When you started your property management company, did you stop and think about if your company name also had a great (and available) internet domain name? Chances are, you probably had a million other things on your mind and an internet domain wasn’t high on the priority list, if it was on the list at all. Just like having great property management website design attracts the right renters, having a great domain name works in similar ways. If you’ve already done a search and found that your company name is not available or doesn’t translate well into a good domain name that is easy to type and remember, don’t fret. There are still many good options that we’ll discuss in this post.

Your Domain is Available

You’re in luck! We suggest you register your chosen domain quickly since anyone can purchase it at any time. However, before you register you may want to do some research to make sure it truly is the best domain for your business. Do a Google search and see what comes up when you type in the name to see what you can expect your customers to see when they search for your business. Also, are you including unnecessary words or characters in your domain name, for example does it contain “LLC” or have hyphens or other characters that are difficult to type or remember? If everything is looking good and you’re ready to snap up that domain, the .com address is preferred and will be easier for your customers to remember when entering it into a web browser. Remember, having an excellent domain name is highly important along with having good property management website design.

Options for When Your Domain is Not Available

If your domain name is not available this creates problems, but all may not be lost. Can you shorten the name or choose another extension, for example .biz? Be careful here though so that you choose a name that is different from others who have may register similar names so as to not draw bad traffic to your website. A simple Google search should help you here. You may also do a search through whois.com to determine the contact information for who currently owns the domain and offer to purchase it from them. Do you use any special design features as part of your property management website design, for example do you have a company mascot? This may also be something that can be included as part of your domain as another option to differentiate yourself from others out on the web.

Domains for Search Engine Optimization

If your name isn’t available or if you want to have great Search Engine Optimization, choosing a name like “yourtownapartments.com” may be a good choice, for example the domain chicagoapartments.com. How does this work? Search engines use keywords to match and return websites that are similar to what someone has typed into the search box. For example, a potential renter in Chicago types in to the Google search engine “Chicago Apartments”. Since your domain name chicagoapartments.com matches the two keywords that the renter typed, your website would come up higher in the search results which would bring more traffic to your website. Assuming you had great property management website design, the renter would likely spend time on your website looking at what apartments you had listed for rent.

These are just three options that you may encounter when trying to find a great domain name for your company. When the time comes to get that domain, we’re available to help you every step of the way with making the domain name choice that is right for your business!

Are you still using paper rental applications that your prospective tenants fill out when showing your properties? What if your tenants could securely submit their rental application information and pay the application fee online? In the age of the internet, you no longer have to worry about managing all those paper forms and maintaining a mess of records in your filing cabinet. New tools are available to help organize your rental applications and even accept the rental application fee online, virtually eliminating trips to the bank and saving you time, money, and hassle. Just how easy is it to accept rental applications online? Continue reading to find out more.

Rental Application Form

The online rental application starts with a secure rental application form on your website. Then tenant will go to a rental application though a link and fill out the form with all information you normally use for background and credit checks. Since sensitive information is collected from tenants, it’s important that this information be encrypted to protect against identity theft. Also, the online form should be customized for your business and should contain rental application questions that are required by law for your state. A typical tenant would fill out the online rental application form with all of their information, pay any rental application fees electronically, and it would then be routed directly to you for review and background and credit checks.

Manage applications online

What good are accepting online rental application forms if there is no easy way to view and manage them?  After online rental applications are submitted by tenants, being able store and later view the information online in an easy to use way is essential to replace the traditional filing cabinet. With E-Rental Tools, we offer an easy to use solution that lets you review applications and manage the complete workflow as you process them through our rental application forms dashboard. The dashboard allows the property manager is to view and search all online rental application forms right from their website and efficiently process credit and background checks much quicker and easier than with paper forms.

It's a no-brainer, allowing your prospective tenants to submit their rental applications online and allowing you to view and work new online rental application forms and process them as you run credit and background checks helps to save time, eliminate paper and document storage, and keep your business organized.

Much can be said for having a good looking website and its ability to attract the right renters for your business.  How much thought have you given to branding, advertising and marketing, and the overall look and feel of your company to create the right impression you want to present to the world?  In this post we will discuss website design and help you understand the importance of advertising, marketing, and branding to better see how they work hand-in-hand to affect your business.

Reason #1: Creates a Great First Impression

More than ever, renters are beginning their search for apartments on the internet.  If you don’t have a web presence yet or your website was designed years ago and is looking stale, you are probably missing out on a large pool of technology-savvy renters that are influenced by how your website looks.   As an example of how look and feel plays an important role, think of how Apple Computer has risen to dominance by building great looking and easy to use products.  You may be thinking, “I’m just a property management company, not Apple!”, but in many cases your website is the first impression your renters have of your business.  If they see an old, out of date, and unmaintained website the high-quality renters you want may look to your competitor who has that snazzy new website.  When it comes to technology, it only takes 2-3 years for a product to become obsolete so staying up to date and making use of new technology is important.

Take-away: Great property management website design plays a key role in convincing these renters to look at your company instead of your competitors. 

Reason #2:  Improves Advertising and Marketing Reach

Imagine this scenario: one of your apartments becomes available for rent, you post that is vacant to your social media enabled website, and you almost immediately have potential renters contacting you about showings.  Does this sound far-fetched?  With the increase in use of social media and the connectedness of the internet, we’ve seen many forward-thinking property managers use this strategy and rent their properties much more easily with a lot less cost.  New advertising and marketing tools like QR codes, Facebook and Twitter, and text messaging all help to spread the word about your business much faster than was possible even a few years ago.  You may have tried some of these tools or just don’t see the benefit, but believe us when we say that it is there for property managers who can use it effectively.

Take-away: Using new social media tools helps to advertise your business and market your properties much more easily that was possible before and for a lot less cost.

Reason #3: Builds Your Brand

While you may have not given much thought to developing your brand and what it stands for, branding is as important to attracting renters.   Taking the time to build your brand so that renters can relate to you and want to rent your properties is worth the effort.  To further explain why, think of a brand you admire.  What does using this brand mean to you?  How does it make you feel?  Would you recommend it to others and what would you say about it?  Think about how these questions you asked yourself relate to your business and use them to mold your brand's image.  

Take-away: Branding is important to develop the right image that you want renters to see of your company and plays a role in generating new business and referrals.

These three reasons we’ve discussed just touch on the subject of how property management website design plays a role to create the right impression of your business that impacts your advertising and marketing and helps to build your brand image.  How much though have you given to the importance of having great property management website design for your business?

You may have asked yourself just how rental property management software can help your business as you explored the many options on the market for online property management software tools. If you are using outdated software, spreadsheets, or the paper and filing cabinet method, online property management software tools have become very powerful in the past few years as the property management software industry has matured. In this post, we will specifically talk about why it’s worth the time and effort investigating new tools for your business and how it can save you money in the short and long term. It is also important to mention that the start of the recession, companies that have been able to successfully grow their business have made widespread use of new technology that has allowed them to be much more efficient and save on overhead costs. Who doesn’t want to be more efficient and do more with less?

You may not have realized that smaller companies and individual landlords are now able to run their businesses using the same best practices and efficiencies similar to that of larger rental property management companies. As rental property management software has become more powerful and new technologies have appeared, affordability is now better than ever. What may have cost you thousands of dollars five years ago can now be bought for much less, as wide availability of the internet has considerably lowered costs for online property management software. An interesting statistic that we came across recently is that today over 60% of property management businesses use a rental property management software system to automate tasks, track online leads, and provide tenants with online services. Like many other industries, successful property managers are increasingly moving toward offering these services to remain competitive and attract renters who are becoming more and more technology-savvy. According to research done by Software Advice, Inc., companies who use a rental property management software solution managed an average of 102 rental units per employee, as compared to 61 units per employee for those that used generic software such as spreadsheets! That’s a great productivity improvement that can free up time to work on more valuable tasks.

What’s your strategy for the future and how does online property management software fit into the picture? What would you do if you had a large amount of time freed up for yourself and your employees? Here are a few questions that we challenge you to consider:

1. If you had a considerable amount of new free time for yourself or your employees, what could you spend it on to grow your business and increase revenues?
2. How many times over the past year have you thought about how technology has changed your business and will continue to do so?
3. What is your strategy to provide tenants with online services such as maintenance requests, rent collection, and also make them available to use from smartphones and tablets?

In future posts we will talk about these three questions in much greater detail. This is an exciting time to be in the property management industry. As they say, knowledge is power and being prepared will help to bring you continued future success.