Today I spent some time looking at both our local IDX search and our state IDX search from a consumer's eyes. It wasn't pretty.
One of my biggest concerns was that each had a scroll down box to choose the city you wanted to search. Well, some choices were towns but other choices were neighborhoods.
How on earth would a buyer unfamiliar with the area know which names are part of the area he's considering?
People might know that both St Petersburg and Clearwater are cities on this peninsula that's Pinellas County, but they wouldn't know that 22 of the other choices in the dropdown box are here, too.
From the other side, our boards are here to help us. What about the agent and seller of a home in Safety Harbor? Is that property never to come up when someone searches for St Pete or Clearwater?
It seems to me it's a disservice to both our buyers and our sellers.
Is yours more customer friendly?
Sharon, it seems in all these IDX searches if things were more graphical or area defined rather than town/city defined with drop down boxes consumers would get better search results. Many tiny towns people from outside the area don't even know their names.
Gary - I vote for an area search, as well as perhaps one with a map. I think most out of town buyers would be looking in the general area.
I assist a team here in Florida and have been researching IDX solutions and I agree there are some issues. It's difficult to find one that is just an all-around great product. There are a couple of issues that I have come across that is holding things back. One is that MLS's were never designed to be public. The second is that the associations are usually lagging in technology comprehension. You can't rely on a local or state association to provide a good IDX product. And that is a good thing actually. Let your competitors provide the mediocre product with limited searchability and gain the competitive edge of investing in an amazing IDX product that provides superior property searches for your area.
BW - you make a good point about the MLS not being designed for the public. Since recent years have shown that the internet is where the public is searching, you'd think that the associations would plan for that - or at least NAR and then distribute it. My techie son has told me for the last 20 years that he'd help me with anything except the local MLS which he always felt was so far behind the times. Our lockboxes don't work with the best phones, either.