iHouseweb is a website service provider and online marketing solution with SEO marketing and a CRM for real estate agents.
Have suggestions for products that you’d like to see reviewed by our real estate technology expert? Email Craig Rowe.
iHouseweb is a website provider and online marketing solution for real estate agents.
Platforms: Browser; mobile-optimized
Ideal for: All agents and teams needing a website; those looking to consolidate web marketing efforts
Top selling points
- Unique search engine optimization (SEO) strategy
- Easy template and site feature editor
- Internet data exchange (IDX) integration
- Built-in customer relationship management (CRM)
Top concerns
Those needing a new CRM should compare iHouseweb’s included CRM TurboLeads against stand-alone CRMs; don’t assume TurboLeads will overlap with your business because you like what the website product has to offer.
What you should know
iHouseweb offers agents an IDX website with a flexible editing interface and multiple marketing features.
The company includes templates that react effectively in the mobile environment and can handle video banners.
Buyers browsing for homes will enjoy faster loading and a smoother search experience as a result of the decision to do away with the slower, sometimes clunky iFrame connection for the IDX feed. (An iFrame is a method for inserting an HTML page inside another HTML page, and it’s often obvious to the user because of it’s “framed” appearance.)
The map search comes with what’s typical these days, including a polygon drawing tool to pinpoint streets and communities — not particularly innovative but certainly a feature many locally-focused home shoppers have come to expect.
I like the minimal touch experience for saving a home search by clicking on a price range slider when hovering over a listing, and then following a three-listing registration prompt. The pop-up isn’t obnoxious, merely asking for a name and email.
Editing a website on iHouseweb is simple. New templates will adapt quickly to existing content, and site components are dragged and dropped from pages with ease.
Users can select from over 300 designs, which can lead to design anxiety. It’s great to have options, but make sure the process of choosing one doesn’t prevent you from launching a new website in reasonable time.
iHouseweb plays the SEO game in clever fashion. 
Because there’s no chance you can compete directly with the portals when someone searches for “Homes for sale in Anchorage,” for example, iHouseweb builds your site and listing pages for localized, price-specific home searches.
Your chances of floating up to page one become much greater when someone looks for “Homes for sale in Anchorage for under $250,000,” or something similar.
However, there is no secret code to automatically ranking in search engines. A proper SEO strategy takes thought and money, and iHouseweb’s approach is only one part.
The company is also leveraging a new open-source tool from Google called the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project, or the AMP Project. The initiative is designed to load summarized, cached pages from your site to significantly increase mobile searching and accuracy.
Given the pace at which homebuyers are moving strictly to mobile, using AMP was a smart decision for iHouseweb, and one that will pay off for its customers.
TurboLeads accepts new leads from all sources — something agents should be happy about if they are already paying for multiple online lead products.
TurboLeads comes as an app too, which I haven’t reviewed. Make sure you give it consideration because it looks pretty sharp.
Other features include a number of MailChimp-powered automated follow-ups to prospects and reminders to agents, such as:
- Automatic email sends
- Texts after lead registrations
- Notifications when a registered buyer is searching your website for listings
- Alerts for over-due tasks
iHouseweb is the type of tool I feel would be ideal for agents just underway in the profession because of its overall feature stack and omni-channel lead integration.
It also provides a 30-day, one-on-one onboarding service to help with site design and launch, CRM setup and general support.
That said, for agents already in the top-tier of their office, I’d like to see more reasons from iHouseweb to make a wholesale switch.
Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe.
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