Team Roar
In a day and age when Sri Lankans are so heavily dependent on smartphones to get about everyday life, whether it’s to do with ordering pizza, having a gift delivered, or booking a taxi, it was only a matter of time till the real estate market caught on, too.
If you thought that searching for or advertising properties online made things convenient enough to begin with, you’d be pleased to know that real estate advertisers have upped their game – by catering specifically to smartphone users with responsive websites, employing GPS technology and (because it’s now available in Sri Lanka) Google Street View, to give potential buyers a better picture (no pun intended) of the properties they’re scouting out. And of course, it helps sellers present their properties better, and target the right demographic too. How exactly does this work? Read on and find out.
SL’s leading web portal for property needs.
LankaPropertyWeb.com, which claims to be “Sri Lanka’s leading property website” (they do seem to be popular in the real estate market – for March the site had 210,000 visitors) recently gave their site a new look – and complete with upgrades. The company says that they have had to take into account “the mounting number of mobile internet users in Sri Lanka”, which has currently exceeded desktop internet usage by over 2.5 million (that’s 57% of total internet users).
Commenting on the changes they have made to their site, Founder and Managing Director of LankaPropertyWeb, Daham Gunaratna, said that, “the responsive nature of the site allows it to adjust and optimise itself according to the screen size, be it a small mobile device or a large TV. ”
The other features include, as we mentioned earlier, the inclusion of GPS technology, that would help potential buyers (who are also assumed to be smartphone users) locate properties nearest to them. The site allows expansion of search radius to find properties around specific chosen locations too.
Once a specific property/specific properties catch your attention, you can find out exactly where it is with the site’s “View on a map” option, or scroll down and explore the location better on Google Street View. Also – and this is helpful if you’re not property-hunting by yourself – the site allows you immediate sharing on Facebook, WhatsApp and Viber, so your spouse/business partner won’t have a reason to accuse you of not keeping them in the loop.
Lanka Property Web is now accessible on a wide variety of devices.
Overall, the site has a clean user interface, and looks particularly good on mobile devices. We think it would perhaps be a great idea for the company to launch an app too, in the near future
Keeping in mind the growing number of smartphone users in the island, the company feels these upgrades should help reach wider audiences. With even real estate companies making catering to mobile phone users a priority, it’s safe to say that Sri Lanka really has embraced the era of the smart phone.
