A survey by the California Association of Realtors reinforces the importance of Realtor Response time:

• 86% of leads felt that response time was “extremely important” when deciding on their real estate agent
• 31% of Internet home buyers expected their real estate agent to respond instantly to their online inquiry
• 96% of Internet home buyers expected a real estate agent to contact them within 4 hours of their online inquiry

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Some additional information from their website:

WebtoPhoneLead closes the gap between impulse and action to increase website sales. Talk to your website visitors during their peak interest instead of following up with a text or email. Your conversions will soar.

• WebtoPhoneLead leads increase conversions and profits.
• WebtoPhoneLead work during the weekend and after hours. No need to have a salesperson in a call center, behind a computer.
• Differentiate over your competition with a new, innovative lead type.
• Payment occurs only when the call lasts 30 seconds or more.
• Dynamically route calls to multiple offices or within an office or salespeople.
• Be first to connect to a lead if it is posted to several buyers.
• Automatic second and third attempts to dramatically increase conversions.

We would be interested to get some feedback on this product so contact us to let us know what you think!

If you’re unfamiliar with iHomefinder’s Hot Sheets, they are site pages that include listings from either a saved search or a list of specific MLS IDs. With Hot Sheets, Realtors can personalize their site by showing expertise in a particular area or highlighting a noteworthy collection of listings.

The Hot Sheet slide show pulls the listings from a Hot Sheet into a customizable slide show for display on
any webpage.

To place the Hot Sheet slide show on a website page, use the following JavaScript include:

<script src="http://www.idxre.com/idx/hotsheetslideshow.cfm?cid=Client-ID&hid=Hot-Sheet-ID"></script>

The Hot Sheet ID in the above JavaScript can be found after the Hot Sheet Name in the ‘Manage Hot
Sheets’ section of the Control Panel.

Use the following parameters to customize the slide show:

Changing the Font Size
Use the ‘&fs=’ parameter to change the font size of the listing description. Font size can be specified in units of px, pt, or em. The default font size is 12px. Do not include any spaces in the fs value, but do include the units.

Example:

<script language="javascript" src="http://www.idxre.com/idx/hotsheetslideshow.cfm?cid=1234&hid=12345&fs=14px"></script>

Show Listings Without Photos
For a slideshow that shows listings that do not include photos, use the parameter ‘&showListingsWithoutPhotos=1′ .

Link to Frameset Coded Page
Add the parameter ‘&ShowFramed=1′ to have the slide show link open the listing detail page with the Frameset Code template applied.

CSS
You can modify the display of the slideshow by customizing and inserting the following CSS on the page that includes the slide show:

<style type="text/css">
/* Adjust Photo Size (Typically height: 130px; width: 170px) */
table.featuredPropertyPic img.photo { height: 195px; width: 255px; }  

/* Link Text */
/* Note: Must change font size using fs argument (see below) */
div.ihfslidestext a { font-weight:bold; color:800; font-size: 12px; }
div.ihfslidestext a:hover { font-weight:bold; color:F00; font-size: 12px; }
</style>

First of all, let me explain that to have a ‘mobile friendly’ site, you do not need the .mobi extension. The .mobi extension is ultimately no different than .net, .edu, or .com, except that it is intended to house a mobile friendly site.

There has been a lot of controversy over the advantages and disadvantages of the .mobi domains as well:

The main advantage to .mobi is that the pages under the .mobi domain are expected to be fully customized for the mobile phone’s browser. This means that the site has been built with the mobile phone’s browser in mind and will look good on almost every mobile platform.

However, having two separate domain names for your website creates two separate internets – one for mobile access and one for normal internet viewing, dependent entirely on the device used to access them. Keep in mind, this means maintaining two separate websites/domains, one for standard browsers and one for mobile browsers.

The other thing to consider is that web sites can automatically detect what platform a visitor is accessing the site through. Go to google.com on your phone, you end up at m.google.com. Its hassle-free to the end user. For this reason, you do not need .mobi to have a mobile friendly site!

Also, domain name extensions become successful when lots of people use them and recognize them. There are still many people who are not familiar with .mobi and will not think to type it into their browser.

It seems to me that .mobi is not a domain extension for the typical website owner. Unless you plan on spending some time and money on making your business all about mobile web applications it’s really not worth it!