While in Vegas we had the pleasure of taking one of our favorite clients, Lisa Young, Woodmont Real Estate Services, out to dinner at the SW Steakhouse. We enjoyed hearing all of Lisa feedback and ideas on how we could add icing to our EZPublish™ system and we look forward to implementing some of Lisa's hot ideas. Thanks Lisa!

Our final day in Vegas couldn't have been any better. We caught a streak at the craps table and were able to leave with our shirts still on our backs! Lamar Odom and Robert Kardashian Jr. were also enjoying the Wynn and stopped by our craps table which was entertaining... But where was Khloe? Maybe poolside at The Encores new daytime hot spot, Surrender, featuring Kaskade? Never a dull moment!

Our next trip is to Orlando for the AAGO Trade Show, 8/16 - 8/18. We are looking forward to meeting all the great industry friends in Florida as this is our first year exhibiting at this show. We will be hosting a great special for anyone who signs at the tradeshow. So stay tuned and try to get a demo in before the show or stop by booth number 120A at the show for a live demonstration on how we can save you time, money and improve your marketing efforts all with just a couple clicks.

Talk soon!

Steven

I hope your Summer is off to a great start- mine sure is! I spent most of the weekend out by the pool enjoying the sunny, San Diego weather and considered how lucky we are to enjoy such a great environment. Every year, I consider what I can do to help decrease my environmental foot print. Year one, I participated in a beach cleanup. The next, an old cellphone recycling drive. Last year a group of us planted trees and went paperless on everything we could!

Property management companies, you now have a great opportunity to lessen your environmental footprint by going paperless with your community newsletters, or at least lowering the number of newsletters printed! Our EZPublish™ Marketing Collateral System enables you to create custom, ad agency-designed community newsletters in just minutes. You can then save your newsletter as a PDF and send it to your residents via email or post it to your resident access section. Not only does this save you time and money, but it also saves a ton of trees!

For more information on how to get started on this simple, yet important initiative give me a call or shoot me an email.

Talk soon!

Steven

LeaseLabs will be at the 2010 NAA Education Conference & Expisition, June 24th and 25th. Please make sure to stop by to meet the team and check out how LeaseLabs can enhance your marketing, reinforce your brand and drive more traffic.

We Might Be Cheap But We Have Expensive Taste

A gift from Tiffany lasts forever.

Visit our booth #1419 to demo our services and enter our drawing for a chance to go home with one of three gifts from Tiffany & Co.

One gift will be given away at each NAA session. Follow @leaselabs on twitter to find out the winners!

The CoPilot™ Mobile platform snaps on to your CoPilot™ website and makes web access on a mobile device as simple as from a desktop device. LeaseLabs’ mobile add-on also offers consistent branding and online identity from desktop to mobile device with rapid and painless implementation.

CoPilot™ Mobile works seamlessly with your CoPilot™ website and content management system and is compatible with all smart phone devices, ie: iPhone®, Blackberry®, Android®, etc.

CHALLENGE AND SOLUTION

The usual approach to mobile web browsing of multifamily websites relies on the standard site rendering well in mobile browsers.  Good W3C-compliant markup ensures a fairly good experience on most platforms.  However, as mobile users grow in number and sophistication, so do their expectations of how they want to interact with properties on their mobile phones.

Users want the same functionality, features and access on their phone that is available on the desktop web, but optimized for the small browser.  This means providing easy access to key information and features (while stripping non-essential graphics and layout options) in order to ensure prospects and residents have a satisfying mobile browsing experience.

TOP-LEVEL FEATURES

• Works seamlessly with your existing website and content management system
• Manage content for desktop and mobile sites from one place
• Mobile users are automatically redirected to mobile pages within your existing domain
• Consistent branding and online identity from desktop to mobile device
• Compatible with all mobile Smartphone devices and platforms
• Integrate with Vaultware’s mobile Pricing & Availability Solution.
• Touch screen version along with Link-Based version ensure no user is left out.

DETAILED FEATURES

Prioritizing content over graphics, optimized for the mobile environment, the mobile site structure offers access to the following information.

• Compatible with all major mobile phones
• Easy-to-Use Property Site Pages
• Quickly Access Regional Pages
• Corporate Site Pages
• Resident Access
• Photo Gallery
• Click-to-Call Contact Information
• Click-to-Map Information
• "Current Location” Apartment Search
• Social Media Integration (Twitter®, Facebook®, etc.)
• Lead & Contact Us Forms
• Service Request Form
• Mobile Pricing and Availability Feed Integration
• Embedded Mobile Search Engine Optimization Code
• On-Demand Mobile Reporting and Analytics
• Free Support and Training

With many options on the table, who do you consider, and why?

A good apartment website design company should be able to show you an impressive portfolio.

If a company can't dazzle you with a portfolio of WOW-looking websites they have developed, run the other way, and fast! A living portfolio (live sites) is the best way to introduce prospective clients to the kind of work the company does and is therefore a necessity that any design company worth considering should have.

Aside from checking out the visual quality of the sites displayed in the company's portfolio, you should also make sure it includes designs similar to what you want to be built. If most of the company's websites have the same basic layout, and that's not what you desire, chances are you should go elsewhere. Also, if you are looking for something fairly complex such as a content management system, SEO upgrades, Social Media Integrations, Online Applications, etc. ensure that they have other examples of that in their portfolio.

Know what you are willing to spend.

Before you begin your process, decide on a budget. Even if it's a range. Website Design should be treated no differently then any other expense. You need to decide how important this project is for your management company/property, and how much you're willing to spend. Once you do this, make sure to let each prospective web designer know how much you've budgeted. It will make the process that much easier for you and your designer in the long run.

With websites acting as the new "Curb Appeal" you might want to consider investing a little more this time around and enhancing your site with emerging technologies. One option to consider is contracting a provider that offers a monthly fee rather than one big charge upfront. Ask about building in future upgrades and features into the monthly cost. This way you won't need a new website every 2-3 years. After all, what was hot 2 years ago is barely functional today. Look at Flash.

Find out EXACTLY what you are paying for.

It's always sad to hear a client tell me about their horror stories on being nickled and dimed for everything under the sun, rain or shine by previous website companies.

Since this may be an expensive initiative for your property management company/property, make sure you know EXACTLY what you're paying for. What's included? Does the price include copy writing? How about the web hosting? Does the fee include annual updates to enhance the SEO? How much will any edits to the layout be in the future? The more you find out prior to signing the contract, the more trouble you save yourself down the road.

A good industry website design company should have a proven track record.

This means not only having a great portfolio but also a track record that proves they deliver what they say they do. Similar to other aspects of online marketing, property website design is to a certain degree results-based. This means that you will not only want the website you paid them to create, you will also want to be sure it works correctly and helps to promote your properties better than before in generating new leases, retaining current residents and subsequently resulting in a high ROI and essential paying for itself.

A couple things to consider on this topic:

• Has the company won any awards for websites they have designed in the past?
• Does the company employ apartment industry experience?
• How easy to use is the company-to-be's own website?

Ask to take a look at current client testimonials and industry references.

A trusted apartment website design company that is good at what it does will be confident in its track record, and will therefore not be afraid to provide current client testimonials and industry references who will vouch for them. Also, a common practice for high quality website design companies is to post current testimonials on their websites.

Everyone's situation is different, so let's examine some of the pros and cons of handling search internally versus tasking an outside expert to handle the duties.

In-House: Pros

SEO is an ongoing process, and regularly updated content goes hand-in-hand with SEO efforts. There can be good reasons to keep all aspects of site management in-house, particularly in industries (such as pharmaceutical) that are strongly regulated, or subject to legal and compliance concerns when it comes to website copy and other site content.
Many organizations need internal support and champions to get projects off the ground. If marketing, content, and IT are truly in sync and have clearly defined goals, SEO can be effectively managed in-house.

In-House: Cons

Unless yours is a very small business or site, consider the many duties inherent in SEO. Will one individual (or a small team) be able to optimize multiple pages, write content and tags, build links, and run reports, quickly enough to stay competitive? Ongoing training is practically mandatory to do the job well since the search engine landscape changes so frequently.

One current and very real drawback is that once trained, SEOs can be extremely difficult to retain. Even in a down economy, demand is high for almost anyone with demonstrated SEO skills in this very nascent marketing discipline. As I once said to a headhunter who called to see if he could pry open my Rolodex, "How many SEO majors did you know in college?"

SEO isn't purely an IT function, nor does it reside squarely within marketing. As with other digital marketing initiatives, a solid SEO strategy requires the knowledge, skills, and input of both camps. Ask yourself if your organization is up to that task, and if you can identify an individual who spans these two often-disparate worlds.

Finally, although costs will be lower than hiring an outside consultant or agency, the burden is high. Assess whether you can support the internal resources.

Outsource: Pros

An outside agency will have a specialized staff with expertise in the myriad aspects of SEO: strategic planning, copywriting, link building, site architecture, and technical issues. Moreover, SEO is its core competency. It will stay on top of new technology and trends in the business.

An outside agency or consultant can become a trusted partner that helps keep even the in-house slice of the initiative on track, while offering a fresh, outside perspective on the business.

Even when in-house personnel are highly competent, driven, and well-compensated marketers, an agency usually brings consistency, continuity, and strategic planning to the table.

Outsource: Cons

Costs can be considerably higher than running a program in-house.

Success metrics can result in murkiness and data overload. Even if you outsource, monitoring the success of that effort should be kept in-house, which is still an extra burden of responsibility.

Splitting the balance

Finally, there is one last alternative: Compromise and split the balance. Many companies don't outsource the entirety of their SEO or SEM efforts, but rather those pieces of it they cannot, or don't want to, handle internally. It may be beneficial to work with an agency to develop a long-term organic optimization strategy, but execute most of that plan internally. Alternately, an in-house marketing staff may find that it needs support with only one or two SEO-related issues, which can then be outsourced to an independent consultant. You might, therefore, want to keep the bulk of SEO in-house, but outsource certain specialized tasks, such as overall strategy, site architecture, or link-building.
Obviously, there's never a black and white, right or wrong answer when it comes to hiring any kind of outside business consultant or service. Search engine optimization is certainly no exception. And as search grows, agencies are becoming more specialized. There are now disciplines within search that specialize on local businesses, public relations, multimedia search for audio and video, global and multicultural search, social media search optimization...the list goes on and on.