New ‘Help?’ Links

As you navigate through the back-end of all your Sequoia pages to alter Settings, create site pages, set-up forms, run reports, or track deals – you’ll notice the new Help links next to all page headers. Each Help link is set-up to direct you to the corresponding page of our interactive User Guide. Each section will explain how to effectively use and leverage a specific Sequoia tool, feature, or general functionality.

It’s very important to us that all of our client’s are able to easily and effectively use all that Sequoia has to offer, so we are always open to feedback on the system’s ease-of-use. Please contact Client Support for any suggestions, comments, or questions you might have- we’re here to Help!

New Lead Report Interface!

Our development team has given the Lead Reports function a nice face-lift for 2012…here are a few changes you’ll notice:

1) In addition to the line graphs previously shown you will also see bar graphs within, representing each Lead Creation Type (i.e. Modal, Dynamic Form, Inquiry, etc.) and Lead Type (i.e. Buying, Renting, Selling, etc.), depending on what you choose to filter.

2) You now have the ability to mouse over your Lead Type sections and dates to see a quick ‘total’ pop-up.

3) If you choose to filter by a date range that’s too large for the screen to show, you can easily navigate back to previous weeks, or view a condensed graph of the entire range.

4) If you choose to Group your Leads by ‘Total’, Sequoia will generate an dynamic pie chart, giving you a digestible view of how the Lead Types break down as percentages of your total.

We hope this helps- let us know what you think!

Attend a Weekly Training to Learn More About Leveraging All Of Sequoia’s Benefits

Crispin Richey wanted a great looking website to leverage and build his own personal brand, while staying aligned with Sotheby’s trademark attributes. Built out of his brokerage parent theme, we were still able to produce a site uniquely tailored to Crispin’s personal taste and needs.

Any agent at any brokerage we serve can use the parent theme at no additional upfront cost, just like it was a Standard of-the-shelf theme.

The icing on Crispin’s cake? His parent brokerage has a fully customized Sequoia website design!

Learn more about Boston Logic’s award-winning website design options or contact us for a free consultation

Michele Monti, Century21 - Standard Theme

Home Run Realty - Personalized Theme

Realty Executives - Standard Theme

Visit our interactive User Guide for help leveraging the LogicLeads CRM or sign-up for a weekly refresher training! Our Webinar trainings are Tuesday’s at 10am and Thursdays at 2p.

LogicLeads Enhancements

We’ve added an icon on the lead’s details page that indicates if the lead has opted out of Daily Email Updates – very helpful for making sure you don’t accidentally send emails to a lead who has opted out. We’ve also added the ability to turn on a Captcha for the Sign Up and Contact pages on your Sequoia site – this is to prevent spam signups, and it works extremely effectively. We use Google’s reCaptcha, the most trusted and widely used Captcha tool on the market.

We’re also now tracking the Luxury Building or Development that a lead is captured on when they sign up through the modal window on the property’s details – this information is displayed in the lead’s History. In addition, we’re tracking the CMS page or sales Town Page that leads sign up on and showing that info in Lead History as well. What’s more, we are now tracking and showing the search terms that leads used to find your Sequoia site – a great way to see how effective your online marketing campaign is and what your leads are really after when they first come to you!

MLS Updates

In addition to the Lead Management enhancements, our dev team has completed an update to the MLS.
Sequoia users will now see that MLSPIN listings are showing full details on the front-end of their site for logged-in users.

MLSPIN now allows us to show all listing data to leads who are logged into their accounts – so we have added the full suite of info to property details pages in order to give the most info possible to users of your Sequoia website.

Stay tuned for more great Sequoia feature updates, and contact support for any questions you might have!

Boston Logic’s development and design teams have been working on some key Sequoia System performance and feature upgrades that will propel our clients’ business into the new year. Here’s just a portion of what you can expect from the latest release:

LogicCMS (Content Management System):

◦    Trigger the Modal Lead Capture window on any page
◦    Export Dynamic Form submissions in a CSV file
◦    Enter a default page description for your meta data

Having the ability to trigger the Modal Lead Capture on any page within your site gives you yet another way to build lead acquisition mechanisms. If there’s content that users want to read or see on a page, you can ask them to sign in before accessing it. It’s also great functionality if you want to restrict special content to registered users/leads. Since Sequoia is able to track which page each lead signs up on, you now have better intelligence about that lead (i.e. what they’re looking for and specifically which types of content they’re interested in). This will only help you nurture a better relationship with that lead in converting them into a loyal client.

The added export tool for Dynamic Forms functionality lets users generate downloadable summaries of form submissions through the site. Jonathan Ufland, a new Sequoia user and Broker at Prudential Unlimited Realty, commented on the new tool,

“I love what you did on the export for dynamic forms. It works fantastically and will definitely help us with the adjustment to the new system.”

New Search Improvements:

◦    Allow leads to create a ‘Daily Search’ email from the sign-up modal
◦    Property Details and Search Results now show the neighborhood for a property in the address

We’ve added an option to the lead signup modal to automatically create a Daily Email Update from the search the lead just performed. There is now a check-box on the modal signup window to automatically create the daily email update. We save the search with the name “My first property search” so you and your clients know which search was saved during modal lead capture.

Property Details and Search Results now show the neighborhood for a property in the address section – this not only gives a more precise description at a glance, it puts valuable information on the location of the listing right in the H1 tag for the details page – this is GREAT for long-tail searches.

Social Media Updates:

Our Share buttons for all pages now share the page you are on, not just the homepage for the site. We’re now automatically adding a Share tool to property details pages if your site does not have the Share tool shown in the header. Also, Brokers now have the ability to edit any Sequoia blog post, not just their own blog posts.

System Performance Upgrades:

If you’ve noticed your search results, Town Pages, Luxury Buildings and MLS property photos loading even faster than they did before – it’s not the holiday madness setting in, it’s really happening! Search engines take page load speed into account when ranking your pages in their results. So, if you want to rank higher in Google, having pages that load faster will help you achieve your goal. Our development team regularly dedicates resources towards making all of our sites load faster – just one of the benefits of being on the Sequoia website platform!

For more information about all of Sequoia’s great features and functionality, check out our interactive User Guide or attend one of our weekly refresher trainings

Chicago Real Estate Artists

They came to Boston Logic ready to start a new brokerage, and needed a new website which could be up and running fast and on a budget – and they wanted the look to be as sophisticated and quintessentially Chicago as possible. For brokers and agents who need quality design work fast, we have just the thing – our Personalized Theme design option. Starting with any one of our already outstanding ready-to-deploy standard design themes, the Personalized Theme process lets you change colors, fonts, and images to make the theme match your existing brand collateral, or simply just make it suit your individual style. Within a matter of only a few days, Boston Logic worked with Chicago Real Estate Artists to make their new Sequoia website platform a visually compelling part of their brand identity.

If you are on a budget but want top notch visual impact, or need to launch a new site that speaks to your unique aesthetic in a hurry, our Personalized Theme design package might be just the thing for you. Contact us today to learn more!

The result is a stylish and easy-to-use website with an attractive user interface, plus all the tools Spark Realty Group will need to capture leads and close deals.

In addition, with the busy schedule of a brand new real estate company, Spark knew that creating unique, search engine optimized content for their new site would be a daunting task. Fortunately for them, Boston Logic offers content creation at levels from the very basic all the way up to highly comprehensive packages such as the one Spark Realty Group opted for. In addition to creating content for the basic pages of the site, such as the property search pages and contact forms, our marketing department filled Spark’s new site with original and optimized content about the neighborhoods they serve, as well as a large  number of Boston and Cambridge luxury buildings which the Spark team focuses on in their boutique high-end firm.

Only a few brief meetings between our project management staff and Spark’s core team were needed for Boston Logic to take the wheel of this project and craft a handsome, feature-rich website loaded with quality content.

We wish Spark Realty Group all the best as they continue to grow and succeed in the lucrative Boston real estate market!

If you’re interested in learning more about how the Sequoia Website Platform could be designed to meet your needs, sign-up for a no-pressure demo! We host one every Wednesday at 2p EST.

CALLING ALL LOCAL REAL ESTATE PROFESSIONALS…

This one-day, fast-paced program will prepare you to leverage the latest technologies in your daily lives with expert training from some of the industry’s leading speakers. Amongst these industry leaders will be Boston Logic’s President and Founder, David Friedman, who will sit on a Social Media Insights panel with Matthew Shadbolt, Director of Interactive Product & Marketing for The Corcoran Group, and Heather Allen, Director of Sales and Marketing at HubConnected.

Inman Agent Reboot will take place on the 3rd Floor of the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, MA from 9am-3pm (registration begins at 8am). We’ll be handing out a ton of candy and good advice, so be sure to register below and come visit us at the Boston Logic table!

Topics throughout the day include:

• 15 Mobile Tools That Will Make You Stand Out
• Developing a Content Strategy That Sells
• Social Media Insights – Making the Smartest Investment of Your Time
• Capture Consumers’ Attention with Video
• Getting Down to Business: Optimizing Online Lead
• Lifestyle Branding: Why it Matters

BOSTON LOGIC IS AN EXCLUSIVE ASSOCIATE SPONSOR
This means we are able to offer our constituents a special discounted rate!

The Findings…

Boston Logic looked at all Sequoia users in one MLS and compared them to other real estate agents in the same MLS. The numbers told a clear story. On the buy side, Sequoia users average 33% more trans-action value than the average buyer’s agent. On the sell side, Sequoia agents sell 46% more real estate!

Our Method…

Using MLS PIN data in Massachusetts, we first looked at agents who have actively worked helping buyers in the past 12 months, closing at least 1 buy-side transaction in that period. We then compared this group of agents to the agents who use Boston Logic’s Sequoia platform. The average buyer’s agent total transaction value (summed prices of all homes sold) for a Sequoia user was 33.1% higher than the average agent.

A similar process was followed for real estate agents working with sellers. Analyzing over 54,000 transactions in the past 12 months in Massachusetts, the average total transaction value for Sequoia agents working with sellers was 46.3% higher than the average agent who had done at least 1 seller-side transaction. Boston Logic has more clients who work with MLSPIN than any other MLS. Thus, their data made for the largest sample set available.

Sign up for a no-pressure demo to learn more about how the Sequoia Software System can propel you and your business online

Design

We’ve added the ability to use custom fonts in any of our design themes. We no longer have to be tethered to the “web-standard” list – by embedding custom fonts, we can now use whatever typeface you want in designing your new site. This lets us match the font on your Sequoia website exactly to your offline collateral, and means that you are limited in style only by your imagination.

Social Sharing

In addition adding the LinkedIn share button (which will also now be tracked in Google Analytics), we combined  all social media share buttons (Facebook, Twitter, Google +1, and LinkedIn) to display in a “tooltip” as a single “Share this Site” or “Share this Page” button.This will help conserve some space (at the top or bottom of your site’s home page), giving your social sharing tools a more organized appeal.

We also added a field in Social Media Settings which allows you to set your own default Twitter hashtag; when your leads tweet content from your site, the hashtag you set is automatically added to the message!

QR Codes

We’ve added QR codes to the printable listing sheets and showing sheets you can create on the back end of your website. These link directly to the property’s details page on your website – so you can hand out printed materials that help drive prospective customers to your site.

Town Pages Update

We’ve updated Town Pages to allow you to show off listings on which you were the buyer’s agent; now you can highlight your sales on both ends of the process with a single checkbox.

LogicCMS – 301 Redirects

We built the ability to implement your own 301 redirects into our LogicCMS. 301 redirects tell search engines that content they are used to finding in one location has permanently moved to another. If you are creating new pages with new URLs when you move onto the Sequoia platform, all you have to do is put the old URL in the 301 redirect field on the new page and our software will automatically ensure that your search engine rankings for content on the page in question won’t be affected negatively by changing the page path.

Spambot Blocker

We’ve added the ability to require reCaptcha on your site’s Sign Up page – this tool keeps spambots out while still letting quality leads in. You can turn it on or off in your Settings panel.

Check in to one of our weekly trainings to stay current on all the features and functionality Sequoia has to offer – or attend a no-pressure demo to see how the system can work specifically for you and your business!

One of the most effective ways you can get your property listings in front of more potential buyers – and search engines – is through listing syndication. By sending your listings out en masse to various real estate search sites like Trulia, Oodle, Zillow, Vast, and Hotpads (to name a few), we are able to get your properties seen by a much larger audience, as well as acquiring large numbers of quality inbound links to your listings on your own website. Your exclusive listings are syndicated automatically just by having a Sequoia website – you list your properties only in your MLS and we take care of the rest!

Want to learn more about how Sequoia works for you?

Sign-up for a no-pressure demo to see all of the great benefits our industry-leading software system has to offer!