Product Updates: 2017 & Q1 2018

This is our first ever edition of Product Updates, and it comes at after a massive development period at RealtyNinja which primarily focused on the launch of Katana at the start of the year. That means we have a TON of information to share with you today.

As 2018 progresses, we will try to update you with Product Updates once every few months. We have a lot of important updates — many of which are requested by customers — on our 2018 development roadmap, and can’t wait to share them all with you through this new format. Now scroll down to start learning what’s new.

What’s New

Q1 2018 Updates & Fixes

• KATANA LAUNCHED! After thousands of man-hours for almost 2 straight years in development!
• Ability for website visitors to subscribe to MLS searches on Katana
• When uploading background images on Katana widgets the Save button is now disabled until the file is done uploading
• If a website was migrated from and old site to Katana, now they have a link to their previous invoice history in their new Katana site backend
• All website accounts now have team features enabled by default. (Only 20% of customers had this feature ON before)
• When editing a page or blog post and you hit cancel, you now see a warning asking “are you sure?” to avoid mistakes.
• Empty blog archives/categories now properly show the blog footer navigation
• Katana paylocked page and e-mail alert unsubscribe page implemented and styled
• Katana DDF sites show the data disclaimer popup and when reciprocity is not verified, searches can not be used (as per CREA rules)
• MLS searches on some Katana DDF sites had a small issue where certain property types would not filter properly
• Bug where some formatting on listing/building descriptions was being stripped on Save
• Issue where some embedded forms on a page would not work on Katana sites
• If you tried to unsubscribe from an already unsubscribed e-mail alert it would error
• Creating links using the editor in Chrome would sometimes save a yellow background
• You can now create a page named “Blog” with Katana without error (new sites have a Blog page by default)
• Various speed improvements and optimizations

 

December 2017 Updates & Fixes

• Thumbnail image carousel missing when viewing listing image gallery in lightbox
• When deleting a blog post in Katana that is in a category it will no longer delete the whole category
• When canceling editing a blog post it now reloads that blog post or the main blog page if its an unsaved blog post
• The “blog post footer code” setting is live, and now lets us use Facebook and other comment plugins (or anything you want to appear at the bottom of all blog posts)

November 2017 Updates & Fixes

• Launched the “active listings in a building” and “active listings for an agent on the team” widgets
• When viewing sold listings you can order by sold date instead of list date (only works if listings have a sold date value which is not always true)
• Error message updated when trying to upload more than 30 images in one batch
• Moved dollar sign from tax year field to tax amount on listing detail pages
• Show count of posts in blog category/archive drop-down list.
• Added “Edit/Save Post” to use instead of “Edit/Save Page” on manage bar when on blog post
• Hide editor tools (bold/italic/etc) when clicking out of editable area
• New display format for listing showcase widget when less than 4 listings in group
• Trigger Google Analytics and/or Facebook lead events on form submissions
• Enable blog settings page for Katana with new blog footer code feature

October 2017 Updates & Fixes

• Completely removed Flash from our app and replaced our file uploaders with nice modern new HTML5 ones
• When deleting a blog category it no longer closes the lightbox
• Using the Embed tool in the Header/Footer now works properly
• Omission where some buildings were not showing meta tags
• Added a “delay blog publish” feature on Katana sites
• Pagination for blog category/archives
• Blog categories containing special characters do not break the page anymore
• Media gallery URLs now use CDN (Content Delivery Network) for faster load time and easier copying of image paths
• Clicking edit this page on an MLS® search page no longer results in “do you want to leave page” warning

September 2017 Updates & Fixes

• Listing images on list/grid/map/table now source from a CDN so they are faster and refresh when we clear the global cache
• Improved the empty states for certain widgets such as blog showcase so that it looks better when their are no blog posts available
• A new “Page Layout & Widgets” Call to Action has been added to the Manage Bar in website back-end for quick access
• New default listing images which are nicer and higher quality (listing created on site creation when no reciprocity listings available)
• You can now delete a blog category and the general interface for category add/edit/delete has been improved
• The buttons for changing a blog posts date or category have been combined into one button with a drop-down menu, also makes it so that the editor buttons don’t disappear on small screens!
• A bug where unpublished blog posts would error sometimes when logged in
• Z-index on our embed overlays to reduce display issues

Customer Spotlight

Our good friend and long-time customer, Craig Veroni, has been making headlines through his dedication to video marketing so far in 2018.

Just this past February, Craig was invited to be a speaker at the RE/MAX R4 Video Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada. R4 is the largest RE/MAX convention in the world with an international attendance of over 7,000 RE/MAX agents.

It’s no accident that Craig’s video prowess has been noticed and praised. Not only is Craig a trained actor (google him,) he has also been highly dedicated to video marketing for the better part of a year. During that time, Craig has released a series titled “My 30 Favourite Places in North Vancouver“ and he has just published the 2nd Episode of his all new series “My Favourite Humans in Vancouver.”

Craig even helped us out with video testimonial about his Katana real estate website! We’re extremely proud to show off our ninja customers, like Craig, who are on the cutting edge of real estate marketing.

High five, Craig!

Before You Go

Aside from really awesome REALTOR® websites and software, we also work hard to constantly provide customers with various useful resources…

Here are some bonuses from RealtyNinja that you might now know about:

WEBINARS
www.realtyninja.com/webinars

Every 2 weeks we host a live customer success webinar that covers overall website marketing, as well as on-site and off-site optimization tactics. We will show you how to get the most out of your RealtyNinja website after you’ve launched!

MARKETPLACE
www.realtyninja.com/marketplace

Did you know that we provide our customers with a sweet assortment of deals and discounts from 3rd party companies that REALTORS® love? Browse deals and claim your favourites in the Marketplace.

EVALUATION TOOL
www.realtyninja.com/evaluation

Want a quick and painless audit of your real estate website? Visit this link, answer 15 multiple choice questions and we’ll give your website an automated rank (AND a bunch of great suggestions!) based on your responses.

WRITE BETTER LISTING DESCRIPTIONS
www.realtyninja.com/blog

AIDA is a sales model (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) and can be used to write highly converting sales copy (aka Listing Descriptions!) Take your property descriptions to new heights by using this downloadable spreadsheet.

VIDEO TUTORIALS
www.youtube.com/realtyninja

Learn everything from basic website editor functions, to advanced marketing tactics via our YouTube channel. We’re always adding more helpful videos to the channel so please subscribe so you don’t miss anything.