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PHOTO: GRAPHICS: SCREEN GRABS OF WEBSITE IN BJ0506019
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“Some people are surprised that a real estate company would create a website that isn”™t all about selling houses,” Anne Marie Gianutsos, chief marketing officer of Houlihan Lawrence, said about the brokerage”™s new online initiative to offer clients and prospects a source for lifestyle information.
After a six-month development period, Houlihan”™s new website “North of NYC” went live on April 17. “The feedback has been very positive. In the first week, we”™ve already had thousands of visitors who have come to the site,” Gianutsos told the Business Journal.
Rather than presenting listings of houses along with co-ops and condos for sale, the website is designed to provide a guide to living in the Westchester, Hudson Valley and Connecticut communities served by Houlihan Lawrence. The company”™s main website houlihanlawrence.com continues to be the access point for seeing listings, browsing the roster of agents and conducting related business. The new website”™s address https://northof.nyc needs to be carefully entered. If the prefix https:// is not accurate or a computer automatically adds the extension .com to the address, it will lead to a dead-end.
“Houlihan Lawrence fully understands that when a city buyer is having the ”˜do I stay or do I go decision,”™ they need access to more lifestyle information to help them make that decision,” Gianutsos said. “Let”™s say you know that you really love the walkability of your city life; you may want to explore the towns that have a strong center.”
The website offers various interactive elements, such as interactive maps that lets users explore hundreds of curated shops, restaurants and cultural attractions. Across the top of the landing page are the tabs “lifestyles,” “places,” “homes,” “journeys,” “happenings,” “how-to”™s” and “news” along with a “search” function. The lifestyles page offers a choice of six categories: cosmopolitan; equestrian; locavore; trailblazer; villager; and waterfronter. The “places” section offers profiles on 31 communities.
“We cover Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess and even beyond that into the Hudson Valley, Ulster and Columbia counties and even into Fairfield County in Connecticut,” Gianutsos said.
Gianutsos said they believe that the new website will be useful even after someone has bought a house using a Houlihan Lawrence agent. “We think that many people, after they purchase their home, can benefit from the site. Often, people turn to their agents who become their friends with ”˜what can I do this weekend.”™”
She said that by the time they were ready to launch the site, they had content contributions from 13 Houlihan Lawrence agents. “In just the first week of this being live, we”™ve had close to 50 more agents sign up and contribute their own content to this suite.”
The new website does represent a departure from the type of content which traditionally has been associated with real estate advertising, which typically highlights the physical elements of properties, including what some consider to be unexciting but nonetheless important items such as whether a house has a new roof or a boiler which is in dire need of replacement. “The real estate business is constantly evolving and, in the face of competition from national brands, Houlihan Lawrence, which has been in business for 130 years, really wants to use the opportunity for innovation in the digital space,” Gianutsos said.
The website was designed and built for Houlihan by King & Partners, a New York City marketing, content and technology firm. Gianutsos described the cost as “substantial.”
