Try a Google search in any market and you’re bound to see search portals like Zillow and Trulia dominating the results. There’s a simple reason why they are winning the online real estate game: users love their platforms.

The “map to the left, listing thumbnails to the right” portal-inspired design has become the standard—widely embraced by home buyers and sellers who have come to expect intuitive and seamless tools in all aspects of their lives.

As an agent or brokerage, it’s daunting to compete against search portal giants with multi-million dollar research and development budgets.

Until you remember their kryptonite: search portals cover every market very well but they lack your superpower: hyper-local content.

And that’s the opportunity. Here’s how REW can help agents and brokers regain search supremacy in three easy steps:

1. Set your sights higher

Don’t measure your real estate website against your local competition. They’re not up to snuff. Set your sights higher. Look to search portals as your benchmark. Be inspired by their innovations with IDX and take it one step further, because you have the ultimate advantage: local knowledge.

2. Leverage your hyper-local advantage

Research suggests 75% of millennials would rather work with a local agent as opposed to an online agent, displaying a strong preference for local insight and personal touch. That means brokers and agents hold a distinct advantage over Zillow: Agents are local. Search portals are not.

Zillow only offers basic information like price range, beds, and baths, but brokerage and agent sites can offer:

Expert knowledge of the local market and its history Rich community storytelling through photos and videos Hyper local, market-specific search features like drive time and property styles

Users demand this type of personalization, and agents and brokers are uniquely positioned to provide it.

3. To win back your users, be better than Zillow

To beat Zillow, you need to start with the portal-inspired search that users love, and then come over the top with your advantage: hyper local knowledge

Work out of Austin or Toronto where traffic is an issue? You can add the ability to search by drive time to work.

On the coast where your clients are interested in luxury waterfront properties? Allow users to search by that term.

To beat the portals, you’ll need to invest in a customized real estate platform that not only includes an intuitive search layout, but allows you to showcase the hyperlocal information that users crave.

Introducing: Discover by Real Estate Webmasters

Best in class front end design. Portal-inspired home search technology. Exceptional localized search. Designed by Real Estate Webmasters’ own Research & Development team, Discover will take eyeballs and leads from search portals, putting them back into the hands of agents and brokerages.

Discover’s rich feature-set includes:

Portal-inspired search, customizable to be refined by any home feature in the local MLS—something no portal site provides Cutting-edge and sophisticated design Virtual reality and 360 photo/video capabilities A fast, mobile-responsive, and SEO-friendly website framework The new REW CRM and REW Leads App

Want even more? Additional data integrations like Onboard Informatics, Inrix Drive Time, or nearby amenities are easily added to your order of the Discover platform.

With Discover’s user-driven design and exceptional localized search, agents and brokerages can finally take on Zillow and win.

About Real Estate Webmasters

Innovative web design. Exceptional SEM capabilities. High performance CRM. That’s how Real Estate Webmasters helps our clients generate the leads that convert into sales. And the results are nothing short of amazing. Come join the 60,000 other top real estate professionals in North America who have found success with Real Estate Webmasters.

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