Windermere Solutions – tech spin off
Today at the National Association of Realtors’ annual convention, Windermere Solutions will publicly launch their first product, Agent Websites after spinning off of Windermere Real Estate. The company was built to create products that strengthen “the relationship between agents and brokers” and is the first of several more pending product releases.
Agent Websites was made available to Windermere Real Estate’s 7,000 agents last month and over 2,5000 have opted to set up their websites using the services, but the tool launches today to all Realtors, not just Windermere agents in an effort to help agents be as tech-savvy as empowered consumers are coming to expect them to be.
Windermere Solutions CEO, John Jones calls the product “modern, intuitive and easy-to-use toolset for agents.” In a statement, Jones added, “Our mission and focus is to help strengthen the relationship between the brokerage and agent, providing tools that add clear benefit in that value chain.”
Pros and cons
The Agent Website features include customization for branding, integrated property search “eliminating the need for a separate IDX feed of listings,” testimonials, unlimited custom pages, widgets for school information and the like, social media ready, listing history, photo galleries, email contact forms and custom flyer generation, search and listing save capabilities, and built in SEO.
The example Windermere Solutions provided was Windermere Northeast which appears to have the standard information consumers seek from a real estate website, but it is unclear whether it appears like a template because of how it is set up or if all of the sites appear this way. The design is modern but aesthetically leaves us desiring more.
Many agents will continue to invest in having a custom site built (like this), but it is certainly newsworthy that a real estate brokerage has spun off to provide all Realtors with tech tools, starting with simple websites that appear easy for agents to use.
hmmm
November 11, 2011 at 3:10 pm
hmmm…does anyone else feel that purchasing a solution from Windermere is fueling your competition? Yes, they are a seperate company but owned by Windermere.
meyers.drew
November 12, 2011 at 12:24 pm
I opened the example site linked in this article — and didn't even see a prominent search feature on the home page. Not sure why? 70% of visitors to agent/broker sites are looking for listings. If you want a site to actually WORK, you've gotta get them as quickly as physically possible into the search experience.
disclosure that i work for virtual results, which offers websites to agents/brokers