| New Year, New Office, New Horizons |
 Over the holidays, we moved into our new 2-storey office in Nedlands (see photo>).
It's great to be back on Stirling Highway again ... now with more space to poke a stick at. Do drop in and see us - please note parking is best on Napier Road. Directions: click here
Our New Year's Resolutions for 2006 include:
- developing great real estate web sites for our clients
- continual improvements to the aussiehome.com portal
- producing our full colour magazines for clients
- improving the back end "Client Zone"
- ensuring our feeds to other sites work well
- releasing new products (rental lists, brochures, content management systems for reps... are all in the pipeline)
If you need anything at all, please do not hesitate to contact us. Likewise, we always appreciate your ideas and suggestions. |
| The January Effect |
 As per usual, traffic to aussiehome.com surged in January. We have now witnessed this effect every January since we started 7 summers ago. This year's increase in traffic has surpassed all previous years in week on week percentage gain - truly astounding given the relatively low numbers of properties for sale.
263,000 visitors came to aussiehome.com in January 2006 (previous record was 230,000 in October 2005).
It is not only aussiehome.com which experiences regular surges in web traffic during the first weeks of January. All real estate sites seem to experience this (even our Jakarta portal, iproperti.com's traffic surged). Agency sites, which are statistically the most effective, have also shown a major increase in traffic to start the year.
There are a number of reasons for the "January Effect:"
Pent up demand following the Christmas and New Years break - most people, including reps, are taking a holiday and too busy with family and friends.
During the first couple of weeks in January people are coming back to Perth, but still have some time, are rested and thus check out the property market. They have time to check out the property market before things get too hectic and kids have to go back to school.
This year's surge has exceed all previous years perhaps because there as so few listings in Perth at the moment. People go on the net more frequently to see what is new on the market in the hopes of not missing anything.
The economy in WA continues to be on a roll and attract migrants from over East and Overseas. Moving during the turn of the year may also contribute to increased traffic during January.
What has been great about this 'January Effect' for us is that this spike raises us to a new level, on which we build.
Is your site "sticky" enough to keep the new visitors that appear in January? If not, do give us a call to see what we can do. |
| Winning the World Wide Web War |
 Some of you may have seen the promotion for the next REIWA ILS breakfast at the Burswood on Tuesday 28th February.
aussiehome.com co-founder and director Charlie Gunningham, will be the guest speaker, talking on "Winning the World Wide Web War" (it IS a war out there in Internet land...)
We'd love to see our clients there and would encourage any 'new recruits' to REIWA.com to attend (and maybe pick up an award). CLICK HERE to email REIWA for more information.
Thanks also to those who sent in lots of abuse regarding Charlie's appearance in a series of ads for the UWA Business School in the local press: for those who missed it, CLICK HERE. |
| Data Protection, Data Perfection |
 This week we changed our UPDATES list slightly (within Client Zone) to make it easier to enter SOLD prices and dates.
This sales information can then be collected by REIWA for those of you on the REIWA feed. Please note that this information is private and is only published by REIWA when the sale becomes unconditional.
Since we signed our alliance with REIWA in October, almost half our clients now feed their properties directly to REIWA.com from our system.
We want to hear from anyone who is experiencing any problems with the feeds (properties not coming off, not being updated, etc) - not just with REIWA feeds, but also realestate.com.au or domain.com.au.
If you have any comments on the quality of the data feeds, please email NICK. |
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| Winner of last issue's competition was Gary Dye from ACTON North who was the 7th entrant with the correct answer to our new office address. His prize was a free Feature Property of the Week on aussiehome.com. We also hear the property subsequently sold for a record price at Auction, so double congratulations Gary. |
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| As we all know things change and prices go up in real estate as in every other industry. Uploading of City Developments and Land Estates will now attract a fee of $176 per development. Feature Property of the Week on aussiehome.com is now also valued at $176 but for the 1st 2 bookings received from the booking link below we will hold the price to $150 the 2004/05 price. |
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We're always keen to hear new ideas; and we were glad to enhance our web database to include various new items - such as new fields for commercial properties, REIWA Exclusive/Plus and MLS, expanding the bullet point fields to 10 and even adding vaccum system as an item you can flag on a property.
Thanks to Melissa Turton and Geoff Loneragan from ACTON Commercial for their input, as well Tammy Corden from Porter Matthews Metro, and REIWA for their help in improving the aussiehome.com system.
Keep the good ideas coming! |
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If the results of our New Year Poll is anything to go by, we seem to be in a positive mood:
56% of us are "Optimistic" about what 2006 holds
22% are pessimistic, and 22% do not know what 2006 has in store!
* Happy New Year everyone * |
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