New Website for W D Schorsch

W D Schorsch, a Chicago-based exterior investment commercial real estate firm focused on GSA-based projects, retained KCN Solutions to develop and launch a new public website. The project included a fully customized design and goals analysis, and employs several proprietary KCN Solutions technologies. KCN Solutions is a Chicago-based website/new media strategy and development firm.

New Website for DIS

Design Installation Systems, a Chicago-based exterior rehab, masonry, inspection and exterior cleaning firm retained KCN Solutions to develop and launch a revised public website. The update includes both design and functionality enhancements, and employs several proprietary KCN Solutions technologies. KCN Solutions is a Chicago-based website/new media strategy and development firm.

Website Update for RDO Investments

RDO Investments, an Arizona-based advisory firm and broker specializing in off-market investment grade real estate, contracted KCN Solutions to develop and launch a revised public website. The update includes both design and functionality enhancements, and employs several proprietary KCN Solutions technologies. KCN Solutions is a Chicago-based website/new media strategy and development firm that specializes in the real estate industry.

New Website for NelsonHill Commercial Real Estate

KCN Solutions, a nationally focused web design firm specializing in the real estate sector has developed and launched a new website for the NelsonHill Commercial Real Estate. The NelsonHill is a Chicago-based industrial real estate specialist for acquisition, development assistance, leasing and disposition of single and multi tenant projects in the greater Chicago metropolitan area. http://www.nelsonhill.com

New Website For Atwater Group

KCN Solutions, a nationally focused web design firm that specializes in the real estate websites, launches a new website for the Atwater Group. The Atwater Group is a Chicago-based investment grade commercial real estate firm that specializes in acquisition, development assistance and disposition of single and multi tenant projects on a national US basis. http://www.atwaterchicago.com

New Website For Karen Koerner

KCN Solutions, a nationally focused web design firm that specializes in the real estate websites, launches a new website for Karen Koerner. Karen is a Charleston SC-based residential realtor with over 30 years experience that includes 400+ transactions, $100 million in transaction values, relocation expertise and accreditation and some unique qualifications and experiences that make her truly stand out as a realtor.

The Four Things You Need To Make Money From Your Website

We have been working with clients on their websites and online strategy for over thirteen years, starting with when the web was in its infancy. Drawing on that experience, we have identified a checklist for almost any business which when used only works every single time. Sounds like an infomercial, so without further ado here is the checklist:

1. Have A Good Website – This sounds vague but can be summarized as a publicly available website that features a compelling visual design, good tools for searching/viewing any inventory and has focused pages written for your specific target audiences. To keep it tight, you should have between one and four target audiences that represent your best customer categories. In addition, the site needs to be well written (code-wise) so that it is compliant with W3C standards and is optimized to display correctly on as many different types of devices as possible.
2. Get on the First Page of Google – Your potential customers are out there. Why drive yourself nuts looking for them when they are probably looking for you? A campaign to get you in the top five search results, for the searches your target market is likely using, will result in more of your target market coming to your website than ever before.
3. Do Social Networking Correctly – That last word is critical. Everyone’s abuzz about social networking in business. We say so what. The point is to do social networking using the right approach, which basically boils down to knowing what your target folks are likely to look for and like, and give it to them. If you don’t have a clear sense of that, there’s no real benefit and doing it wrong may even harm your image
4. Drip Marketing – Email blasting and newsletters are a terrific way to keep yourself in front of your clients. That being said (and everyone says it), the true key in drip marketing is to position as little content as possible as actively selling them. Instead, give the readers free and useful (short) advice on things, maybe mention big projects or items you’ve recently done, and be sure to highlight anything new or different you’ve started doing. Joined a trade association or been a speaker? Talk about it. Closed a big deal? Maybe want to talk about that.

Look, to do these things right, it’s probably going to cost money. However, with the costs of such things in general being very reasonable, the likelihood is gaining a fairly low amount of new business from the initiative will more than offset the costs, and potentially increase your perceived value to your existing clients. Many businesses would have positive ROI on the project if they get one new customer/deal a month; aren’t those 12 new customers/clients/deals annually worth it?

First Carbon Negative Web Design Firm in the US!

KCN Solutions, a Chicago-based professional web design and online strategy firm, has become the first carbon negative web design firm by purchasing suitable offset credits from http://www.carbonfund.org. KCN Solutions requested that their offset credit purchases be directed towards reforestation efforts. As an innovator in the web design world, KCN recognizes the implicit value in enhancing and beautifying the world around us all.

Getting Your Real Estate Listings on Your Website – The Facts

As part of our long-standing specialization in websites and online strategy for commercial real estate, we are constantly dealing with the issue of not just getting your commercial listings on your website, but also how to manage them. As part of virtually every website project we do, it is an issue that needs to be addressed correctly to derive maximum benefit from having the listings on your website. If you’re not getting the best results, and are taking time to put them up there, what’s the point?

Below are the general methodologies for getting your listings on your website, and the advantages and disadvantages attached to each.

1. Listing Services on Your Website – Costar, Loopnet and PropertyLine offer services that allow visitors to your site to search just your listings. The advantages to this system are chiefly speed of implementation and a fairly low price point. The disadvantages are multiple, but the number one biggest issue is that all this listing information actually doesn’t live on your website, they actually live on your provider’s website. If you use CostarConnect or Looplink, just look at the actual URL where your listings live. They are on loopnet.com or costar.com. This is important because when Google and the other search engines crawl through your site, they know that those listings don’t actually live on your site. Thus, you’re paying good money for Costar and Loopnet to do better in the search results!
2. 3rd Party Solution – KCN Solutions is an iProp integrator. iProp is an ingenious system that has a centralized admin website that you log into, and then iProp publishes your listings (and related stuff like agent pages and newsfeeds) automatically into your website. The advantage of using something like iProp is that the listings on your website truly live on your website, and they can be customized to look any way you want. Having the listings on your website, looking the way you want, means you get the bump from Google and the others for all the listing pages you have. You also don’t typically pay for upgrades, bug fixes and enhancements made to the system like you would with a custom solution.
3. Custom Solution – Custom solutions have traditionally been a huge profit item for web firms. They develop a listing database system for a client that takes lots of time and costs lots of money, and then resell it to all the future clients that come down the pike. What are the advantages of a custom solution? Like a 3rd party solution such as iProp, you can specify exactly what you want the listings to work like on your website. What are the disadvantages? Let’s start with cost. We have seen decently capable listing database systems for commercial real estate website as a $40,000 line item. Once the site is launched, you’re typically on the hook for 100% of the costs to enhance the system, fix bugs, or provide new functionality.

To conclude, we’ve found that the ROI gotten from a 3rd party solution like iProp combines the low price of the listing service offerings with the high customization and search engine benefits of a custom solution. It’s your money, wouldn’t you rather spend as much of it as possible on things that your visitors will actually see?

What Are You An Expert In, And Does Everyone Know It?

Part of being a good businessperson, and/or business owner, is knowing what you are better than anyone else at. Maybe it’s instinctual or not readily clear in your mind, but when it comes time to set yourself apart from a competitor, you have your goto points.

The question is, what are you doing to highlight them?

As part of every custom website project we do, there are two parts of the analysis that take hyper-priority: what are you/your company an expert in, and who is your true target market(s)? Once those two questions are well answered, we develop a strategy to bring the two together: make your real target market understand where you’re really better than anyone.