First of all, we want to say thank you to all of you that took the time to give us your feedback on the 360 Modern website. Aside from talking with some of you at open houses, we don’t often get to hear about your experience on the site. This survey was a huge help in figuring out where to put our efforts into improvements going forward. Since you took the time to answer, we thought we would give you a brief summary of what we learned and hit on a few key “themes” …
You REALLY don’t like the required registration
We heard you on this one-loud and clear. Many of you lamented the good old days of the old 360 Modern site when you didn’t have to register to see everything. The problem was, we were out of compliance with the Northwest Multiple Listing Service (NWMLS).
See, the NWMLS has this rule about advertising someone else’s listings. For us, by pulling the modern listings out of the general MLS feed into a separate area of our site, we are, according to the NWMLS, advertising someone else’s listings. Although, it doesn’t seem like an “advertisement” to us, just an easier way to look at the listings our readers are interested in, it still falls within that definition as far as they are concerned.
To get around this we created what is known in the industry as a Virtual Office Website (VOW). By registering, you in essence become a “client” (although you are in no way obligated to work with us) and therefore, we can show you any MLS listings we want to. Think of it as walking into a real estate office and talking with one of the brokers who happens to be working that day. The broker might ask you a few questions about what kind of home you are looking for, show you a few homes on his computer that meet your criteria and answer any questions you might have. A VOW is the same thing….just virtual. The important thing for us is that the registration we ask you for is what allows us to show you just the modern listings for sale. Without that, we can’t show you anything but the general feed of homes that you can get on any real estate site out there and that is not why you come to 360 Modern.
Hopefully that clears up why we now require you to register. Which brings us to our second point.
The registration process is a pain
If we are going to have to require registration, the least we can do is make it as easy as possible! When you register now, you don’t get to choose your own password and then we send you some weird “squirrel code” (as one reader put it) that you can’t remember.
This is actually something we can fix.
We are working with our website provider to make some changes that will make this more seamless and much less frustrating. We will get this issue fixed…we promise.
And all the rest….
The registration process seemed to be the biggest issue that most people commented on. But mostly, there were some great ideas that came out of this survey and we wanted to let you know,…we heard you and we loved your input. This is a short list of the items that we will be looking into based on your feedback.
• More community information on modern stores, architects, landscapers..etc.
• Easier searching using maps and search criteria rather than by area
• Better property tracking and listing alerts
Over all, the response was super positive about 360 Modern. You guys love what we are doing and we love doing it. We hope to keep improving the site and we encourage you to shoot us an email at info@360modern.com, or you can comment on this post. We appreciate all of your feedback, good and bad alike, and look forward to providing an improved modern search experience for all of our users. At the same time we hope to hear from you when you’re in the market to buy or sell a modern home!
Thanks again!