Ideas for how to use disposable chat for your real estate site

“But I don’t want to install chat!” We totally understand. Sometimes services like Meebo (however great) are just another place you have to be available and monitor and you just want to walk someone through your site or host a discussion about local market conditions. Sometimes the chat feature is broken or down on your site and you need an alternative now. And sometimes you’re just a smart blogger and are looking for ways to keep people on your site for longer…

This article was originally published on April 28, 2010.

Enter nur.ph where all you do is tell it a URL you want a disposable chat for and you’ll get a new URL that is your site but with a chat popup. We’ve tested it and it couldn’t be simpler.

When you’re done with it and everyone leaves, it’s gone (so for accountability and documenting chat, it’s not so great), and you didn’t have to download or install anything. Also, you didn’t have to call IT to help you figure out a chat function.

Here’s how it works:

1. Go to nur.ph.
2. Enter the URL you want to chat on (it doesn’t have to be yours).
3. Copy and paste the new URL it generates for you into your browser.
4. Now you have a chat popup you can sign into with Twitter and share socially.
5. When you’re done, leave and it’s over. You can reuse the URL although it won’t have what you’ve previously talked about in the chat window once it’s closed.

Here’s what the popup looks like:

(click to enlarge)

Uses for Nur.ph:

A temporary chat popup would be ideal for a variety of uses:

• Help a caller with your website so you can see what they see.
• Host a guided scavenger hunt on your site and as moderator give clues and prizes. EX: “First one to paste the link of a blog article about a restaurant and paste a link to a listing of a house with a picture of a pool wins a $20 Starbucks gift card.”
• Do a guided real estate tour and call it something provocative like “real estate p*rn for people not in the market to buy” and do a tour every Sunday morning at 11:00am and provide links to listings from your IDX feed and ask questions about that week’s theme (10 sexiest eco-homes, 12 hot waterfront lots, etc).
• A practical use would be to guide a new buyer on how to use your search site for the first time.

My creative juices are flowing, are yours? What other ways can you see a use for a temporary chat on your site?

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Keywords: blogging, real estate website

Topics: Tech