In the past few weeks we’ve been working hard on releasing our new version of BRIXWORK Real Estate Websites. This update was heavily focused on improving the back-end system. We had some very useful feedback from our clients, and we’ve monitored the parts of the back-end that had the most questions & inquiries around it. This allowed us to identify the parts that our clients found to be most confusing, and presented us with the opportunity to improve our product for the better.

Listings & MLS® Integration

This is the most important core of our website system, and ours is very powerful on Google (and a focal point when we develop our software). We have made improvements that will especially benefit our clients who utilize the MLS® Reciprocity. This makes up more than 90% of our clients!

MLS® to OWN Listing Conversion Module Cleaned Up

The ability to convert an MLS® sourced listing to your own is an old feature. However we made improvements to the user interface, with more information-filled dialogue that lets you know what is happening. Sometimes MLS® listings take a day or two to be loaded into the public database (then funnelled to the BRIXWORK master database) and the new system clarifies this better.

Removal Of The Facebook LIKE & Tweet buttons from the back-end

We had experimented with adding the Facebook LIKE & Twitter Tweet buttons on the back-end, under the HOMES section, to make it easy for you to share your listing. However these modules caused more glitches, slow-downs of the system. We decided it wasn’t worth keeping. Instead we added a quick link module that will let you open the property detail page (the public page for customers) very quickly, and you can use that screen to share your listing on social media. The social media share buttons on the front-end are still intact of course – they are very useful tools for marketing.

Integration With More MLS® Systems Across North America

We’ve had growing popularity not only in our home city Vancouver, but across North America. We have now added the following MLS® integrations:

  • Hamilton & Burlington, Ontario
  • Fort McMurray, Alberta
  • Columbia, Missouri

You can see the full list of the MLS® Reciprocity integrations we offer for real estate websites here.

Other Modules Improved

Text Editor & Other Code Structure Updated to Latest Version

The user interface modules that we leverage are constantly updated, so we like to keep on top of that as well. The modules updated include:

  • TinyMCE (Text content editor for pages & listings)
  • jQuery & jQueryUI (user interface modules such as the tabs, buttons, drag & drop modules etc.)
  • Image Cropper module

Website Email Generation System Improved

The email forms throughout our clients’ websites have been improved further. We now use a dedicated outbound email service provider at a nominal cost. This system allows for great deliverability of emails in a quick timeframe. But even more interesting is that this system allows us to track the open/click/geographic statistics of the emails generated, which can be turned into valuable marketing data later.

What’s Planned For Future Updates

Some items we are planning to improve upon include more support for rental modules, as well as generating link snippets for Craigslist postings. Also the pages module will receive some upgrades to make it easier to navigate between top pages and sub-pages. As always, we’re working hard to improve our infrastructure!