Product Tour: zipForm 6 Professional
For most new homeowners, the most challenging, tedious, and confusing part of their real estate transaction was the paperwork. As a real estate professional, it's your job to simplify that process as much as possible. But who is making it easier for you? One product aiming to do just that is zipForm 6 Professional. Hardly a new name in the industry, zipLogix is constantly improving their flagship forms solution, as is evident in its current generation. So please join us for a tour of zipForm 6 Professional. Creating a New Transaction with zipForm 6 Professional zipForm 6 Professional opens on a list of your transactions. From there, you can easily access any transaction that requires attention, or you can create a new transaction. We created a new transaction to see what the process was like. When creating a zipForm 6 Professional account, the appropriate forms will be added to your account based on current membership status with your Association or MLS. Thus, when you create a new transaction, the lists of forms you need are assembled for you. From the forms list, you can click or drag the forms you need in your transaction file. Note: Should your broker provide you with an account, the libraries you will have access to will be selected by the administrative user of the brokerage account. Once forms have been selected, zipForm 6 makes it easy for you to populate the documents with client and transaction information. The biggest time saving feature is the automatic field population. Fill in one field and the information will find its way into other forms as you add them to the transaction. This is not fool proof because of the nature of some forms, though, so always go through all of your forms to be safe. This eliminates a lot of typing, but this is just the beginning. After working in a region for a time, you may find yourself typing the same cities or zip codes, which can get tedious. The look up fields feature will remember this common data and put them in an easy drop down menu within the form field. This information is automatically saved and is available for all transactions and forms. In addition, the look up fields database may also be customized as you like and can be locked to prevent the database from saving any more information.

Appointment Scheduling, Simplified
Selling properties or helping your buyers find a property is all about showings. After all, real estate isn't generally something people buy sight-unseen. The logistics of scheduling these appointments is tedious and can significantly siphon away time that could be spent on other important tasks in buying or selling a home. One of the solutions available to help simplify and improve this process is eShowings. I sat down with Jay Lantz, National Sales Director, to learn more about the tools available from eShowings, particularly Show It Now – a tool that is free to MLSs and agents. A Trusted Partner In an industry where technology is often a "flash in the pan," eShowings has been in business for 14 years. They have established relationships with MLSs in 38 states, but serve real estate professionals in all 50 states. This experience and the relationships they have formed give them an edge in supporting the real estate community. How Does eShowings Help Agents? Basically, eShowings helps with appointment scheduling. Their goal is to improve the process for both the listing agent and the buyer's agent. They accomplish this through: Call centers Software With eShowings, an appointment can be made online or over the phone. The call centers are what you want and expect – professionally-staffed, available 365 days a year. The software is where things get more interesting from our perspective. Let's look at one example: Show It Now.

10 Best Product Reviews of 2012
We encountered a lot of great real estate tech products in 2012. Here, we take a look at the 10 most popular product reviews of the year. 1. Cartavi and DocuSign Integration Like most of the industry, we were intrigued by the news of Cartavi's integration with DocuSign. We'd had the opportunity for a brief demo of the Cartavi document management system at industry events and were certainly impressed – but the addition of DocuSign electronic signatures takes this already - impressive platform to a whole new level. 2. Top Producer CRM™ Those of you who have been around awhile probably remember that Top Producer used to be software that you installed on your computer. Now, because Top Producer is cloud-based, you can leverage the platform from any touch screen mobile device, tablet or desktop computer. We took a look at the product from the perspectives of both a computer user and a mobile user. 3. ePropertySites Property Marketing Tools ePropertySites describes their goal in their mission statement: "Perfecting the art of property marketing online and on site." For this reason, we've focused this review on several of their tools focused on marketing individual properties. However, their robust array of products also helps real estate professionals with personal marketing and much more.

Product Review: ePropertySites Property Marketing Tools
ePropertySites describes their goal in their mission statement: "Perfecting the art of property marketing online and on site." For this reason, we've focused this review on several of their tools focused on marketing individual properties. However, their robust array of products also helps real estate professionals with personal marketing and much more. There are a few key strategic objectives that agents and brokers can accomplish with ePropertySites: Building a property website before the listing presentation enhances your ability to secure the listing Leveraging your iPad to exude your technical expertise and marketing savvy Highlight your seller's property with a single listing website Enhance your search engine optimization effectiveness Convey far more information to the buyer than what is offered through IDX property search The Basics ePropertySites offers several different pricing plans for their services. Each of the tools we're going to discuss here is included in every plan. For a better understanding of options and pricing, visit ePropertySites.com. Step One: Earn the Listing Property marketing cannot begin until the seller selects you as their agent. For this reason, ePropertySites offers their Flipshows for listing presentations. These "flipshows" or "flip books" combine your custom images and text. ePropertySites offers an iPad-friendly version of their Flipshows, recognizing that the iPad has become a favorite listing presentation tool. You can check out an example of a listing presentation Flipshow here.

Product Review: RatedAgent.com
Agent ratings are a hot topic among real estate professionals today. Consumers love service provider ratings, and real estate is among the last service industries to adopt a solution. There are a variety of tools available – each with a slightly unique approach. One provider of service ratings for real estate is QSC, with several customer satisfaction survey options along with a consumer website, RatedAgent.com. RatedAgent.com allows consumers to look up quality of service ratings during the agent selection process. Since its founding in 1998, QSC has been a leader in creating consumer centric service standards and real estate agent ratings. The Basics Providing consumers with trustworthy, comprehensive, and impartial agent ratings is a central goal for RatedAgent.com. However, they also look at agent ratings from the professional side. They've developed tools to help on both the individual and company level; we'll dig into that a little more thoroughly shortly. The Customer Satisfaction Rating (CSR) on RatedAgent.com is simple for both consumers and agents to understand. It is an average of the Overall Satisfaction question from both buyer and seller returned surveys. There are no other factors or secret formulas that influence the rating; it is solely based on the overall satisfaction as rated by verified past customers. When an individual or company joins RatedAgent.com, they agree that every closed transaction must be surveyed to maintain integrity. This is central to the RatedAgent.com philosophy – it ensures that consumers can trust their ratings. Surveys are sent via email; however, if a client does not have an email address, a paper survey will be sent for a nominal fee. Brokers or franchises may configure their accounting system to automatically trigger customer surveys to be sent for all completed transactions through a simple interface. The results of returned surveys are aggregated and shared with each agent and, if applicable, their management team. Users can set up custom email notification settings so they know when new surveys are returned. At any point, authorized individuals may look at their overall ratings with easy-to-generate reports. This all happens within the RatedAgent.com web-based back office solution (which, to be clear, is internal and not accessible by consumers). Ratings are based on a rolling three years, so this is the default setting for any report, but users can adjust the date range. For most users, reports look at either buyer or seller data – the questions asked of buyer and seller clients are different, so reporting them separately makes more sense. Once a report has been generated, the masthead shows overall ratings (including both buyer and seller data), but the rest is specific to either buyer or seller.

Product Review: Delta Agent Sites™
Delta Media Group offers a robust array of diverse products to assist agents and brokers in today's technologically advanced real estate market. For this review, we'll focus solely on their Delta Agent Sites™, which are exactly what the name seems to indicate – websites designed specifically for real estate agents. The Basics If you are an agent looking for a template-based website with IDX, you should include Delta Agent Sites™ in your research. These websites offer a clean, simple look with the ability for agents to manage changes to the site through an administrative control panel. Consumer Facing Designs Agents can choose between 236 different templates to personalize the look of their site. They can further customize the look of their site by adding a custom website header across the top, customizing text on the home page, and creating up to 99 custom pages (which will appear in the navigation on the left side of the website).

+1 Is Not the Loneliest Number
Guest Contributor Chris Brogan says: I was just reading about the Plus One button from Google. Essentially, it’s going to be a way to vote up things you want to share in search and on sites that implement the button. It’s “like” for Google. Here’s a quick video:

New Xactsite LIVE Demos Available for MRIS Members!
Be the Xpert in your market with websites that update themselves with IDX properties, RBI market watch report, daily real estate news, full contact management, email marketing, CMA and more. Even includes a mobile website! See it live and receive special discount! Save from $39.95 to $149.95 in setup fees just by attending the session! And of course, there is always the 30 day money back guarantee if you aren’t 100% satisfied. LIVE demos will be held on the follow dates: