Quick Tip: Location Quick Searches

Want to help your clients hone in on their ideal marketplace? A good place to start on your website is through custom pages that include interactive maps, a.k.a a Location Quick Search page. It is a simple procedure that takes less than 15 minutes to complete per page/location.  How does this help? For you, it means less time spent messing around in the Website Editor, affording you more time to source out new leads. For your clients, with proper placement on your menu it means they can pull-up their desired property search location within sixty seconds of landing on your homepage. The ability to capture and lead someone deeper into your website not only enhances its usability, but also reduces the chance that someone will land on your site and in failing to find their desired resource quickly, press the BACK button to leave.

How can you setup a Location Quick Search? Follow along…

First the page itself needs to be created, and to do that, lets follow the steps outlined in the Online Manual:

1. Open the Website Editor
2. Click on Pages
3. Click 'Create custom page'
4. You can now give the page a name, select a category and enter a friendly name*. There are also options on this tab to hide the page (visible to visitors’ box), open page in a new window and show only content.
5. Click 'Create'
6. Click 'Ok'
7. Click 'Ok' to edit the page

Once the page is created you will need to add content to the page. There are several different types of content available. Please refer to the 'Website Content' section of the online manual for details on adding different types of content.

*The friendly name cannot contain any spaces or special characters i.e. &,), ^, %, etc...

In this example, let’s use Etobicoke as the city of choice. So for the Name of the page, I’ve opted for “Search Etobicoke’s Fine Homes,” selected the Category of Properties, and entered a Friendly Name of, “search-etobicoke-homes”. The other settings such are optional, so use at your discretion; however for this example, I’ve left the other settings as is and clicked Create.

Now that the page has been created, it is time to add the interactive map. Click “Yes” when prompted to “Edit the Page Now,” and you’ll load onto the newly created page. From here, it is a small matter of adding the map itself. Click on “Add Content,” then “Listing Map Search”. This will add a generic map to the page. By editing this map, we can specify a myriad of default criteria. Let’s take a look at the fields offered:

Now that you’re aware of all the possibilities, let’s take a look at the same two screenshots, however this time with the values I’ve opted to use:

Authored By: Bryan Coughlin, Client Relations