PORTALS
per cent at the peak. But though there has been a drop in traffic, it hasn’t been a significant fall. Steve Lees adds, “There is still interest out there, and this year is comparable to 2010, if not a little up on last year.”
Overseas audiences Looking at UK portals of course the assumption is that you’re advertising to a UK audience. But for central London properties and the country homes market, that may not be the case any longer; overseas buyers have been the driving force in the market for some time. That gives another portal, Lucky
Wu, its opportunity. Sherry Madera, Managing Director, calls it “the Rightmove for overseas properties in China”; it launched in September this year, and has already scored over 100,000 visits in its first six weeks. She points out that it’s not just a
question of translating the content into Chinese; the portal also has to be promoted. “We are actively marketing to the right channels in China,” she says. “Agents marketing to Chinese customers don’t have many options, and Lucky Wu fills the hole.” Understanding the Chinese
customer is also important. For instance, most Chinese buyers prefer newbuild, though they are willing to consider resale properties in the right areas. Chiswick, Chelsea, the West End, and Docklands are all in demand – “by a factor of ten, there are more people searching our portal for London than anywhere else in the world,” Sherry Madera says. Unsurprisingly, given the bias to
new property, developers form an important customer base. For both developers and agents, Sherry Madera says, the portal offers more than just a listing; “We can expose their brands to the Chinese market,” which is very brand-conscious. Of course Rightmove could
translate its site into Chinese – if it wanted to – but it would also have to invest in advertising within China. That’s where Lucky Wu has an edge; its owner, Betex Group, already has a number of businesses in China, and Lucky Wu is a sister company to marketing agent
The assumption is that you’re advertising to a UK audience – but that might not be the case...’
uploads to PropertyLive, while the Independent Network of Estate Agents also operates a portal for its members. But INEA also works as an aggregator, uploading listings to 15 other portals as well as providing a property sharing system based on the US style MLS model – so agents are paying for more than a single exposure on one portal. That might be a model that gains increasing currency as the portal sector continues to develop. Vertical search engines such as
Nestoria and
Home.co.uk are another port of call for agents; they take feeds from portals or estate agents, or depend on indexing technology similar to Google’s, so as Doug Shephard points out, agents don’t need to do anything for their properties to appear on them. Andy Walden, at Nestoria, says
On laptops, PCs, netbooks and smartphones,
the portal battle is played out globally 24/7!
5 Continents Property. It’s a slightly off-piste idea, and
Sherry Madera knows “we need to convince people”. That’s why, she says, prices have been set at £100 a month for up to 100 property listings, including translation (human, not automated).
affinity grOups Many affinity groupings also have their own portals. For instance NFoPP members benefit from free
Lucky Wu, a new portal, is the ‘Rightmove in China for overseas properties.” sherry madera md, Lucky Wu
search engines offer a different approach from portals. “The job of a vertical search engine is to aggregate listings from a number of different sources, “ he says. “We want the user to find what they are looking for as quickly as possible, click on it, and so leave our site. At that point in the process, the role of the portal becomes important – to provide more information to the user, and the opportunity to contact the agent. The two services are clearly linked, but are also very different.” Nestoria works with a large
number of portals, who provide content under commercial agreements. That gives Nestoria a large number of listings, and ensures the quality of the content.
Home.co.uk searches the web for
its content. Doug Shephard believes that the portals have been hindered by having agents as customers, so they have not been able to introduce services that might compete with agents. On the other hand
PROPERTYdrum FEBRUARY 2012 23
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