CENTURY 21 REAL ESTATE LLC. My C21 Site FAQ

Transcription

1 CENTURY 21 REAL ESTATE LLC My C21 Site FAQ 1

2 Table of Contents Q. WHAT IS MY C21 SITE? Q. WHY IS CENTURY 21 LAUNCHING THE MY C21 SITE PROGRAM? Q. WHAT IS THE COST FOR A MY C21 SITE? Q. HOW WILL USERS BE ABLE TO USE THEIR MY C21 SITE? Q. WHY SHOULD I CLAIM MY SITE? Q. WHERE ARE THEY HOSTED? Q. WHAT IS THE NAMING CONVENTION FOR THE SITES? Q. WILL YOU NOTIFY MY CURRENT PROVIDER THAT I NO LONGER NEED THEIR SERVICE? Q. HOW CAN I ESTABLISH A DOMAIN NAME (WEB ADDRESS) FOR THE MY C21 SITE? Q. WHAT ARE THE DEFAULT PAGES? Q. AM I RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CONTENT CREATED ON MY PAGES? Q. WHAT PAGES CAN I EDIT? Q. WHAT PAGES CAN I ADD? Q. CAN I ADD SOCIAL MEDIA TO MY SITE? Q. IS THIS A REPLACEMENT TO THE BROADSPIRE WEBSITE BUILDER TOOL? Q. IF USERS ALREADY HAVE A WEBSITE VIA BROADSPIRE, ADVANCED ACCESS OR OTHER SERVICE PROVIDERS, WHAT HAPPENS WITH THEM? HOW ARE THESE SITES HANDLED ON CENTURY21.COM? Q. DOES THE MY C21 SITE NEED TO BE APPROVED BY BRAND COMPLIANCE? Q. WHO WILL HAVE ACCESS TO BE ABLE TO CLAIM AND MANAGE THE OFFICE SITES? Q. HOW WILL THESE SITES BE LINKED FROM CENTURY21.COM Q. HOW WILL TEAM SITES BE HANDLED? Q. IF 2 OR MORE TEAM MEMBERS EDIT THE SAME PAGE, WHAT WILL HAPPEN? Q. WILL THERE BE COMPANY WEBSITES? Q. HOW WILL LISTINGS BE HANDLED? Q. WHAT IS FEATURED LISTING ON MY C21 SITE? HOW CAN I CONTROL WHICH LISTING IS FEATURED? Q. WHAT ARE THE OPTIONS FOR PROPERTY SEARCH? Q. WHAT DOES IFRAMED MEAN? Q. HOW ARE LEADS HANDLED? 2

3 Q. WHAT IS MY C21 SITE? My C21 Site is a program that automatically generates high quality feature-rich websites for every CENTURY 21 agent, broker, office and team. These sites are created and hosted at no cost to system members. It offers professionally designed brand compliant templates that can be easily personalized via a graphical editor on 21Online. Q. WHY IS CENTURY 21 LAUNCHING THE MY C21 SITE PROGRAM? Century 21 Real Estate LLC created these websites to provide system members with an online presence that is professional quality, simple to administer and enables advanced functionality. The major benefit of this program is to dramatically increase our Search Engine Optimization rankings via the collective power of this linked network or ecosystem of web sites. This will drive more traffic to CENTURY 21 and thereby drive more leads to our brokers and agents. Q. WHAT IS THE COST FOR A MY C21 SITE? There are no costs for the creation or hosting of these sites. Q. HOW WILL USERS BE ABLE TO USE THEIR MY C21 SITE? When users login to 21Online, they will see a button under their profile picture to Manage My C21 Site. A step by step process will guide them through claiming and personalizing their site. They can also preview their site as the visitors would see them, make changes at any time and then publish their site live. Q. WHY SHOULD I CLAIM MY SITE? If you do not currently have a Web site: The My C21 Site is a professionally designed feature-rich website for you that showcases your listings and is very easy for you to maintain. You may choose to make as little or great changes to the content and pages as you like depending on your content and personalization needs. The easy to use graphical editor makes it simple to add and update content for users without any programming know-how. If you do not presently have a website we highly recommend you claim the My C21 Site as your website and add your own custom content. This is a no-cost program for all CENTURY 21 system members. If you already have a Web site: If you do have a website there is a possibility your My C21 site might be more advanced than your current web site. If this is the case you may take down your current site and have your current web address point to your My C21 Site. For example if you own the web address C21ABCREALTY.COM you can have this name point to the homepage of your My C21 site. You can do so by following the simple instructions within the My C21 Site admin tool in 21Online. This will ensure that all visitors to your website will be 3

4 seamlessly directed to the My C21 Site and that you can maintain the Web address that is on all of your marketing materials. Some of the benefits of this approach may be: - Eliminating hosting, maintenance, programming and administration fees that you are currently spending. - Taking advantage of the Search Engine Optimization of the My C21 Sites (each page is optimized for ranking well against similar content). - Having a professionally designed website that is brand compliant and will continue to change/improve in synch with the brand s online look and feel. If you wish to keep your current Website you may choose to do so but we recommend claiming your My C21 Site and managing the content as a secondary web presence for potential century21.com visitors who may not know of your website address. You may also consider linking to your current website from the My C21 Site pages to enhance the visibility of your current site. Q. WHERE ARE THEY HOSTED? The My C21 Sites are hosted on the same environment as CENTURY21.com Q. WHAT IS THE NAMING CONVENTION FOR THE SITES? By default the My C21Site will have the following type of addresses (urls) - Office sites: Offices.Officekey.eco.century21.com - Associate (Agents) sites: Associates.sakey.eco.century21.com - Team sites: Teams.teamkey.eco.century21.com It is recommended that you register your own domain name independently and have that forward to the My C21Site. Q. WILL YOU NOTIFY MY CURRENT PROVIDER THAT I NO LONGER NEED THEIR SERVICE? No, please contact your web design agency and any other current providers for hosting, maintenance etc. to see what steps are needed to discontinue your current website. Q. HOW CAN I ESTABLISH A DOMAIN NAME (WEB ADDRESS) FOR THE MY C21 SITE? You will need to register a domain name through an independent domain name vendor. If you do not currently have a domain name, we recommend that you purchase one. Here are a few vendors that specialize in domain name registrations:

5 Q. WHAT ARE THE DEFAULT PAGES? The My C21 Site is pre-populated with some pages - these pages include Home Page (Office, Team, Agent, or Broker), property Results Page, Community Page, Staff Directory, Careers (for Office/Broker pages only). The built in Search can be used for Properties. Q. AM I RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CONTENT CREATED ON MY PAGES? Yes, please write content that is original and you have the rights to. All content should be kept current and as accurate as possible. Q. WHAT PAGES CAN I EDIT? All pages have editable content areas that will allow you to write custom content. Q. WHAT PAGES CAN I ADD? There are 4 different content templates which you can use to suit your needs. You can also add up to 2 tabs (top menu/navigation items) or change any of the topics. Q. CAN I ADD SOCIAL MEDIA TO MY C21 SITE? The following types of Social Media sites are handled: 1. BLOGS Internal Blog My C21 Site offers a basic internal blogging mechanism which is built into the admin tool on 21Online. Users can create blog posts by logging into 21Online and these posts will be shown on a webpage in the My C21 Site. External Blogs Users can also link to blog platforms that they use outside of My C21 Site. They can do o by entering the url of their blog in the admin tool on 21Online. An icon of the blog platform will be shown on the home page of My C21 Site that site visitors can click on. The Blog site will be opened in a new window. External Blogs with RSS Feeds Users may also provide the url of an RSS feed from their external blog. The My C21 Site has built in functionality to link to RSS feeds and show blog posts from the platform directly on a webpage within the My C21 Site. 2. SOCIAL MEDIA SITES My C21 Site can be linked to profile sites like Facebook, Linked-in by adding the relevant profile/usernames in the 21Online admin tool. The corresponding platform 5

6 icon will be shown on the My C21 Site home page and clicking on the icon will open a new window with the site. Users can also display various Instant messaging addresses on the My C21 Site. These are shown directly on the My C21 Site as contact information that visitors can view. This is for display purposes only and no instant messaging or chatting functionality is available within the site. Q. IS THIS A REPLACEMENT TO THE BROADSPIRE WEBSITE BUILDER TOOL? It is an alternative. Please see the comparative checklist attached at the end of this document to see the major features of My C21 Site compared to the alternatives including BroadSpire. Q. IF USERS ALREADY HAVE A WEBSITE VIA BROADSPIRE, ADVANCED ACCESS OR OTHER SERVICE PROVIDERS, WHAT HAPPENS WITH THEM? HOW ARE THESE SITES HANDLED ON CENTURY21.COM? If you wish to keep your current Website (hosted via BroadSpire or elsewhere) you may choose to do so but we recommend claiming your My C21 Site and managing the content as a secondary web presence for potential century21.com visitors who may not know of your website address. You may also consider linking to your website from the My C21 Site pages to enhance the visibility of your current site. Q. DOES THE MY C21 SITE NEED TO BE APPROVED BY BRAND COMPLIANCE? No, the templates have been approved and are brand compliant. However the compliance team can at any point audit the content and/or the domain name that users add to the My C21 Site and if any items are out of compliance, the team may decide to remove the linkage and/or have the users address these issues as appropriate. Q. WHO WILL HAVE ACCESS TO BE ABLE TO CLAIM AND MANAGE THE OFFICE SITES? Brokers and Office Admin high roles in 21Online can claim and manage. Q. HOW WILL THESE SITES BE LINKED FROM CENTURY21.COM All Associate sites will be linked from the respective associate detail page on Century21.com. For the office sites, any offices that do not have a website address in their office profile in CREST, the My C21 Site will be linked from their office detail page on Century21.com. Q. HOW WILL TEAM SITES BE HANDLED? 21Online does not have team logins but any team member can edit the team site by logging into their own personal 21Online account.. The user for example Agent X would have access to both their associate site and the team site under their 21Online Login. The system will give the user the ability to select which one they want to edit. 6

7 Q. IF 2 OR MORE TEAM MEMBERS EDIT THE SAME PAGE, WHAT WILL HAPPEN? The last edit published will appear on the site. When working as a team, it is best that you consult with each other as to who will manage changes or coordinate the changes you are planning with the other team members to avoid overwriting another team member s content. Q. WILL THERE BE COMPANY WEBSITES? Currently, there will only be office, agent and team sites. Companies that have more than one office will have a My C21 Site for each of their offices. Each of the office web sites of a multi-office company will also have a navigation item called Real Estate Offices that takes users to a page that lists all offices within the company and links to their My C21 Sites. Q. HOW WILL LISTINGS BE HANDLED? For all My C21 Sites, on the Our Listings page all listings that are listed by your office in CREST will be displayed. The listings are displayed in order of price and the users have the ability to sort them by Bedrooms, Bathrooms and descending order of price as well. When a search is conducted (if you have chosen the default Century 21 Search) all listings available on the entire century21.com site will be searched through and returned based on the user s search criteria. Q. WHAT IS FEATURED LISTING ON MY C21 SITE? HOW CAN I CONTROL WHICH LISTING IS FEATURED? The home page of My C21 Site has a Featured Listing area. Only one listing is featured at a time. This can be pulled dynamically from your listings based on the criteria you set in the admin tool. For example, if you choose the settings to feature listings that have a minimum of 3 bedrooms and a maximum price of $800,000 then the My C21 Site will pick any one listing within those criteria from your listings (or your company s if you so choose) and feature it in this area. Each time the home page loads, different listings may get picked up within the criteria to be rotated. Q. WHAT ARE THE OPTIONS FOR PROPERTY SEARCH? There are two options for Property Search built into the My C21 Site - Century21.com search This is the default and recommended option for property search. Choosing this will enable your site visitors to search the entire Century21.com site for properties. Results will be returned within the My C21 Site and the visitors can sort and filter the results by Beds, Baths, price and square footage. - Framed search This is the other alternative in case you want your site visitors to search a third party site (example the local MLS in your area). When you pick the 7

8 framed search option, you will need to provide the public website address (url) for the MLS site. My C21 Site visitors will then be shown a Search Properties button which will open a new window with a My C21 Site header (or footer depending upon your choice in the admin tool on 21Online) with the site you have chosen appearing in a frame below it. CENTURY 21 has no control over the sites that you are framing. Q. WHAT DOES IFRAMED MEAN? An iframe is the webpage element that creates a frame that contains another webpage. An iframe functions as a document within a document, or like a floating FRAME. Q. HOW ARE LEADS HANDLED? For all sites that use Century 21 search, Lead flow will follow the current Century21.com business rules. All rules set at an office level in CREST (by Brokers) are followed on My C21 Site. If you are a LeadRouter Participant, the leads are automatically set to your LeadRouter account. 8