Last time I wrote about the stats on how many people are using which browser, Firefox had 27% of the market. That was September 2006. Well, now it is almost November 1st 2007 and here is an update:
Internet Explorer 7 - 20.8%
Internet Explorer 6 - 34.9%
Firefox - 35.4%
Thats 91% of users. Do you think it is time that you looked into Firefox now?
Here are 7 Website No No’s for non Ubertors. Take a moment to check out your website. If you decide that you want to see what the Uber fuss is about, take Ubertor for a spin here.
1. No Splash Pages - Internet users are in too much of a rush to be slowed down by your splash page.
2. Login Required - These days, internet users are too savy to give up their real email address. They will just go elsewhere to find the information they are looking for or give you an email address that they use for login required sites.
3. Canned Content - Get rid of it. Take the time to write your own content. Your website visitors will love you for it.
4. Flash - As a minimal accent to your website it is great, if more than 15% of your site is in Flash you have a search engine problem.
5. Version - If your website asks the user what version of your website they would like to see. Like Flash, HTML, Low Bandwidth, High… you lose. If your website doesn’t show up immediately and deliver your message right away it’s pretty hard to keep people along for the ride.
6. Firefox - If your website does not work in Firefox… look into it. Firefox accounts for 35% of internet users. Don’t know what Firefox is? check it out here… it is a big step up from Internet Explorer.
7. Sitemap - Do you see a sitemap on your website? Google says “Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site.” Don’t have one? Better get on it.
It takes the average person 5 seconds to identify and delete a single spam message. While that may not sound like much, all those seconds add up. Take a moment to watch this Gmail video that discusses how Gmail fights spam.
Wow, 3 environment posts in a row.
I saw this article linked on Brenda Russell’s blog talking about an article that Garry Marr of the Financial Post. He questions if Canadians will spend more for ‘green’ homes?
Full Article Here
Al Gore would be proud. A new survey says 63% of Canadians are willing to spend more money to get a green home.
A poll conducted for Royal LePage Real Estate Services found 62% of those Canadians will spend anywhere from $5,000 to $20,000 in order to get so-called green features.
“The mood of Canadian homebuyers and sellers is changing with the times — environmental concerns are impacting the decisions people are making about their dwellings,” said Phil Soper, chief executive of LePage. “From simple energy conservation efforts to more elaborate use of organic building materials, the environmental conscious mindset that our agents are seeing in clients is not a passing trend.”
LePage found that 8% of the 63% who want a green home will pay more than $20,000 extra for the privilege. The same survey found 72% of Canadians plan to look for a property with environmental improvements when they buy their next home.
Atlantic Canadians were the most likely to spend more money to buy a green home at 72% while Ontario finished last with only 60% of respondents in the province willing to pay more to go green,
The survey found 51% of respondents were concerned about the environment and felt changes needed to be made. Despite that concern, 54% of respondents said the changes would be too expensive to implement and 15% said they had no idea where to start.
“There are many simple and affordable measures than can lead to big gains for the environment and many of the practices can actually save homeowners money,” said Mr. Soper.
Almost three-quarters of Canadians say they are doing some traditional recycling. Another 74% say they have switched from regular light bulbs to compact fluorescent bulbs, 61% have added window and door sealers to prevent heat loss and 54% have switched to high efficiency washers and dryers and are using low flow water fixtures.
The survey was conducted by Angus Reid Strategies and completed on Oct. 16. It is considered accurate to within 2.75 percentage points, 19 times of 20.
The team over at ONNI is making unique use of some expensive land in downtown Vancouver. I was driving by the other day and noticed this sign on Pacific Street:
If you can’t read it, it says:
“For the Residents of Vancouver,
Community Park and Garden.
Contact us to take part in the planting and setup of your community garden”
You can see the garden here:
View Larger Map
What a great way to get involved and do something good for the community and the environment.
Lately the world seems to getting more and more on the environment band wagon. Have you?
- Macdonald Realty offers their clients the ability to make all of their real estate transactions earth friendly with their MacGreen Program.
- James Rodgers has built his real estate business around being a Greener Realtor
- Ian Watt is discontinuing the realtor standard “just sold” unaddressed flyers and sending all of their just listed flyers electronically via email to those who sign up and who are interested in their service.
What are you doing to “get green”?
CNN is reporting that Microsoft Corp. announced today that it is investing $240 million for a minority 1.6 percent stake in Facebook.com, a price that values the social networking site at $15 billion.
If you have not played with Facebook.com maybe now it is time to check it out and see what it is all about and how it can help you connect with friends, family, colleagues, client and potential clients.
Techcouver.com is a flash map that showcases technology companies based in Vancouver (well, the Lower Mainland) and Ubertor got the nod on the site. Take a moment to check out the site, lots of great companies come from north of the boarder.
Techcouver.com is a product of TechVibes
I asked Christian of WellcomeMat to answer a few questions about his video platform product. Take a moment to learn more about WellcomeMat and how they differ from YouTube.
Ubertor: In your opinion, why is video so great?
WellcomeMat: I’m going to switch your question up a bit and just list off the reasons why I quit a six figure job, made $0 in the last 15 months, spent my life savings, work seven days a week and strained my marriage to make WellcomeMat.com happen:
1) Video saves everyone (buyers, renters, and sellers) a ton of time. Buyers are the most obvious winners in the video equation. Simply put, they don’t have to visit places in person unless they know that they might make a move. Buyers’ agents save this time too! The sellers and listing agents in the video equation deal with less “window shoppers” in person.
2) Real estate professionals that use video as a listing tool make more money. Homes with video tours attached stand out hugely amongst photo and text-based listings. Although there are not many sites able to tell how much more traffic video-based listings get, the evidence is mounting in video’s favor. It is a huge magnetic pull! Add to that the fact that videos will find their way to page one of an organic Google search (because of Google Universal Search), usually within the first week of being posted, and now we’re talking! Lastly, we are hearing time and time again how powerful a good video is when trying to win a listing over competing agents/brokers. I have yet to meet a listing agent that has used video and stopped.
3) Video is the closest thing to a real walk through that you can get online. There are many real estate marketers that view video’s realness as a scary thing. But, their assumption is a fluffed property online will yield more sales. Not true! Matching the physical walk through, and the experience homeowners might have living in a particular neighborhood should be the goal of video.
4) It is a “green” technology, helping to us to use less fuel and be less wasteful.
We often hear about how video is more difficult than using photos, or virtual tours, and more expensive. Completely true! So what? Harvard is more difficult and expensive than a community college, but attending will yield better results (disclaimer: I am a mere University of Colorado at Boulder grad). What our team always finds in terms of adversity to video is a cost analysis: video verses photos, or video verses virtual tours. These discussions are, for the most part, worthless. Use everything you can to win listings and make more money! Photos rock too. And, there are many video producers that have figured out ways to charge less and do more volume. The average cost of video has decreased massively since WellcomeMat first went live (June 2006). Without question, competition is working its magic within the production side of real estate video.
Ubertor: How are people to best use WellcomeMat’s system and technologies?
WellcomeMat: I would start by simply stating dive in! Our team supports our users better than any tech company I can think of. And, we have about 1000 video producers ready to help you get going as well. We are always amazed at how much WellcomeMat video producers want to help people understand how to do it themselves. Truth told, people that want to sell/rent a lot of properties cannot spend their time shooting their videos. They know this, but they also know that many people want to try video themselves.
In general, think of WellcomeMat.com as a one stop shop to: get professionally produced videos (or upload your own), create the best quality video experience for your viewers, and get your videos into every spot desired on the web (blogs, listings landing pages, Craigslist etc.). To us, it’s all about making stars out of those using video well, making sure our members have fun with video, and enriching our members’ sites/web pages.
Ubertor: What makes WellcomeMat better than YouTube?
WellcomeMat: Nobody is “better” than YouTube! For what YouTube does, they are the best. That site is raw volume and SEO. There aren’t many smart people questioning the amount of traffic videos get on YouTube; and, now that Google owns them, videos posted on YouTube show up quickly within organic search results. What WellcomeMat does better than anyone is a) helps people gather high-quality content through support and our videographer directory, b) provides the highest quality playback (clarity, chaptering for clickable scenes etc), and c) helps people to get their content into the right contexts. Context is a big deal right now. People are posting their videos to a bunch of different sites that provide zero relevance to a real estate search. If the intention is to show up within search engines, posting videos to the generalist video sites makes sense. If you want to use quality video where it should be used (your site(s) and your blog), WellcomeMat is where you do all of this.
Now you can have your listings show up on the Zillow.com website! We have just added the functionality for you to have your listings showcased on Zillow.com quickly and easily. All you have to do is follow the instructions in this knowledgebase article.
Now your listings can go to Zillow.com and Trulia.com. All you need to do is take a minute to register with both websites and your on your way. Learn how to deal with Trulia here.
