I suppose they’ve added the + sign after people had feedback on it, but it would be nicer to add bathroom numbers to “4″ or “5″. It would be nice if people can add more than 3 photos to showcase.

Searching for a Property

Uh Uh. I’d be bashed, but it isn’t user friendly to me. I’d rather much prefer Myoochi‘s way of searching, at least with street or for a development. To each its own, but I wouldn’t be stereotyped or bogged by budget, the area, or the exact maximum price for rental or sale. To improve, maybe they would like to list down the areas in the districts rather than the district numbers (North/ West).

Plus Points of Listing

This is how it looks when you list it with PropertyGuru

+ Very clean listing, development details are listed as well (good for condominium listings, with the developer name and TOP date)
+ Allows potential clients to submit a form to contact you, with their email/ contact and their preference of contact.
+ Location map with amenities are listed by the sidebar. Great for potential buyers who’re interested in the particular development

Minus Points

- 3 photos limit isn’t good
- Premium listing are REALLY focused than normal listings. I understand when you pay you’ll get better features, but I suppose it shouldn’t be made so obvious. All the premium listing gets in front. My Sanctuary Green listing gets hidden in the pile of premiums without photos.
- Adding a video tour option would be good (though impractical at the moment)

Traffic/ Viewership

It’s doing better than Myoochi. One reason I can think of is it’s advertisements on the television. But is it the number one Property Search portal in Singapore as claimed by someone who actually gave me a call to register for the premium member (from PropertyGuru’s office) yet? Let’s see. *Compares.

True to some extend (those that I’m more familiar with), but very close fight with one which I will be reviewing soon. With such page views, you’ll get 200 – 300 unique visitors daily. From what I can see on the charts, their traffic is improving as well.

To hit expatriates or overseas market, I think SingaporeExpats is doing fantastic as compared to the search portals that I’ve seen. (In fact, the best).

Extra Features

The estate market data seems interesting. Also, the online valuation function is pretty accurate to how much a particular project cost now. Information about the different condominium projects and photos are here.

The site is tastefully done, but I’d say if it could improve on not focusing too much on Realtors that pay for their premium listing, it would fair better. (Not that I don’t want to pay to list, but with that kind of uniques in terms of traffic, it’s not worth my $50 per month just yet). Register here as an Agent to advertise your listing.

Rating: 2.5 /5.0 (Better viewer ship, but not worth the money to spend for membership for now)

Next…

iProperty will be next in the shootout.