apartment website

Not…

Ran across a quote the other day that sent me thinking – in a contentious sort of way…

In today’s information age of marketing and web 2.0, a company’s website is the key to their entire business. – Marcus Sheridan

I rarely drop four letter words – as a personal choice – but this gave me cause. It was more like an eight letter but four letter affect word but passionate nonetheless. Maybe I missed the context of the remark but it just seems shortsighted.

Heart of a Company

I shared a story from Leo Buscaglia just a couple of days ago and it purely relates to my reproach. To me, it is much deeper than a website. Hate the soft side of business as much you want, think of it as the gnat that you can’t get rid of or the back burner – get to it some day sort of thing but that, my friends, is the key to business. In apartment marketing or management, your website is not key. You are.

I suppose I could agree that if information were the end all be all to business then your website is key. But information, be it about your apartments, management company or otherwise, is not what drives your business – people do. People are key. People make relationships and people compel others to respond and take next steps.

You can have the best website in your space but if the people at the end of that avenue are unkept, obnoxious and otherwise disinterested – you will struggle.

Information Age or Mindful Age

As we move away from share for the sake of sharing or sharing for the sake of garnishing good favor and thus a business transaction, I think being mindful of relationship on every level will be the key to business. Even when it comes to your website [your digital archive of information] you must be mindful of the people who are interested in the information. They are there because of their interests at that moment in time. But, most important, they are there to seek relationship first and information second.

So I borderline beg you – please argue that people seek out information first and relationship second so I can carry this conversation on….

Your – looking for some feedback – multifamily manic,

It seems the tipping point is here with regard to the way consumers use the Internet for information to make purchases. There is a stat out there that suggests that 53% of users get their information in places other than corporate web sites. I wonder if it is time to re-imagine the corporate website.

In lieu of a shiny new one dotted with the general me me me stuff accompanied by a map of all our properties, should we move in the direction of a social classified [Craigslist] concept? I’m not suggesting we ditch the specific company and community information but maybe we just display it in a different manner. Can we give them what they want right when they want it? Can we get to the point without sacrificing engagement and overall experience? Or, would the engagement and overall experience be amplified positively by a less cluttered approach? I think the overriding theme in developing a web presence going forward should be to make it more social in nature.

That in mind, do you think it is conceivable that an apartment prospect just wants to get to the pertinent information via a search box – for all intents and purposes, they are expertly trained by Google to do so. Could we get away with just having a search box on our home page? Maybe after that, they just want to read a few reviews so that they can make a more informed decision about joining our apartment experience? Could each one of our listings carry with it a review or two? – And on that point, why use a third party when you could provide your own feedback [Yelp or Aptratings like] mechanism? Would it carry the same credibility?

Maybe the site is a mashup of Goolge and Craigslist [Craigooglelist], where your homepage is a search box that leads to a set of classified listings that include reviews. We could include links to the other stuff just in case the user wants to see it.

The over-riding point here is, do we need to rethink the corporate apartment website?

Have a stellar Sunday. M