Inman Review: Need more horsepower in your online presence? Try Agent Engine

Have suggestions for products that you’d like to see reviewed by our real estate technology expert? Email Craig Rowe.

Agent Engine is a digital marketing content creation service for real estate agents.

Platforms: Web, mobile-responsive
Ideal for: All brokerages, associations, teams and agents (independents especially)

Top selling points:

• Superior web/online designs
• Easy to manage
• Stand out from the crowd
• Individual listing pages
• Agent profile pages

Top concern:

Agent Engine doesn’t fit into a easy-to-define category, as its services go beyond website design and don’t focus on social media, for example, which are what most agents seek when searching for content creation services.

What you should know

When I went out on my own as a freelance writer and content provider, Copyblogger was the first website I visited for insight and inspiration.

Twelve years later, I met (over Zoom) one of the people behind it, and like me, he’s helping real estate agents understand how an online presence betters business. His company, while just out of the gate, is already doing a very cool job of it.

That person is Brian Gardner, and he’s joined in the Agent Engine endeavor by a fellow Copyblogger alumnus, Tony Clark, as well as by a number of established real estate writers and industry advisers, including Inman columnist and Zillow vet, Jay Thompson.

While the founding team and adviser lineup is enough to warrant immediate credibility, it’s the solutions offered that should win you over.

Agent Engine creates simple, exceptional designs for online agent profiles. It also builds crisp landing pages and offers white-labeled online directories.

Visually engaging professional biographies can be accompanied by listing descriptions and testimonials to quickly summarize an agent’s market status and lift them above the exhausted and regimented brokerage-provided website.

They come with icon-based contact menus, subscribe tools and social media links.

Agent profile pages are easily edited on the front end, meaning there isn’t a wall between content and product, a feature that demonstrates a commitment to user experience and content control.

Listing descriptions are introduced on the page in the same way a typical blog post might be, as if another section of content. Click to learn more, and you’ll see more of the same dedication to information design.

Listing pages are given large banner images, a customizable selection of supportive pictures, map views and an informative, linked tagging system that can drive consumers to similar listings.

That tagging system is also used to quickly assemble an agent profile, in addition to interactive icons to access each content block. Click, type and save. It’s that easy.

Agent Engine uses a high-contrast black and white color scheme in its icons and typography. Any banner images and logos help integrate color and depth to the pages.

Agent Engine is using its clients’ profiles to build a slick national agent discovery resource. Consumers and other professionals can search by name, state, brand or team.

The company is also inviting industry vendors into the mix, such as lenders and photographers, the latter of which would be especially well represented by the Agent Engine user experience.

Agent Engine can build websites from the profile data under Pro account levels, which can also have a team profile with callouts to individual agents and their profiles. Users can also easily plug in their own custom domain names.

I’d like to see Agent Engine sites build in connections to CRMs and perhaps add some user metrics under the listing pages.

That said, I’m expecting some big things from this company. I’ve been disappointed before, of course, but I don’t think this is one of those cases. There are new features underway for the agent profile which should be available by this publish date. I was told to expect more functionality.

One thing I can rely on with Agent Engine is a carefully considered roadmap. People this dedicated to good design don’t add the unnecessary, and they make every suggestion prove itself.

Such is the case with Agent Engine Spaces, which gives brokerages, associations and teams the ability to build out their own custom agent and member directories. The new feature was driven by feedback on the nationwide version and is now available for all customers.

There’s no reason this won’t take off as agents fight for bandwidth in a market that’s only getting tighter, and as a result, more innovative in how its practitioners find buyers and sellers.

Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe

Craig C. Rowe started in commercial real estate at the dawn of the dot-com boom, helping an array of commercial real estate companies fortify their online presence and analyze internal software decisions. He now helps agents with technology decisions and marketing through reviewing software and tech for Inman.