Sydney businessmen Gary Bateman and Trevor Reid have created an innovative new web tool called YouVu, which takes the best of the web, and applies it to real estate property marketing.
The result is a real estate advertisement with many differentiators. It is a real estate ad that will attract the attention of a potential buyer and maintain their focus for many minutes.
Online property portals are emerging. Whether they be in Europe, the United States or Australia; more buyers are consulting the web for property information before buying than ever before. In Australia, research has shown that more than 75% of buyers use the internet to research properties and in excess of 7.5 million unique browsers view properties advertised on the web each month.
Bateman and Reid of YouVu realised that the biggest challenge with internet advertising is making sure that an agency's properties stand out from the crowd.
Bateman said: "Sure, you can pay for a prime position. But once the potential buyer clicked on your ad it was clear to us that they all looked the same.
"A few details in small font, a clever headline if you are talented enough and a handful of images. What you get is a potential buyer having made up their mind 'yes' or 'no' after a few seconds."
YouVu Property Advertising is definitely different. Its goal is to display a holistic view of a property to the potential buyer.
Reid explained: "Firstly, it can have as many as 25 rooms with their own individual pages.
"Secondly, within each of those rooms, our 'Emotion Icons' allow agents to bring certain key components to further attention of potential buyers. For example, you may want to highlight a feature on a wall or an appliance in the kitchen.
YouVu also allows one to add a Virtual Tour and/or Image Slideshow to their ad, making it more interactive and viewer-friendly.
And how do the people behind YouVu plan to get this magnificently dressed up ad to thousands of potential buyers?
"Easy," says Bateman. "Most agents use existing portals such as realestate.com.au and domain.com.au, and we would be asking them to do the same, except they will also add the link to their YouVu ad to encourage people to take a closer look at their property.
"We already have dozens of YouVu users doing this to great effect."
YouVu is the most comprehensive a real estate advertisement can get. The key selling point at the moment is the price it is offered at. From only $40, any property can become extra sellable with a YouVu ad.
Further, creating a YouVu ad requires zero technical knowledge, according to web developers KayWeb.
Haig Kayserian, Managing Director of KayWeb, commented: "It is a web tool designed with layman users in mind. People register and simply follow the steps until their awesome ad goes live for the world wide web to see.
"If you can use email, you can create a YouVu ad."
A YouVu demo is available on www.youvu.com.au.
