Thursday, October 21, 2010

Top Ten Most Popular VaultWare Powered Apartment Search Websites – Q3 2010

October 21, 2010, Scottsdale, AZ -- Realty DataTrust, maker of the VaultWare™ complete apartment marketing and leasing solution, including the multifamily industry’s original online apartment availability and reservation system, today released its quarterly list of the top ten most popular apartment search websites powered by VaultWare during the third quarter of 2010.

The VaultWare apartment reservation system integrates with over 170 websites in the United States to provide rental prospects the ability to find current rental pricing and availability, as well as to hold a specific unit and pre-qualify instantly online. On average, over one million people per month have used VaultWare to check availability in 2010. This has resulted in the average VaultWare-powered property experiencing 395 check availability sessions per month.

The rankings are notably unchanged from Q2 2010. However, Oodle.com entered the top 10 for the first time further supporting the role of non-traditional online advertising sites as growing traffic sources for apartment managers and owners. Craigslist retains its position at the top of the ranking with the classified ad site generating 265.6 availability searches per property in the 3rd quarter. Continuing its reign as the top traffic producing traditional Internet Listing Service, Rent.com delivered 204.8 check availability sessions per property.

Top Ten Most Popular VaultWare Powered Apartment Search Websites – Q3 2010

Based on prospective renters checking apartment availability

Q3
2010 Rank
Q2
2009 Rank
Q3
2009 Rank
Website* Availability Searches
Per Property
1   -

1

6

Craigslist.org

265.6

2   -

2

1

Rent.com

204.8

3   -

3

3

Apartments.com

139.3

4   -

4

4

ForRent.com

89.8

5   -

5

8

Move.com

79.9

6 -

6

7

ApartmentFinder.com

55.7

7 ↑

8

9

ApartmentGuide.com

36.0

8 ↑

9

10

MyNewPlace.com

21.4

9 ↑

10

NR

ApartmentSearch.com

10.2

10 ↑

NR

NR

Oodle.com

7.6

 

Total

910.3

*Rankings are based on the number of times renters check specific apartment availability online per property from the respective website. All websites have a minimum of 200 apartment properties powered by VaultWare.

For more information, visit the VaultWare Online Marketing Index which enables multifamily professionals to benchmark their individual property or their portfolios’ online leasing results against industry averages. To see how rental pricing compares by marketplace, visit www.PadZing.com.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

VaultWare Mobile Websites Enhanced for Newest Smartphones

With new smartphone models and updates to mobile operating systems being released seemingly everyday, we proactively test our mobile websites to ensure our customers are providing the best mobile renting experience possible to their potential residents. With more and more phones adopting HTML5 compatibility, we’ve created a newly-redesigned mobile website template that takes advantage of the many of the benefits HTML5 provides.

Beginning October 21st we’ll be rolling out this new enhanced mobile website to all of our customers free-of-charge! As for the old mobile template? It will continue to be served up automatically to older smartphone models that can’t handle the new bells and whistles in the new mobile template. You might say it’s the best of both mobile worlds!

Here are some of the more notable, shiny new features we’re building into your mobile website:

  • Mobile Beautification - All of the apartment marketing solutions we make -- online leasing, mobile and property websites, iPad Leasing Tablets to name a few -- are built around one core philosophy, “Make leasing easy.” From larger pictures to easily recognizable icons to slick AJAX navigation, the new design provides a superior mobile renting experience to your customers.

  • Custom Buttons - Do you have a third-party mobile site you’d like to link to like RentPayment’s mobile payment portal? We can now add a custom linked button to your mobile website.

  • Mobile Management Company Portal - We’ve added city-level search capabilities to the mobile management company portal so locating a property in cities where you have multiple properties is easier for your potential residents.

Check out an example of the new mobile template. We expect everyone to be on the new template by the end of the month. To see a preview of what your property looks like on the new template please contact your Account Manager.

If you would like to learn more about our mobile website solution for apartments connect with a sales representative.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

5 Reasons Your Apartment Community Needs a Mobile Website

  1. Your Customers Are Already Mobile
    It was just a few years ago that having a website for your property was optional. Today you wouldn’t dream of marketing and leasing apartments without one! More than 57.8 million American consumers (and growing) are accessing the web via mobile devices every day. In the multifamily space, mobile traffic to apartment websites increased 74% per property in the last 6 months alone according to VaultWare mobile site analytics. If you aren’t providing a quality mobile experience to your customers you’re already behind the curve.
  2. The Mobile Web Will Surpass Desktop Web Use Within 5 Years
    Mobile web usage is growing at a significantly faster rate than the traditional web with most analysts predicting that in just 5 years mobile web usage will overtake desktop web usage. Quantcast reports that last year the mobile web grew 110%. Are you prepared for more than half of your website users to visit your website on a 3-inch screen? (It’s a good idea to take a minute and check out what your site looks like on your smartphone before reading further.)
  3. Balloons and Directionals Can’t Beat GPS
    If you want that apartment hunter down the street to find you, you can try balloons, directionals and sign-spinners, or you can make it easy for them to find you on their Blackberry! Smartphone GPS technology has become an integral piece of the mobile web that your mobile website must take advantage of. From automatically identifying the communities closest to a potential resident’s current location, to turn-by-turn routing and directions, properly implemented GPS features in your mobile website can be an apartment manager’s best friend.
  4. Smartphones Are Considered Important Tool in Making Purchasing Decisions
    More and more, consumers are using their mobile devices to aide them in purchasing decisions and to make purchases. A study by AT&T and Demandware Inc. found that almost 1/4 of retail shoppers use their phone while in a store to competitively price shop an item and 60% ranked the ability to check product availability as important to very important. While only 15% of consumers have used their mobile devices to make purchases, the mobile purchasing trend is expected to increase dramatically as mobile network speed, screen resolutions and perhaps most importantly, website usability improve.
  5. Google Cares About Mobile
    Google knows the difference between content designed for mobile use and traditional desktop computing. That means that any SEO you are doing for the traditional desktop web isn’t doing much good on the mobile web. If you aren’t presenting mobile optimized content, Google isn’t going to send you any mobile traffic. But rest assured your competitor appreciates the extra traffic you’re giving them!

VaultWare Mobile Websites are a cost-effective and easy-to-implement solution for apartment managers ready to capitalize on the mobile demographic. They work seamlessly with your existing website, are compatible with all major mobile platforms and require little to no development costs. With mobile demand for current apartment availability increasing 73% and mobile apartment reservations increasing by 67% since February 2010, we highly recommend combining the VaultWare Mobile Reservation System with your mobile website and taking advantage of automatic rate updates, industry-leading availability and reservation functionality and centralized content management for your online ads, website, mobile, Craigslist and social media.

Contact VaultWare today to learn more or to schedule an online demo.