Strategy
100floors.com - product updates
As you know, we did a quick re-branding of our product from my100floors.com to 100floors.com based on the feedback we got from several of our early adopters as well as for easier brand reach and recall.
With that, we also launched some new product features primarily around SMS and email communication and better user touch points which they think are critical for a better user experience.
So with little drumroll, we launch - Click2SMS and Click2Email for listings. You can use these features to quickly communicate with listing owners and also get rapid responses for your listings on 100floors.
We also offer Click2call - a service using which we can we dial you up along with the listing owner and connect both of you, however at this point this service is available only for premium listings. If you are interested in having click2call integrated with your listing, give us at shout at info@suksh.com or leave a message on our Contact us page.
As always, we would to hear feedback from you, tell us what is working, what is not, and we will continue to work to provide you with better listings from real people.
Understanding spatial search
So what is spatial search ?
In today’s context, where the Internet is the starting point for finding any information you need about anything in the world, and of course most of us use Google. The problem with traditional search is that it does not support or have information about the geographical dimension.
Why is spatial search important ?
This becomes extremely important when searching for something like “Guest houses in Bangalore”. Although the geographical location, in this case ‘Bangalore’ can be used as a part of search query term, the search engine does not interpret it as a geographical location. So results for the search query - “Guest houses in Bangalore” will turn up documents with “Guest houses” and “Bangalore” and might not show up results with guest houses koramangala or indiranagar which are localities in Bangalore and also hence very apt results. This is because, the search engine does not have a relationship between these terms.
The other issue with traditional search in entities like homes is that the geographical information of these locations are not known, and hence they cannot be visualized on a map - which would be the most intuitive way to visualize these results.
While planning and architecting my100floors, we understood the need for Spatial search and helping users visualize home searches on maps. Moreover we felt that that searching for properties on maps was the intuitive way to find properties. In fact, we are the first to provide a map based search in India, cracking the problem of non-availability of geo-coded data.
The next post will talk about our implementation of Spatial search in, challenges we faced and a walk through of the user experience.
We are now in Closed beta - My100floors.com
This post comes on the day of lights and festivities in India and we are glad to announce that we are now live in closed beta. My100floors.com is now ready, after days (and long nights!) and some great experiences and learnings along the way.
Check out http://www.my100floors.com/ and leave us your email address. We will get back to you shortly with your invite.
So what’s my100floors.com ?
My100floors.com is a real estate marketplace which creates an ecosystem for individuals, real estate agents and builders to search and find properties across India. My100floors is the first and only online real estate portal in India which powers your real estate search through maps and provides an intuitive experience by making it extremely easy to find buyers and sellers of property.
We are now eager to hear from you, and we want to hear your thoughts/ feedback and how we can serve your needs better. Keep following this blog for new feature releases, updates etc.
To some great beginings, cheers!
Sequoia Capital on startups and the economic downturn
The slide deck below from Sequoia Capital is some solid advice about dealing with the entire economic crisis and recession from a startup standpoint.
In fact, the slides below give a good synopsis of the entire problem in the US and global markets and the effects which they have had on the global economy and how startups need to deal with new challenges and realities.
What do you think ? If you run your own startup, what’s your strategy in dealing with the tough times ?