This article contains the information from the Pipeline Newsletter – Issue 1.
Search Engine Optimisation
Search Engine Optimisation or SEO as it is commonly referred to 
is where a company puts effort into the design of its website in order to improve the ranking position in the listings of a search engine such as Google or Yahoo. Rentright started its SEO campaign this month and has already started to benefit. It takes about 3 months for a website to start to see improvements and although still in the Google “Sandbox” has seen some major leaps in its rankings, Whilst these rankings are still on the move the 
Rentright team and the website developers are very confident that they will be achieving quality results in the next few months, as this is the timeframe that the website are unofficially held in the “Sandbox”. In addition to Google other search engines are indexing the site regularly but as the site 
is still very young the site is manoeuvring up and down the rankings every day as nothing is stable yet. The number of towns with property and letting agents listed is growing on a daily basis and although there is now over 500 agents listed on the system there is still a long way to go, but what this means is that the site has to be continually changed to reflect those new areas within the SEO in order to get those towns with property and agents higher up the listings in order that the Rentright website can grow and expand. In addition to the SEO Rentright has a “pay per click “ (PPC) campaign running which is where the company pays for listings in the sponsored section of a search engine. This has resulted in a steady 
number of visitors which is growing all the time. The chart Below shows the visitors for last month. This shows that after the launch in March visitor numbers have increased steadily, and they continue to do so.
Properties Get Mapping
Rentright have added a system which allows all properties with a postcode entry to have a location map showing the whereabouts of the property. All agents have this facility as standard and the 
system is fully automated from the postcode on the property entry form, Rentright believe this is a excellent enhancement to the site and provides one more element to the property details, with many more features for the future planned including Thumbnail photographs, property picture slideshows and Brochures made up in real time from the details entered. Rentright have enhanced the system with 7 levels of zoom allowing Tenants to easily locate a property for driving directions or just to visualize where the property is in a location. Agents can opt to use partial postcode to only display the centre 
of a location so instead of posting the full postcode they can use only the first part of any postcode in order to plot the centre of that location.
Competition Winner
When Rentright went live on March 1st 2005 the competition was launched for all agents to win a Nikon 5200 digital camera. All agents had to do was to submit suggestions for site improvements or enhancements. Caroline of sure-Let in
Exeter was the email which was drawn and the camera was promptly dispatched to the lucky winner. Caroline said “The Postman has just been and delivered the camera -Brilliant excellent yippee! We are having a promotional event this weekend with Mr Surelet a 12 foot blow up man, its always a fun day so I will be sure to use the camera and I’ll send on some happy snaps..” Caroline's suggestion was to add a facility for agents to view a property as displayed on site without having to log out of the agents admin section. This suggestion has been 
added to the development programme and be implemented in due course. Rentright will be launching another competition in the coming months, details will be communicated to all registered agents as soon as the competition details are finalized.
Rentright Adds Radius Searching
Radius Searching is a facility where a site visitor can select a town and then add a certain amount of Miles to the town in order to find any suitable properties, The feature was asked for by many tenants from the Rentright Tenant feedback questionnaire., this is sent to all registered tenants one week after registration on the site.The feature enables tenants to perform a much wider search of properties, this will in turn give agents a much wider possibility of their uploaded properties in town suburbs reaching more prospective tenants. Rentright are continually improving the search functionality of the site to ensure all uploaded properties are given the maximum possible exposure to the users.
View All Agent Properties
Rentright has added a new feature to the agents section, this is a piece of HTML code that can be inserted into an agents website and provides a direct link to all the properties listed on the Rentright for that particular agent. This button feature was an original suggestion from Kirula Lee of
London property zone, Rentright as always put the suggestion to its developers who confirmed this was a simple task and could be done in one day so it was scheduled for development and released. In the future this functionality will be developed into a website module which will allow agents to seamlessly integrate the search and listing functionality already and coming to the Rentright system into their own website. This will include all the features 
such as mapping, Multiple pictures and yet to be featured slide shows and full property detail pdfs. This is proposed in Phase IV of the development plan.
New Agents Joining Daily
Rentright was launched on March 1st 2005 and has enjoyed a successful start to life. Since launch over 500 agents have registered on Rentright and the site is growing rapidly. New agents are joining the site on a daily basis and this is set to continue over the coming months giving users a much greater experience when visiting the site. Due to the excellent response Rentright has had from agents with property uploads the main server has been upgraded to give more database space to accommodate a huge amount of properties. Also more bandwidth has been added to improve access to all the pages. Rentright are working on improving the overall coverage of the site on a wide basis to capture the users and keep them coming back to the site. If you are part of an agency group and Rentright is working for you then please let more offices in your group benefit from what there is on offer.
Feedback from Tenants and Agents
User feedback is very important in the development lifecycle and
everything is noted and discussed in detail. Where possible an interaction with the requestor is made who provided the feedback, this is why last month agents and tenants started to receive an email inviting them to add comments and rate the service offered by the Rentright website. The charts below show some of the feedback results and some of the comments we will be using to improve the service. Overall the feedback has been positive which is very encouraging as Rentright is in such an embryonic state and the service to you will only get better as time goes on. Your feedback is very important, as Rentright is developed to enhance your business and any suggestions or additions you would like to see on the site will be looked into and developed where ever possible. If you have any comments or would like to rate the service offered to you then please let us know, either complete the Rentright questionnaire, send us an email to info@rentright.co.uk or give us a call.
Some of the agent feedback received
Watch this Space for New Features
From the agent feedback Rentright has a list of site enhancements that they wish to make. Now that the mapping and radius searching has been made live the efforts of the development teams is firmly set in SEO activities as discussed earlier. After some significant improvements have been made in search engine rankings, the team are then scheduled to start improving the property entry and display features, the purpose of this is to enhance data entry functionality and make a more friendly user interaction experience. In addition to these activities there are many more planned enhancements to the property display features and agents admin area. As always improvements to the sites performance will be continuous.
Agents Corner
Rentright would like to extend an offer to all agents to provide editorial content for the agents corner section of the pipeline newsletter. This space will be handed over to any agent who wishes to write an article from our 500+ membership base. The space will be allocated on a first come first serve basis and is subject to the approval of Rentright for content matter. Please email any ideas of what you would like to write about to pipeline@rentright.co.uk
10 of the best!
Thank you for choosing and using Rentright, as a valued member your feedback is important and should you wish to discuss any part of Rentright or your membership please do not hesitate to email or call.
Email - pipeline@rentright.co.uk Tel - 0870 766 9056