Top things to look for in a valuation tool

Here at The ValPal Network, we know that there are other options available when considering to use a valuation tool, so we’ve come up with a handy guide to help you choose the right valuation tool for you.

Valuation Quality

As we know, an online valuation tool is a very effective way of capturing the contact details of vendors and landlords by converting website traffic. Some agents may not care so much about the accuracy of their valuation tool if they’re simply planning on using it as a form of data capture.

However, if accuracy is important to you, be sure to invest in a valuation tool that invests in the quality of their valuations. There are some low cost valuation tools available that do not continue to develop the product (How could they? You run a business!), meaning it will never get any better and will not necessarily evolve with the market.

Here at The ValPal Network, we feed over 43 million pieces of data into the ValPal algorithm. Despite all this data working to get the most accurate valuation possible, we understand that there is always going to be the odd anomaly. To combat this, we have developed the Agent Valuation Reporter and are the only online valuation tool to include agent feedback in our algorithm. If you spot a valuation that is outside of an acceptable range, simply click the button, tell us what it should be and why. Your opinion is then weighted and fed back into the algorithm once accepted, improving the valuations for the property in question and similar properties in the area. Find out more…

Integration with Your Business

For a truly successful launch of an online valuation tool with your team (particularly if you have multiple branches), it’s important that your provider can integrate seamlessly with your CRM to help you get the most out of the service. In this instance, choosing a valuation tool provider that has been around for longer could work in your favour as integrations will be more polished.

It is also important to have an efficient, fast setup to ensure you’re receiving leads as soon as possible – for every minute you don’t have a valuation tool on your website, you’re missing out on potential business!

Finally, your tool needs to integrate seamlessly with your website, mobile site and your call to actions need to be in the optimum position to get you the max amount of conversions.

The ValPal Network can fully integrate with Reapit, Jupix, Qube, DezRez, LetMC, Gnomen, Acquaint, Zapier, Drip, MailChimp, Fragra, and many more providers. We also have a support team on hand to walk you through the onboarding process; everything from the back end of ValPal to checking that your mobile site looks just as good as the desktop and testing all functionality (you’d be surprised how many second rate tools don’t sit properly on a mobile site or just don’t work!) We advise our members to use our call to action terminology in the first fold of their website, which on average gains 25% extra conversions.

Price

As mentioned above, there are some options available for an extremely low cost, but 9 times out of 10 with PropTech solutions, you get what you pay for. It’s not only the accuracy that tends to suffer with low cost, low value products. You’re likely to lose out on customer service and additional benefits.

If you’re only after a valuation tool to convert web traffic that you drive yourself through your own marketing and nurture the leads yourself, the low cost option might be fine for you. However, if you’d prefer a tool that invests in improving the user journey and gives you additional benefits and add-ons to help you drive traffic, convert leads, nurture those leads and monetise them into new revenue streams, a low cost option won’t be the right fit for you.

Campaign tracking

If you decide to go for a valuation tool without all the bells and whistles of The ValPal Network, and you’re planning on running digital campaigns to drive traffic to the tool such as social media campaigns, PPC and Facebook ads, make sure that your chosen supplier can provide a results page with a different URL to the start of the journey. Without this, it will make tracking campaigns and using intelligent insights to retarget or learn from campaigns very difficult, as Google Analytics, Facebook or whatever you’re using won’t be able to recognise the difference between traffic and leads because the URL will be the same.

This is pretty standard practice to expect from a PropTech provider but make sure your supplier is able deliver this, as some don’t (you didn’t hear it from us).

Is The ValPal Network right for you?

Becoming a member of The ValPal Network means you get much more than JUST a valuation tool. You will have access to a dedicated support team and a client success team to help you get the most out of your valuation tool, all included with your membership. You’ll also benefit from additional marketing and design services, and exclusive discounts on many useful services and products through our carefully selected partners.

Not to mention the additional benefits within ValPal itself, including a chatbot for your website to convert even more vendors and landlords, an online market appraisal booking calendar through which an average of 12% of all ValPal leads automatically book a timeslot in your diary without you having to lift a finger, and the out of area lead sharing programme which makes the most of our large clientele to give you additional leads in your area, meaning you have over 4,000 estate agents across the country generating leads for you.

We are also in the process of developing two new products which will make you more money and nurture your leads to give you more business and revenue without you even trying, so watch this space for the launch of MovePal and PortalPal!

For more information, email team@valpal.co.uk or call 020 8663 4930.

Written by Steph Rady - Head of Marketing and PR, Angels Media and The ValPal Network

steph.rady@angelsmedia.co.uk