COLDWELL BANKER CANADA ROLLS OUT NEW WEBSITE, COLDWELLBANKER.CA, REDESIGNED
WITH DREAMERS IN MIND

Site Suggests Three Resourceful Ways for Home Buyers and Sellers to Search for Real Estate

BURLINGTON, ON, Oct. 22 /CNW/ - Today, Coldwell Banker Canada Operations ULC officially launched the beta version of its website, www.ColdwellBanker.ca. Wholly re-thought and re-designed, the site features optimizations that completely alter and enhance the experience of searching for a home online.

"The Internet is often the first stop for potential home buyers and sellers, so it is our goal to make the online home-searching process as enjoyable and efficient as possible," said Michael Fischer, chief marketing officer for Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC. "For the new ColdwellBanker.ca we looked at search functionality across various websites including, retail and music and continuously asked ourselves, 'Why not in real estate?'  As a result, we have created exciting new ways to search for homes and real estate agents."   The site includes a variety of new features, such as:

• BlueScape^sm Search
  Taking cues from popular music recommendation websites, Coldwell Banker^® developed BlueScape^sm, a visually-driven real estate search platform to help "dreamers" find just that - the home of their dreams.  Instead of limiting search options to postal code or the number of bedrooms, users begin the search by rating abstract images with a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" from landscape scenery to images of snowmobiles and taxi cabs. At any time, users can submit a query and the BlueScape^sm technology will identify homes that are a good fit using all properties available on the ColdwellBanker.ca and ColdwellBanker.com web sites. BlueScape search was also named as a finalist in the Inman News Innovator Award, Web Services category.
  
  
• Keyword Search
  For those who prefer a more traditional approach to searching for a home, Coldwell Banker has added keyword capabilities to its general real estate search function so that consumers can more easily narrow down the properties they are interested in viewing. Visitors can enter terms as broad as "modern" or "colonial," to more specific property descriptions such as "pool," "dock" or "boat slip."
  
  
• Expansive Use of Video
  Taking advantage of the popularity of Coldwell Banker On Location™, the brand's YouTube channel which has had more than 16,000 videos posted by sales representatives and 1.6 million video views since the channel was launched over a year ago, the new site integrates video into real estate search.

"Real estate is a deeply emotional process, despite the focus on hard numbers like square footage and price," said Fischer.  "Home buying is often driven by a gut feeling. We've widened the definition of real estate search to give consumers the chance to explore those intangibles."

Coldwell Banker closely examined the reasons why consumers visit ColdwellBanker.ca and what functionalities they deemed most important when determining how the website would be transformed.

"The BlueScape^sm search platform was designed to help consumers in their decision-making process," said Fischer. "While the new website is in beta form, we have an opportunity to receive valuable feedback from users and continue making improvements until the site was optimized to its greatest potential."

Additional capabilities of the ColdwellBanker.ca site include:

• Technology that immediately identifies the current location of visitors via their IP address, offering up homes for sale in that area.
  
  
• Join Us: a recruiting resource enabling brokers to promote job opportunities and create local career pages.
  
  
• Learn: helpful real estate news and tips for consumers, such as real-time industry articles from news media.
  
  
• Home File: Place for consumers to store, share and organize a limitless amount of property searches, sales representative and office information, and industry articles.

Coldwell Banker will also include integrated video and social networking capabilities to the new site. Visitors will have access to an array of videos powered by Coldwell Banker On Location, the company's branded YouTube channel, offering behind-the-scenes looks at towns and neighbourhoods, tips and timely news on real estate topics, and video listings of homes for sale. 

Development of the new ColdwellBanker.ca site was a collaborative effort by Coldwell Banker interactive agency partners, FD Kinesis and Bootstrap Software, Inc.

About Coldwell Banker^®

Since 1906, the Coldwell Banker^® organization has been a premier provider of full-service residential and commercial real estate. Coldwell Banker is the oldest national real estate brand in North America and today has a network of nearly 98,000 agents working in more than 3,600 offices in 49 countries and territories. The Coldwell Banker brand is known for creating innovative consumer services as recently seen by being the first national real estate brand to augment its web site www.coldwellbanker.com for smart phones, the first to create an iPhone application featuring international listings and the first to fully harness the power of video in real estate listings, news and information through its Coldwell Banker On Location^SM YouTube channel.  The Coldwell Banker system is a leader in specialty markets such as resort, new homes and luxury properties through its Coldwell Banker Previews International^® marketing program.

For further information:

Media Inquiries and requests for interviews/demonstrations: