William Raveis Real Estate, one of the largest independent brokerages in the Northeast, has launched a redesigned website featuring more videos, an agent concierge service and a market forecasting tool.
The site’s yearlong redesign process was meant to make the Shelton, Conn.-based firm’s website more personal, said Bill Raveis, William Raveis’ founder, CEO and chairman.
“We’re a family business and I wanted our site to feel more personalized,” Raveis said.
William Raveis Real Estate founder, CEO and Chairman Bill Raveis introduces the data offerings of the firm’s new website in a video featured prominently on the new home page.
To accomplish this, the new site features a photo-centric home page, enhanced map-based search and video much more prominently than on its previous site, he said.
For example, the site’s desktop home page has four videos front and center that feature messages from the firm’s leaders: Bill Raveis; Executive Vice President Ryan Raveis; Kent Hanley, general manager and executive vice president of sales; and Colleen Kasper, director of e-commerce.
In addition to the increased video presence on the home page, William Raveis revamped its agents’ websites, too, to allow for more videos and a direct link to testimonials from surveys the firm sends out to clients.
Unlike other relatively recently refreshed brokerage websites like Chicago-based @properties’ new site and San Francisco Bay Area-based Alain Pinel Realtors’ site, William Raveis’ new site doesn’t focus as heavily on highlighting neighborhood-specific information.
The focus for the new site was on facilitating connections between the company, its agents and consumers, Raveis said.
Raveis says the website’s layout, too, helps make it approachable for consumers. Raveis pointed to the site’s centered logo and the light gray horizontal divider lines down the page that enhance the site’s personal feel. Both elements were suggested by a “world-class painter” who was a consultant on the project, he said.
Along with the new site, agents have access to a new concierge service manned by six full-time and three part-time employees that respond to leads with a phone call, text or email when a consumer tries to contact a William Raveis agent who doesn’t respond right away.
If the agent doesn’t get back to the consumer within two hours, the concierge service directs the consumer to another William Raveis agent, Raveis said.
The new site also features a market forecasting tool, which William Raveis claims is an industry-first.
Screen shot of a market forecast for Manchester, Conn., using William Raveis’ new market forecasting tool.
The tool uses a proprietary model built by William Raveis with an in-house statistician that includes multiple listing service-sourced sold data going back seven years, unemployment data and other info, Raveis said.
William Raveis has over 3,000 agents in 95 owned and affiliate offices in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island and New Hampshire.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story misstated the number of employees at William Raveis’ new agent concierge service. The concierge service employs six people full-time and three part-time.
