Are you ready for it?  Here it goes...

Simple Is The New Fancy.

OK, I'll admit - it might need some work.  But hear me out:

This week, we started calling some of the folks who had stopped by our booth at the FMLS/ABR Showcase show.  Some current customers need some review on their sites.  Some prospective new customers need general consultation.  One customer in particular wanted me to look over their current website.

This was actually a former customer of ListingWare who had gotten someone to do a new website for them a couple of years ago.  They had a very basic site with us before and I guess they left us because they wanted something 'fancy' - not sure exactly what the motivator was.  

This customer told me they had spent quite a bit of money on the design and programming of it.  They had gone all-out: a completely new design hosted on their own server, backed by an entire database backend with update processes - the works.  But after having the new site for a year or so, they just weren't getting the return on investment they wanted.

It was a nice-looking site, alright.  But then I started testing.  Hard to select a city with the cutesy controls.  When I selected a city and ran my search, it took a minute or more to return results at times.  When I registered on the site, it took three different steps to do so.  And when I was finally registered and selected an option like "Get More Info on This Listing" - the site didn't remember me, so I had to fill out the WHOLE form again!

These are just a few things.  And I DON'T want to make this customer feel bad.  I want to help them get back on-track and help make their clients happy.  So, I'm going to relaunch their old account with us and update it a bit so they can check out what we can do again.

All of that, and some of the other conversations I've had this week, have brought on the new mantra mentioned above.  Simple is the new Fancy.  We've got customers now that get HUNDREDS of visitors a day to the most plain-jane websites - and these visitors are registering, coming back over and over, and becoming CLIENTS of theirs.  All for the fact that when you get on their website, you can actually search for listings without any difficulty or distraction.  I say the sites are 'plain-jane' - they're not ugly sites, but they're not overloaded with all sorts of whiz-bang features that take away from the primary mission: let the client start searching for their home.

So, we're going to start emphasizing this principle over and over, because it serves the Client:

Simple Is The New Fancy.

...Or something that conveys that thought, but maybe sounds better.  You get the idea.