Archive for February, 2010

What House? Awards gold winners were invited by Google to learn about online marketing and digitally enhancing their brands. Rupert Bates sat at the back of the class.

Google’s mission is “to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Larry, Sergey, where’s your ambition for goodness – or Google’s - sake?
We were in Google’s offices in London Victoria, rather than the sanctum sanctorum in Mountain View, California. The event: an exclusive Google Property Masterclass for the Gold winners from the 2009 What House? Awards, in association with www.whathouse.co.uk.
The housebuilders gathered were certainly no digital dinosaurs, but were intrigued by what the search engine giant and world’s most powerful brand had to say.
The gags came early. One developer, claiming he knew nothing about Google, said he had done his homework the previous night by googling to find out about the business. One absentee said he could not cross the threshold of Google’s UK headquarters as the motto ‘Don’t be evil’ contradicted everything his company stood for.
‘Googol’ is the mathematical term for a one followed by 100 zeros – soon perhaps to equate with the personal wealth of Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
The housebuilding ‘students’ – mostly mature – were not too fussed about the world’s information; just property related information, tools and advice on selling more houses through online and keeping on top of consumer behaviour.
But first, what of all the chatter about Google’s plans to enter the property portal market? A lot of it is misinformed; a lot of it in danger of becoming self-fulfilling prophecy for those websites worried about losing acres of market share to the search engine leviathan.
Also while the web offers plenty of options for private sales, cutting out estate agents, it is naïve to assume the latest digital activity spells the death of the middle man anytime soon, although if it helps to sort the wheat from the chaff so much the better.
Ben Wood, Head of Property at Google, was hosting the Masterclass, but could not comment on the latest digital rumour mill. Rightmove’s recent announcement that all its properties will now be displayed on Google Maps comes as no surprise to readers of Showhouse. The magazine raised the issue six months ago.
Google has the maps; Rightmove the content, so this was a marriage, or monster, waiting to happen. It is when Google in the UK have both the maps and their own content that property portals will worry, but with the likes of Rightmove providing the search engine with plenty of digital advertising revenue, Google can bide its time and test the market.
Back to the Masterclass. Wood kicked off with a look at how to use online to sell houses. The consumer journey to buying a new home has changed, with 90 percent of the UK preferring the internet to search for property. A surprising 67 percent of online property searchers are over 35. Google drives 36 percent of all web traffic in the UK property sector.
The buyer is also, if he knows where to look, far better informed, knowing what the current owner paid for a house, planning applications that may have been refused, quality of schools, levels of crime and a far better idea of comparables elsewhere in the area.
“The housebuilding sector has seen a major shift of advertising investment to online media,” said Wood. In the United States that online spend went up from 25.7 percent in 2007 to 38.5 percent last year, with a fall in press advertising from 38.7 percent to 26.3 percent in the same period.
The recent snow was good for Google and the internet in general. “With the web you can keep your shop open. Online enquiries were up in the bad weather, but how quickly are those leads being followed up?” said Wood.
You need to be found and you need to understand value, in terms of where the traffic is coming from; the time spent on site, pages visited and the bounce rate. A high bounce rate may not be due to a lack of interest in the product, but simply a poor website and user experience.
“Make registration as pain-free as possible. A long registration may make for a good lead if they have taken all that trouble. Or do you want a bigger number of less targeted leads through a simpler and quicker registration process?” said Wood.
Test your pages, as sometimes the slightest tweak to the design or content, especially if you have paid for AdWords, can lead to a big increase in traffic.
Mobile will be the next big thing and continual multi-platform innovation is key, with video (Google owns YouTube) creating viral links and helping to share new products with family and friends.
James Bacon, account manger at Google and Bickey Russell, senior industry analyst, then looked at current property industry trends and explained some of Google’s tools to track consumer behaviour.
New homes searches rose 15 percent in 2009, with more searches when prices are falling than rising and Sunday, Monday and Tuesday the most popular days to search.
“55 percent of people now use three or more words when searching for new homes,” said Bacon, but rarely does a user put a developer’s URL in the web browser.
The announcement of Government initiatives, such as HomeBuy Direct, causes significant spikes in searches, highlighting the advantages of an up-to-date website, with top quality editorial, featuring and explaining the housing issues of the day.
Russell compared the popularity of search terms, such as restaurants and recipes – the argument being that in a recession recipes – cooking from home – are likely to rise against restaurant searches, with people looking to save money by not going out. Rising searches also give an indication of trends, be it searches by region, or term.
The ‘Options’ tool on the Google search page, news to most of the Masterclass, allows builders to track the ‘noise’ about their brands; be it mentions on blogs and forums, or timelines to monitor news. The Wonder Wheel too shows how searches relate; a fascinating tool that confirms the ‘six degrees of separation’ theory.
Paul Vallone, managing director of Berkeley Homes (Urban Renaissance), said: “The whole day was very stimulating and thought-provoking and delivered in a very user-friendly way. The breadth and depth of information out there is astounding and incalculable. There are huge digital opportunities for the housebuilding industry and we must embrace them.” The Berkeley Group won Housebuilder of the Year at the 2009 What House? Awards, as well as seven other awards throughout the group.
Chris Coates, managing director of Oakford Homes, Gold winner in the Best Starter Home category, said: “It is only when you sit down with the experts you realize the speed of change the industry is about to go through over the next two years.”
“To have the opportunity to talk to market leaders like Google is a treat. The fact they invited What House? Awards winners to demonstrate how they see the future shows how seriously they take the sector and their intentions to be a very important part of this,” added Coates.
“Developers will have to become e-retailers to compete against each other and the second-hand market. Finding customers will be web based first and the successful sales teams will be those who recognize a web enquiry is as valuable as a telephone call from a potential buyer.”
The Masterclass of 2010

Michael Alden, commercial director, Weston Group
Ian Brown, senior analyst, L & Q
Philip Brown, sales director, Millwood Designer Homes
Roseanne Bullen, regional sales and marketing manager, Linden Homes
Chris Coates, managing director, Oakford Homes
Beverley Davey, marketing manager, A2 Dominion Group
Steve Glover, director, Consero Homes
Harry Handelsman, chief executive, Manhattan Loft Corporation
Michelle Harris, sales director, Dandara
Daniel Hill, director, www.whathouse.co.uk
Paul Vallone, managing director, Berkeley Homes (Urban Renaissance)

Tweet This Post