Blog
We continuously refine and add new features to our websites. See our blog posts below.
Property Practitioners Act Compliance
The Property Practitioners Act which recently came into effect requires that the wording “Registered with PPRA” must appear on all your marketing material. In order for your website to comply, we have added a setting in your admin console which you will need to enable in order for this to show.
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| Choose the show wording from the dropdown. |
- In the footer of your website
- On your property alert emails
- On all your property brochures
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| Edit your job title on the edit agent screen. |
Development Listings
You can now upload a development to your site in the same way you would upload a property. You will find this new “Add Development” feature on the Properties dropdown in your admin console.
Doing it this way means you can create and update developments yourself without asking us to do it for you.
Much like the property pages, the development is displayed in a professional and consistent layout.
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| Developments will show as a menu item on your properties dropdown. |
The development upload page allows for images, floor plans, marketing brochures, videos, and show days. You can also allocate agents to the development.
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| Professional and consistent layout of a development page. |
Subscriber emails double opt-in
Earlier this year we set up double opt-in for all new property alerts and newsletter subscribers on our client websites. This was to be in line with POPIA requirements.
How it works is when a subscriber signs up or is added via the admin console, they receive an email with a link for them to confirm they want to sign up.
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| Double opt-in email. |
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| Non opted-in subscribers in the admin console, with the number of opt-in emails sent and the date of the last one. |
Updates to Lite Sites
We are always working hard to ensure we provide our clients with the best websites. To this end, we have recently upgraded our Lite Site template to include the following:
- An About Us Page (to enable please send us the text and a picture if you have one).
- An Our Team Page showing your agents (it will appear automatically if you have added agents via your admin console).
- A map on the Contact Page (we have set this up if your address was presented on the Contact Page).
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| New Lite Site About Us Page. |
Property Brochure PDF downloads
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| New property brochure interface in admin console. |
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| Brochure PDF shared on WhatsApp. |
POPIA and Property Alerts/Newsletters settings
We have implemented emailing only opted-in subscribers by default as per our blog post POPIA and Property Alerts/Newsletters. This ensures that your website is by default POPIA compliant.
The agency principal can override this default through the settings page in the admin console. To remain POPIA compliant this should only be done if consent has been obtained from the subscribers.
Your admin console subscriber screen will now by default show the subscribers your website is set to email. You can toggle this view via the drop-down shown below.
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| Updates to admin console subscriber screen. |
Opt-in subscribers are those who signed up via the front end of your website or confirmed that they want to continue receiving these emails through an email opt-in confirmation like the 3 email opt in process.
To see how each subscriber signed up we have added 3 new columns to the admin console subscriber screen:
- website opt-in: signed up via front end of website
- email opt-in: opted in via email confirmation
- opt-in: true if website opt-in or email opt-in
If you have any questions on this please contact us, we are here to help.
POPIA and Property Alerts/Newsletters
POPIA states that from next month all direct marketing and related emails must be opt-in.
To adhere to this we will by default, from next month, only send Property Alert and Newsletter emails to subscribers who have signed up via the front end of your website (website opted-in subscribers). Not to subscribers who have been added via your admin console or you have requested us to add for you.
You will be able to override this default and send to everyone by checking a box to say that you wish to email all your subscribers and have consent to do so.
You can now see how many of your subscribers are website opted-in vs not at the top of your admin console’s subscriber screen.
If you want to try to convert admin console added subscribers to opted-in subscribers, we can send them emails asking them to opt-in to carry on receiving Property Alerts and Newsletters. This will be done by sending 3 emails over the next 3 weeks. Be aware that the conversion could be low. There will be a R500 + VAT charge to set up and run this process. Please let us know if you would like us to do this for you.
We will update you on further POPIA compliance for your website in the next couple of days.
If you have any questions on this please contact us.
Feed your properties to Facebook
Don’t forget you can feed your properties from your admin console to your Facebook Business Page. We have seen that this generates significant traffic to our client websites.
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| Admin console link to feed to your Facebook business page. |
You can easily keep track of which properties have been fed to Facebook via your admin console, plus click through to view them there. Just like your feeds to the property portals. Plus a link to the property on Facebook will appear in your Owner Email.
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| Admin console link to view property on Facebook. |
Feeding sold properties to Facebook is the best way to show that you make sales.
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| A sold property on your Facebook business page. |
Feed all your properties to Gumtree for free
All new properties you now upload will be ticked by default to feed to Gumtree - you do not have to do anything. To also feed older properties, select and edit them in your admin console and tick the Gumtree feed box.
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| Feed your older properties by ticking their Gumtree feed box. |
Filter Property Alerts by city and suburb
Your Property Alerts are even better. Subscribers to your Property Alerts can now filter them by city and suburb. This is in addition to the current property type and price range filters.
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| Filter Property Alerts by city or suburb. |
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| New Property Locations Screen. |
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| Link to change property alert filters. |
Property Alerts not just for new properties
With the Covid-19 lockdown in full effect, the chances are you have not been able to get new stock. However, nothing is stopping you from sending out Property Alerts for your current properties to your subscribers. The only way you can reach potential buyers right now is online, and email is the best way to reach as many people as possible.
Here are instructions on how to send out an alert immediately on an older property.
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| Get your current properties out to all your subscribers. |
Group Your Subscribers
You can now group your subscribers and send a different newsletter to each group. Some people want to receive your newsletter, but not property alerts (or vice versa) or you might have an investor newsletter and a homeowner newsletter which you would want to send to different people.
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| Subscriber Groups feature in your admin console. |
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| Add or remove subscribers from a Subscriber Group. |
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| Subscribers can add and remove themselves from groups. |
Track What’s Happening On Your Website
Activities happening on your website can be tracked in the admin console by going to the monitoring menu dropdown. From there the principal can easily see what is happening on the website, what their agents are up to as well as website communications to and from their agents.
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| Admin console monitoring menu dropdown. |
- Owner Emails - List of all Owner Emails sent from website - showing owners their property on the different portals.
- Emailed Properties - All property detail emails sent manually from the admin console. (Not to be confused with Property Alerts.)
- SMS Agent - Logs of any SMSes sent to your agents. (If you would like to buy more credit at 65c per credit, please email us.)
- Enquiry Forms - All Enquiry Forms completed on your website.
- Property Enquiries - A list of all Property Enquiries received by your agents.
- Owner Email feedback - Logs any feedback received from owners to the Owner Email that was sent.
Bulk Upload of Email Addresses
Did you know you can send us a list of subscriber email addresses to do a bulk import into your admin console for you? How easy is that!
We do this because we want to help you get your property alerts to as many people as possible.
The property alerts are an incredibly powerful tool for a number of reasons:
- Enables buyers to be immediately notified whenever you have new properties for sale.
- Enables you to present properties to hundreds or thousands of interested buyers.
- They happen automatically - no extra work (phone calls or emails) or costs (phone calls) are required to get your new properties in front of all of your interested buyers.
- They happen fast - go out automatically at 7am the day after the property is uploaded or you can send them immediately (see how here). Sending them out immediately is especially important if its an open mandate as it could mean you are presenting it to the buyer before another agent … and therefore making the sale!
- They ensure that all of your interested buyers are notified - there is no human error where you or one of your agents could forget to present the property to a buyer.
- Builds brand recognition - people know you are professional and active.
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| A property alerts email. |
- showhouses
- when talking to potential buyers over the phone
- from your incoming emails
New Feature: Email Properties From The Admin Console
You can now send an email with property information from the admin console instead of having to compose them yourself.
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| Example of an email sent from the Admin console. |
All you have to do is select which properties to include and then personalise the intro paragraph and click send.
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| Select properties to include in the email. |
No more spending of time and effort finding and putting together this information. Instead you can send a personalised email that, while it looks professional, also has the look and feel of one composed by yourself.
Save Your Properties As Drafts
Have you ever wanted to start uploading a property but didn’t want to publish it on your website yet, or wanted to remove a property off your website temporarily? Maybe you didn’t have all the information, time or the property wasn’t yet on the market.
We are pleased to tell you that you can now do so with our new ‘draft’ feature. A property can now be saved to a draft before being pushed live on your website, or a live property can be moved to drafts thereby removing it from your website.
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| Save to draft from upload property screen. |
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| Access draft properties from admin console. |
So no more uploading a property when it is not 100% ready and no more losing work that you started but unexpectedly could not finish. We are sure you will find this new feature very helpful.
Call Directly From Quick Notes
Our Quick Notes are a great “on-the-run” tool for agents to make notes on each property. You can record things like viewings, owner interaction and commission splits.
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| Quick Notes for a property with clickable phone numbers. |
Improved Search Function In Admin Console
We have refined the search in the admin console properties page by removing the general search box and replacing it with a search field for each column.
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| New search in the admin console properties page. |
This was done because the previous search sometimes gave unexpected results. The new search addresses this and gives you more precise search results as it is limited to one column.
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| Multiple column search. |
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| Download or print search results. |
New Portal: PropBay
We are excited to let you know that RentBay, one of the current free portals we automatically feed your rental properties to now has a for sale section for residential and commercial property - propbay.co.za
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| New portal. |
We have enabled the feed so your for sale properties will automatically be copied to this portal. Like the other free portals, you don’t have to do anything - it happens automatically. The link to the property on the portal will appear alongside the other portal links in your admin console.
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| Link to Propbay in your admin console. |
We hope you get great exposure from this new portal and would love to know what you think so please contact us.
Feature Reminder: Document Management System
We recently introduced a new document management feature for our standard and responsive websites. These documents can be either for your own internal use.
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| Documents in your admin console. |
Or you can make them available for visitors to the website to download.
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| Documents on your website. |
New Default Property Sort Order
We have changed the default order of “for sale” and “for rent” properties on your website to highest price first. We’ve seen this makes your website (and therefore you) look better since it generally presents your better quality stock first. These properties also tend to have better pictures and descriptions.
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| New default sort order for ‘for sale’ and ‘for rent’ properties. |
Feature Reminder: Additional Users / Multiple Login Function
Did you know you can add additional users with their own logins to your website’s’ admin console? This means agents can upload and edit their own properties, but not those of other agents. You set their permissions so you decide who can manage and view properties, agents, subscribers, the portal feeds, your website stats, enquiries and others tabs in the admin console. This will free up your time, as well as give you a good overview of your agents productivity in terms of how many properties they are uploading.
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| Manage users in your admin console. |
The first 10 additional users each cost R21 + VAT per month, thereafter R16 + VAT per month. If you would like us to enable this feature for you please contact us
Please note this is only available for standard and responsive websites.
Change To Facebook Sharing in Admin Console
Facebook recently changed their security settings so you will no longer be able to share properties to your personal Facebook page from the admin console. However, you can still share them from the property page on the front end of your website:
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| Click Facebook button to share the property to your personal Facebook page. |
Sharing to your business Facebook page from the admin console is not affected by the new settings.
Don’t forget, we can help you set up your Facebook business page for R1670 + VAT (once-off cost ), or if you already have an existing page we can ensure it is optimally set-up for R940 + VAT (once-off cost)
Read more about our online marketing services.
Please contact us if you have any questions, we would love to assist you!
Reminder: Quick Notes Feature
Here is a reminder about a feature that can make life easier. Quick Notes is a quick and easy way to make notes on each property. It is useful for noting viewings, commission splits, owner interactions and anything else that you would like recorded for a property.
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| Quick notes for a property |
Property24 Video Uploads
In our constant quest to make your website work as hard for you as possible, we’ve worked with Property24 to allow any videos you load to a property in your web-box admin console to now automatically pull through to your listing on Property24. No more extra work of sending your videos separately to them for you!
Just follow these quick steps to ensure your videos go through to Property24:
Upload your property as normal. Once uploaded, go back to the property and under “action” click “edit”. Then scroll down to the bottom and click on “add a video”
Enter the video link and click “update”
You’ll be taken back to the upload screen, where you must remember to then click “update” at the bottom too!
Ta da! Your video will now be on your Property24 listing.
Remember, you will need an account with Property24 if you want your properties to feed through to them. Please feel free to contact us on support@webbox.co.za for any assistance.
Please note this is only available for our Standard and Premium Sites.