The new site I built to find an apartment in Tel Aviv is doing really well. It’s a pretty small site and it hasn’t even been indexed by search engines yet, but I’ve been directing a lot of attention into improving it and advertising it:
- I made a Facebook group for it. It only has 18 members so far, but I don’t know some of them, so that’s a good sign that my search has already expanded beyond my own social circle.
- I re-wrote all the pages to be more compelling and clear.
- I installed a mobile theme, so when someone visits on an iPhone or an iPod Touch, it will look good and be easy to navigate. I assume it will work for other mobile browsers, but I only have an iPhone, so I can’t check.
- I added a blue text box with the essential very essential information, aiming to answer most of the questions that people ask me (eg, what neighborhood? and how much money?).
- I added one of those ubiquitous AddThis buttons to all the pages. So far my site has been shared four times using the button, but I don’t know by whom or where.
- I wrote about my search in Telalivit and posted it in Craigslist twice – Apartments Wanted and Real Estate Jobs.
Undoubtedly, these efforts are driving a lot of people to the site – almost 500 visits so far, increasing every day, and I hadn’t even come up with the idea a week ago – and I believe I’m making the site more effective at its purpose, which is to get people to contact me to offer their help. I’ve gotten a few dozen compliments – some through the form and others through the facebook and other venues. But I haven’t yet even gone to see an apartment because of the site. I hope that will change soon.
Tweet