Takeaways:
- Keller Williams announced a partnership with Placester to provide responsive and SEO-optimized websites for agents and local offices.
- Keller Williams’ agents and local office leadership will be able to view, set up and change responsive templates with prebuilt layouts from Placester.
- Visitors will search for listings, with embedded IDX search, view properties in detail, discover neighborhood information, and receive alerts to new listings or changes in listings.
At the firm’s huge conference in Austin today, Keller Williams announced a partnership with Boston, Massachusetts-based Placester, a real estate technology company, to provide responsive and SEO-optimized websites for its agents and local offices throughout the U.S. and Canada. The new websites are optimized for any device.
Keller Williams’ agents and local office leadership will be able to view, set up and change responsive Web design templates with prebuilt layouts from Placester.
Placester.com
The Placester deal would seem to represent a blow to the KW relationship with Zillow’s Market Leader product, which also provides agent websites and other services. However, Keller Williams was silent about any plans with its partnership with Market Leader, which Zillow inherited in its acquisition of Trulia.
Inman previously reported that Zillow was selling Market Leader.
With the new agent websites powered by Placester, visitors will search for listings with embedded IDX search, view properties in detail, discover neighborhood information, and receive alerts to new listings or changes in listings. In addition, agent websites will allow visitors to learn more about the agent.
Local office websites will serve as an information portal for consumers to learn more about an office’s agents and for buying and selling properties. Visitors will also be able to register to save searches.
“We’re very excited to join forces with the Keller Williams brand by providing Placester sites to over 100,000 associates across the country,” said Matt Barba, CEO, Placester. “Keller Williams understands the importance of consumer-friendly real estate websites, and we look forward to collaborating with them to deliver a best-in-class experience to their clients, by way of their associates and teams.”
The announcement was part of a larger set of issues addressed by Chris Heller, CEO of KW, and John Davis, president of KW, this morning at the Mega Camp event.
Heller and Davis also addressed the importance of data protection, assuring its agents that the company’s contract with dotloop protected their data. Heller addressed the importance of the broker-centric Upstream project as another initiative to protect listing data.
“Agent’s data is your business,” implored Davis from the stage. “It is a covenant we will always uphold.”
Placester also has a Web creation deal with the National Association of Realtors, and less than a year ago, the firm announced new technology that can create a website in five minutes.