Thanks to Joseph Ferrara’s article at Inman, I got introduced to an application called Apture.  It is an extremely impressive application that provides a quick and easy way to increase the stickiness of your real estate website.

Increasing the stickiness of your website can help motivate visitors to adopt your site as their real estate research headquarters.  And, of course when that happens, the likelihood of that visitor becoming a client is significantly increased.

There are a number of things that can make a website ”sticky”, meaning that it motivates visitors to stay on the site and return – and maybe even tell their friends!  Two of those factors are:

• Providing useful information, especially in an interactive format
• Keeping visitors on your site, rather than sending them off to another site for information

Apture is an application that helps you address both of those issues.

Access More than 50 Resources – Right on Your Own Site

Apture lets you quickly link to or embed items from a variety of resources to add richness to your page content.  Here are some of the types of things you can access:

• Video
• Images
• Reference Articles
• Maps
• Audio
• News Articles
• Your own documents in a variety of formats

Using Apture, you don’t have to create links sending your website visitors off to other websites for information.  The key is that you can link to a variety of resources, and those links will open in pop up windows right on your own page!

I don’t think you’ll really understand the power of Apture until you see it - visit the test page set up on our Point2 Agent website.   Apture has a widget for Wordpress blogs, and you can get code to make it work on a non-blog site like Point2 Agent, also.  Placing the code in the footer template of a Professional or Premium Point2 site makes every page capable of using the Apture dashboard.

There isn’t a lot of support for end users - no telephone number to call, for example.  But, to be honest, the Apture dashboard is very simple, and I think that will make the lack of support less of an issue.

And, It’s Free!

Using Apture on a website is free.  Apture gets its revenue from the “publishers” who want to align themselves with Apture.  Right now, those publishers include such names as the BBC, Washington Post, and the New York Times.

Normally, an application like this starts out free for the end user, then once we’re all hooked, a fee is established.  Based on the fact that Apture gets revenue from publishers, I think it’s a much better bet that the end user version will remain free, although I’d also bet they’ll come out with premium features that can be had for a subscription fee.

What About Copyright Infringement?

The first issue that came to my mind as I considered Apture was the issue of copyright infringement.  I know that many sites, our main real estate marketing site included, prohibit others from framing the site into another site.

Apture seems to have addressed that issue very well.  If you add a link to a site that isn’t set up for sharing, Apture informs you that the link will be opened in a new window (as opposed to the normal pop up).

I think Apture provides a tool that will change the way many websites are providing information.  Check out Apture for yourself.  And, if you need help, give me a call, or send an email!