How to 'degrade' a page for non-Flash browsers

On the front page of our website we have a Flash movie that I think explains our business very well. I really like it and I think the little animations help to tell the story. The problem is that on browsers without Flash, there used to be a big empty space on the most important part of the page. To address this, we have built in a detector that will identify visitors that don't have Flash installed. For these users, the page will serve up a series of still images animated using JQuery. For those browsers that don't even support jQuery or JavaScript, the page serves up an animated gif as a very basic slide-show. We no longer get empty space or ugly missing plug-in messages. An animated gif is served to visitors without Flash or JavaScript

To see how it works, take a look at the source code of http://www.spacedatabase.com/index.html . Feel free to use this method on your site!

An easy way to test what a site looks like is to temporarily turn off Flash in your browser. Here are instructions for the most common browsers:

• Firefox: go to the 'Tools' menu, select 'Add-ons', then 'Plugins' , scroll down to 'Shockwave Flash' and click on 'Disable'
• Internet Explorer: go to the 'Tools' menu, select 'Toolbars and Extensions', pick 'Shockwave Flash Object' and click 'Disable'
• Chrome: use the address bar at the top and type in 'chrome://plugins'. On the web page, scroll down to 'Shockwave Flash' and click 'Disable'.

Don't forget to turn Flash back on again by clicking 'Enable'!

Make your real estate site look good on the iPad

It used to be that to design a nice webpage you only had to be concerned about what it looked like in Internet Explorer and Firefox. Now, however, there are not only more browsers to worry about but also various devices and screen sizes.
For commercial real estate websites, compatibility with mobile browsers will become increasingly important. Your prospects are likely to look up your site when they are actually 'being mobile' and looking at your building. You've got to worry about what your site looks like on a smart phone or an iPad.
Flash is used heavily in real estate web sites. It makes the sites behave beautifully and the graphic quality can be very high. It used to be that you could count on 99% of browsers supporting flash, but not any more. There's been a lot of publicity about the iPad's (and iPhone's) intentional lack of support of Flash. BlackBerry currently does not support Flash, but newer models apparently will soon. You have to assume that your mobile visitors won't have Flash.
Much of the tiny text and elegant navigation on many websites are hard to deal with on small screens. As desktop and laptop screens have gotten bigger, so too has the screen area used by web designers. On an iPad, it might be hard to click on a tiny link or a little scroll-down menu.
Designing websites for commercial real estate must focus on the experience of the mobile user. Here are three important strategies:

1. Don't use Flash. If you do are already committed to a Flash based design, make sure it 'degrades' elegantly. Your site should serve up alternate content for non-Flash enabled browsers.
2. Don't use tiny fonts. Test your site on a smaller screen. Make sure you can actually click on links on an iPad. Yes, visitors can zoom in and out on your pages, but that's no fun.
3. Keep the design simple. Don't squander the small area that your viewers may be limited too. Keep pages simple clean and focused.

I took a look at our public, building marketing sites on the iPad and I am glad to see that they look great. Here are a few pictures of what 21 St Clair Ave. East looks like on the iPad:

The site is clear and legible and easy to navigate with the touch-screen

Stacking Plans and availability reports work very well

Javascript tools such as Google maps and Yelp are fully functional

The iPad has native support for PDF floor plans.


Don't rely on special plug-ins or developing an iPad app. Most visitors will not bother to install special tools just to view your content. To maximize the return on your design effort, the best strategy would be to build straight forward, HTML standards compliant web pages that look great on all platforms.

3 Tips for Setting Up a Company Page on Facebook

I just set up a company page for Space Database on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/SpaceDatabase/ . I'm not much of a Facebook user - I just can't come up with those clever little messages and notes. But it's important to stake out the territory and get a corporate brand presence. Through setting up this project, I've discovered three things that should be helpful for anyone setting up a company Facebook page.

1. Get a good address. When you set up a page, you create a name but the URL includes a very long number as well. Pages can get shorter and better names if you have at least 25 fans. BUT you can also get an address if you have a trademark! 





Click here (and scroll down to the bottom) to find out more.




2. Brand your tabs. Facebook pages look very generic and it is difficult to make them look more like your brand. I used MiproApps To build a different Company tab that looks like this:
   
   This tool let me easily embed a SlideShare widget and a Twitter feed into the page.




3. Connect your blog. Facebook says you can connect your blogs RSS feed to your notes page and get posts to appear that way. I had no luck with this method, but I found other applications that did the trick. I am using Involver to post the blog on the Space Database page and Social RSS on a tab on my page.
   
   
   
   

Here are a couple more useful links:

• A CrunchBase article on customizing Facebook
• A Squidoo Lens on setting up Facebook pages

How we'll use this Facebook page is still a bit of an experiment. It may be good for customer support or as a 'suggestion box' for our clients. We'll figure it out over time!
Click below to visit our Facebook page:
Or go to http://www.facebook.com/SpaceDatabase/

Getting Leasing Leads Online: Don't Scare Them Off

If you force prospects to provide contact info in order to view your online content, you will reduce the number of views of that content by factor of 50. That's 50x - not just 50%! As a percentage, that means that 98% of the people that might have taken a look will turn away rather than bother registering. I got these numbers from David Meerman Scott's book World Wide Rave (via Savvy B2B Marketing )

Marketers will tell you that 'registration' will get you quality leads. That may well be true. The people that actually go through the registration process are motivated and ready to lease space. The problem is that you have turned away the vast majority of your audience to get these leads.

So why won't people register? There are many reasons:

• They are not far enough along in the buying process to want to talk to anyone. They may just be starting to think about a move.
• They may not be the key decision maker - but they might be a key influencer: an employee, a friend or even a spouse.
• They may be ready to lease but don't want to end up on a list where they get 'marketing' and SPAM.
• They just don't bother, and go back to Google.

We've got our own experience on this topic. In 2009 we did an advertising campaign with Colliers through the Globe and Mail online. We created mini web pages for several buildings. We included availability data as well as a form: have a leasing rep contact me!. The ad was successful and the web pages got decent daily traffic, so awareness of the listings was boosted. But there were no serious leads captured in the forms. People who are really serious, it seems, will pick up the phone and call.

So what should your online marketing strategy be?

You need to do three things:

1. Post detailed information and drawings so that your prospects can picture themselves in your space. The more data you provide, the more effort your prospective tenant will put into imagining your listing as their place of work.
2. Ensure that your material is 'search engine optimized' so that prospects can find it - and return to it later. Your content needs to be found based on a search for the building address. As they become more serious, prospects may return to your site several times, but at long intervals.
3. Post the name of a real person as well as their phone number and email. Make it easy for prospects to contact you when they are ready to go to the next step. When they call you, they are fully informed and have 'pre-qualified' you and your space as something they want!

Building Neighbourhood Details

In order to make our automated marketing websites more useful, we've integrated Yelp! into the map component in these pages. Yelp! is a web based service that provides reviews and recommendations of restaurants, shopping, nightlife, entertainment, services and more. Now you can search for any of these types of services in the immediate neighbourhood of the hosted building. Here's an example:

Visit the site for 21 St Clair Ave. E. in Toronto and go to the location tab:

Using the box at the top of the page you can search for any Yelp! reviews in the local neighbourhood.  

Imagine you are considering leasing a space in this building. You really like to eat sushi and you want to know if there are any good sushi places close to this building. Type in 'sushi' in the search box and you'll see what's around:

Click on any of these icons to get more information.  Follow the link to read customer reviews:

Try some different searches yourself!

We fee that this feature will help your prospects explore the neighbourhood and find out about the amenities your various locations have to offer.   It's another small way in which we help you nudge the leasing process along!

Real Estate on the Internet

Commercial real estate is a different market from residential real estate, but I think there's probably a strong similarity in the patterns of how people search for a home and how they go about looking for office space - especially for smaller sized suites.
The data below is from a survey conducted by the National Association of Realtors in the US in 2008. The survey found that 85% of buyers used real-estate agents but that 87% used the web to get information on homes.

When asked about the first source of information about the home they purchased,  only  34% reported that they found out about it through their realtor.  32% of buyers found their homes on the web first.  Even though agents participate in the majority of transactions, buyers find most of the opportunities on their own.  The internet is by far the greatest alternate source of information. 

If 87% of home-buyers are using the web to find real estate, it is reasonable to expect that the vast majority of people looking for commercial space will start their search online too.  These days, if you are looking for anything, you'll most likely start with a web search. 

Two Enhancements to the Work Order Ticketing System

We've just launched two enhancements to the Tru-Measure work order system. The first new feature allows you to upload a file along with your ticket request. The second feature allows you to include consultants, other than Space Database, in the work request process. Here's a short slide-show on the changes:

Space Database Drawing Updates and Space Plans

View more presentations from Mikael Sandblom.

File Attachments - This is a feature that has been requested by clients for some time now. Rather than send separate faxes or referencing Brava! markups, users can now attach a file directly to a request. Send us a scan, a picture or a PDF to clarify exactly what you need! If you prefer to send us a fax or to do a markup, that still works fine too.

Space Planning - This feature can now be set up for any hosted building. We know that landlords have existing relationships with many different interior designers. We're making it easier to manage the space planning process. Requests will automatically send designers CAD files along with the required scope. Finished layouts can be stored alongside basic marketing drawings and they can be made available to prospects in through a landlord's site, through our site and through automated email campaigns. Give us a call and we'll set this up - there's no extra cost!