Transforming the way rural land is sold, this project delivered a custom real estate platform tailored for Wisconsin’s diverse property market. By focusing on specialized search features and regional categorization, Glen Allen was able to connect buyers with the perfect hunting or vacation parcel while managing listings with ease.
The Challenge
Selling vacant land requires a different technical approach than selling suburban homes. For Glen Allen, the challenges included:
- Geographic Spread: The inventory spanned from the Fox Valley to areas north of Green Bay and deep into Northern Wisconsin. The site needed to categorize these listings so users could easily filter by region.
- Specific Land Attributes: Buyers for hunting and vacation land look for very specific data – acreage, timber type, water access, and proximity to state land. The site needed custom fields to handle these technical details.
- Search Engine Visibility: In 2009, real estate search was becoming highly competitive. The site needed to rank for specific terms like “hunting land for sale in Northern Wisconsin” or “Appleton land for sale.”
- Ease of Management: As an independent agent, Glen needed a system where he could quickly upload new photos, survey maps, and descriptions without needing to call a developer for every change.
The WebCitz Solution
We chose Open-Realty as the engine for this project due to its robust handling of property metadata and its developer-friendly flexibility:
- Custom Open-Realty Build: We engineered a bespoke environment using the Open-Realty framework. This allowed us to create custom “Listing Types” specifically for land, ensuring that acreage and topographical features were front and center. The header even had some Adobe Flash animations to scroll through various overhead photos he had taken of land.
- Regional Categorization: We structured the site architecture to separate “Local Fox Cities” listings from “Up North” recreational properties. This ensured that a user looking for a building lot in Appleton didn’t have to sift through 40-acre hunting parcels in the Northwoods.
- Visual Information Layout: We prioritized the inclusion of plot maps and aerial photos. Our design ensured these technical documents were easy to view and download, providing prospective buyers with the “boots-on-the-ground” info they needed before a physical site visit.
- SEO-Optimized Landing Pages: We optimized the site’s meta-data and URL structures to target localized keywords. This helped Glen capture traffic from people specifically searching for recreational land in the northern half of the state.
- Long-Term Managed Hosting: WebCitz provided the hosting and technical oversight for the duration of the business, ensuring the site remained fast and secure from the initial launch in 2009 until the firm was eventually shut down.
The Result
Realtybyglenallen.com provided a professional, authoritative platform that mirrored Glen Allen’s expertise in the Wisconsin land market. By utilizing a specialized real estate CMS, WebCitz gave a local independent agent the digital tools of a much larger brokerage. The site successfully connected buyers from the Fox Cities with their dream recreational properties in the Northwoods for several years.
