Name of your website?Real Estate Services in the South Peloponnese Kalamata Messinia Mani
Your name?
Sarah McKellen
Your Location (city, etc)
Kalamata Messinia South Peloponnese Greece
Please give us a short summary of your website?
Local licenced real estate agency with property for sale throughout Messinia and the Mani in the South Peloponnese. The site provides detailed descriptions with photos of property as well as information on buying in Greece. It is updated quiet regularly although during the busy season, normally summertime, there will be delays in updates due to work load.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
Basically because in order to carve a position in the business world a website is essential. I also enjoyed the idea of assisting in the design and improving it along the way with the feedback from my viewers welcomed.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
I first launch my site in 2004 and it was this one - real estate in Messinia and the Mani.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
I have to admit that it is a very long name for a site, but I definately wanted to have my family name in the title and then the area of business plus the type of business.
What makes it different from other, similar offerings?
Personally I was rather fed up with seeing property sites feeding people with lines of living the dream, live in the sun, place in the sun etc. I am a local business and I need to get across to my local clients that I am not selling holiday homes to North Europeans looking to escape to the sun. So I have tried to show with the design that I am a professional living and working locally with the ability to conduct business in two languages and advertise my services and their properties to a much larger market than an agent who only deals with North Europeans looking for the sun.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
My eventual goal is improve the site position on the internet as well as the layout and then possible sell it of keep it for income.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
Still investing time which is money so will have to get back to you on that one!
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
More photos with links in to detailed information on the property market in the area, links to each area with detailed descriptions of amenities, etc - make it as user friendly as possible and spend more time on getting it high tech enough to get every little bit of the site picked up by the robots.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
No, but if it got so big persumably I would be reaping financial benefit and either employ people to manage it or sell it.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
Unexpected costs - none to date. Headaches all the time.
What has been your biggest challenge?
How long is a piece of string? When you meet one challenge, you then have another waiting a little further up.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
I would say my family surname
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
My website is only to promote myself and my real estate business so the running of the site does not differ from my expectations.
How long have you run the site already, and how long will you continue to keep it up if you don't enjoy big gains in traffic, income or popularity?
My website will remain my website as long as I am running my real estate business.
Would you ever consider making your business just your website?
In order to make my business just my website I would need to have improved the rank. Once I had got the site in to a position where anyone could see the position it had gained I could then possibly think about approaching other agents or private property owners in order to advertise on the site. I would have to stop being an active agent myself in order to manage the site.
What is your website address?
Real Estate Services in the South Peloponnese Kalamata Messinia Mani
