Straight talk from a guy who knows where he is going....and has learned from where he's been. Idealista, one of Spains largest and most well known real estate search engines has become a major player in Spain's online marketplace. Founder Jesus Encinar spoke at session 5 of Enrique Dans compelling "High Tech Startups" class and provided valuable insights pertaining to setting up and launching a new startup online.
1) How did Idealista build their initial database - inventory build
a) Went through the newspaper and called 25000 prospective sellers offering them a free listing on idealista.
b) Used initial 25K ads to create a highly niche solution to search for real estate only in Madrid. Their idea was to offer a high quality search experience. Restricting initial development to the Madrid market and then expanding slowly city by city allowed them to grow at a rate that allowed them to maintain a high quality experience.
2) So now that the initial inventory was built how did they continue to build traffic from both buyers and suppliers?
a) The company invested in a unique advertising campaign in newspapers, making clear that using Idealista was better than traditional classifieds and poking fun at this antiquated real estate selection process.
3) Designing a website is like building a road sign, you only get a users partial attention, so make sure they GET THE MESSAGE! An image from Jesus' recent trip to India shows that having too much information and mixed messaging severely curtails effective messaging on your site.
Apologies for the poor pic quality...I need to buy an ipad2!!!!
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