Archive for February, 2008

Testing, Testing

Published by Ed on February 28, 2008 in New Features. 1 Comment

Fellow Nestordanians,

as you know we try to take a scientific approach to the business. We’re often running test versions of our site exposed to only a percentage of Nestoria property searchers. Currently we’re testing making the pins on the map clickable and showing information in a little bubble (as many sites that use Google Maps do). Here’s a screenshot of a search for property in Reading:

Reading map with pins

Of course we measure the resulting changes in how people use the site in great details, but quantitative analysis only goes so far; we also welcome your qualitative comments. Please let us know what you think about this test, and any ideas you have for future usability tests.

Moving on up!

Published by Ed on February 25, 2008 in about us. 2 Comments

Nestorianos!

Like many folks in London we’ve been hit by recent trends in the property market. We’re being kicked out of our dear old office because the building is to be renovated and turned into luxury flats. Some of you might think this would be a time to celebrate; that we should be happy to leave behind the clogged toilets and the lack of heat in mid-winter. But our office has become our home. Little quirks like the window that never closed, the stolen furniture, the mice, meeting rooms with doors that won’t shut, the mysterious corridors that lead nowhere, the occasional ear drum shredding alarm, and the light switch in a different room had found their way into our hearts.

Tomorrow (we’ll be offline most of the day) we shove off to our new abode. Full of hope, but sad to be leaving behind the unique charm of an office with a tiny, 1 square metre VIP alcove (very useful whenever disgruntled team members needed a ‘time out’). We’re only a moving a few streets, we’re still very close to Covent Garden and Holborn, but it is a new chapter for our little band of vertical searchers.

To new beginnings!

Nestoria featured in Guardian Tech Podcast

Published by Ed on February 15, 2008 in about us and web 2.0. 0 Comments

Hail Nestorfarians!

While we know many of you spend your waking hours glued to your blog reader scouring the interweb for news of Nestoria and our quest to continually improve the relevance of property search results, we have received feedback that some of you prefer your Nestoria news in other formats.

For the audiophiles amongst you, we’re happy to let you know that Nestoria was featured in this week’s Guardian Tech Weekly podcast. I’m interviewed by Jemima Kiss of MediaGuardian as part of her “Elevator Pitch” series. Give it a listen. Unbelievably, it seems people are interested in other tech topics - the Nestoria bit doesn’t start until around minute 26.

For those of you who insist on text based information, there is a text transcript of the interview with a bit more information.

Have a good weekend.

House prices widget - feedback needed

Published by Ed on February 12, 2008 in API, New Features and tools. 2 Comments

Greetings fellow members of the Nestorinese Empire,

today we need your help. As we announced a few weeks ago, we now offer historic house price data via our API. As an addition to the existing Nestoria house price widget - which shows the current average asking price for an area - we will soon be launching a widget that shows historic price trends for any area.

The problem we face is the same one we are confronted with in designing our property search results page: on the one hand we have a wealth of information, on the other hand we need a simple intuitive way to present it for the benefit of users. Thus, we turn to you, our loyal blog readers, for some help. Please let us know what you think of the following potential designs (note that the data is made up in all cases).

potential widget designs

As you can see each design has some pros and some cons. Some show more information, some less. Feel free to give us all the feedback you have. Perhaps you think these are all rubbish and you’d like to see something else altogether? Regardless of your opinion, many thanks for your help. We do value all the contributions we get, even if we can’t act on all of them immediately.

For those readers new to Nestoria, this widget will be just the most recent of our many tools for webmasters. Please check them out and let us know what you think.

Nestoria API: Fresher than ever.

Published by Ed on February 7, 2008 in API. 0 Comments

Greetings fellow Nestorites!

We know that one of the biggest complaints about searching for property on the internet is that the dream house you find is then gone when you contact the estate agent. This issue, we refer to it as freshness is a very difficult challenge. Without going into too much detail, the problem is not so much technical as it is simply refective of the dynamics of the industry.

Nevertheless, we are doing our part to solve it. We clearly label all of our listings with an indication of how old they are and a few months ago we began allowing users to sort listings by age. We know this doesn’t solve the actual problem, but we hope it’s a start.

Today we’ve extended the information we have about the listings age to our API. Each listing requested via the API now returns a field updated_in_days which is a number representing how many days since the listing last had a significant update like a change in price. The number is rounded to the nearest 12 hours (ie 0.5 would mean the listing is less than half a day old).

As ever, the full technical details can be found on our property search API help pages. Please contact us with any questions you have regarding the API (or anything else for that matter)

Enjoy!

Searching for profits…

Published by Ed on February 5, 2008 in events and web 2.0. 0 Comments

Tomorrow night several members of the Nestoria team will be leaving ‘the Nest’ as we lovingly refer to our office and heading over to Zoomf’s Property Seminar the topic of which is “Searching for Profits”.

The main event will be a panel discussion with experts from the realm of estate agency and online marketing. As the market tightens up we’re seeing more and more folks in the industry taking a closer look at their marketing efforts to see if they really are getting value for money, and the back and forth is sure to be thought-provoking.

Amongst others the panel will feature past Nestoria interviewee Harvey Edgecombe of Renthusiast. Despite the fact that Harvey thinks Alexa is a reliable way to measure internet usage, he has some interesting thoughts on the market. I’m looking forward to a good discussion.

If you’re at the seminar and would like to learn more about Nestoria or have some ideas of how we could improve our property search then please say hello. Many thanks to Zoomf for organising and hosting the event.

Meanwhile, Nestoria super engineer Marc Tobias will be presenting about mapstraction over at Oxford Geek Night. Poke you’re head in if you’re in Oxford and technically minded. If the past is any indicator it’s sure to be a great event.

Nestoria Interview - Lelia Ferro - 4Homes

Published by Ed on February 4, 2008 in interviews. 3 Comments

This month we speak to Lelia Ferro, producer at Channel4.com’s property website 4Homes, home to many of the UK’s leading property shows like Grand Designs, Property Ladder, and Location, Location that attract millions of viewers each week. The site is updated several times a day with tips and guides on everything from house buying to architecture. Channel4 recently partners with Nestoria, to use Nestoria property search technology.

Lelia brings long experience in the online property industry to her role, having previously worked at property portal FindaProperty.

Lelia, thanks for speaking with us.

1. Discuss some of the challenges of managing the online presence for popular offline brands like Channel4’s portfolio of property programming. How do you use the medium of online to enhance the television experience?
It is a challenge, mainly due to the high volume of programmes, but 4Homes has a loyal user base and is a well established site. I often put it like this. The 4Homes programmes inspire people and the website empowers them to do it for themselves. So the website is an extension of the programme experience. I try to maximise the medium by getting users involved and devising relevant functionality that complements the shows.

2. Do you see the UK public’s appetite for property diminishing anytime soon? Or is the seemingly insatiable hunger for all things property related a permanent part of the national psyche?
I think a credit crunch might slow the property market very slightly and trends in purchasing shift over time, but the passion for property is here to stay. It remains one of the main ways of securing your future financially, plus people are becoming more and more interested in architecture and their environment thanks to programmes like Grand Designs.

3. What are your thoughts on the developments in the online property sector in the last 18 months? What do you see coming in the future?
I think it has been a very exciting time. When I was still at Find a Property, there were only a few major players in the online property world which meant they could command the industry in terms of pricing and loyalty. Now that’s all changed. There is a lot more choice and second generation property searches like Nestoria give users what they want which is the ability to quickly find what they are looking for all in one place. It is a better user experience overall and less work and money for estate agents who just want their properties viewed by as many users as possible. In the future I think we will see a lot more collaboration between site owners, not just in the property sector but all over the web.

4. What are the challenges you think a vertical search engine for property like Nestoria faces?
Sites like Nestoria have the benefit of being young and fresh. The company takes an open source approach to business and this works in their favour. Many of their older competitors are owned by large corporations and they benefit from effective promotion. By taking advantage of key partnerships, as they have with Channel 4, Nestoria will be able to significantly close the gap on their competitors.

Thanks Lelia. It’s a great honour for a small start up like Nestoria to work with a leading UK media brand like Channel4, and we look forward to a successful partnership, as one of many mutually beneficial tie ups with traditional media brands.

past Nestoria interviews: Lloyd Shepherd, Adam Samuel, and Gabor Cselle.

Nestoria provides property search for Channel4

Published by Ed on February 1, 2008 in partnerships. 1 Comment

Hello Nestorianers,

As diligent readers of this blog know, the last few weeks we’ve used this blog to announce several cooperations between Nestoria and more established UK media brands like our partnership with The Independent.

Today we present our biggest such deal yet. Recently Channel4.com began using Nestoria property search technology to offer the users of 4Homes, their property search.

Channel4 Homes - Leeds property search

This is major milestone for us. Channel4 is a well known UK brand in general, but are particularly strong in the property space. Thanks to their hit shows like Grand Designs and Location, Location 4Homes attracts an audience of hundreds of thousands of users a month. It’s a great endorsement of our focus on relevance and product quality.

The service is currently in beta mode, and we are, as ever, curious to learn what you think.

More about this partnership next week. Meanwhile, have a great weekend.