Digital Estate Agent Window Displays | The Complete Guide

Alistair Cousins

4 years ago

Estate agent window displays are famous for capturing the attention of passers-by. When you walk past an estate agent you can’t help but stop and check out what the latest properties on the market are. But with so many estate agents on the high-street, how do you get people to stop and look at your properties?

It is becoming commonplace for estate agents to replace their long-trusted light-pockets for digital screens featuring automatic property carousels. These bright screens can make the properties on display almost pop out of the window and cause passers-by to stop and see what’s on the market. This guide takes you through everything you need to know about digital estate agent window displays and how you can use them to sell more properties and improve your services.

If you want to learn more about how estate agents are using digital signage visit our dedicated digital signage for estate agents page.

Use our interactive contents table below to navigate to a specific section.

What is a Digital Estate Agent Window Display?
Integrating Your Property Data Feed With An Estate Agent Window Display
The Importance Of Branding Your Screen Content
Digital Signage Hardware for Estate Agent Window Displays
Choosing The Right Screen
Our Top Uses Of Digital Estate Agent Window Displays

What Is A Digital Estate Agent Window Display?

Essentially a digital estate agent window display is a digital signage solution specifically for estate agents. Digital signage allows users to get their content and digital messages onto a screen. This could be marketing messages, internal communications, or even digital wayfinding. For estate agents, these messages will be their properties up for offer.

Unlike traditional digital signage, a digital estate agent window display may have an automated property carousel that links seamlessly to their property CRM. When properties are added, removed, or sold on the CRM this is reflected on the screen. For example, if the price changes on the CRM from £250,000 to £225,000 the property on screen’s price will change to meet the latest figure. This window display often replaces light pockets and is a streamlined and convenient solution for displaying properties in the window of an estate agent.

There are three simple aspects to estate agent digital signage: integration, design, and hardware. We take care of all three. All an agency really needs to do is send an email and plug in their device(s) – but we’ll get onto that.

Integrating Your Property Data Feed With An Estate Agent Window Display

The secret to digital estate agent window displays is the capability to integrate with your existing property software. Most agencies use a platform like Expert Agent to maintain a property database where they can add new property information and images, as well as remove sold stock. We are able to take this information, reformat it as a webpage, and then display it with other content on our property displays.

With one email, agencies can request an XML feed from their software provider. Platforms like Expert Agent are used to working with us so will happily oblige. Alternatively, we can try and find the feed for you through portals like Rightmove and Zoopla. Once we’ve obtained this feed, the only technical part of the screen setup is over. We’ll create a webpage from it that looks great when it’s sent to your screen(s).

The Importance Of Branding Your Screen Content

Design is a fundamental part of successful estate agent digital signage. In addition to displaying property feeds full screen, digital window solutions allow agencies to add other content slides to their screen playlists. Popular elements include an agency’s Twitter feed, promotional videos, staff profiles, and special offers. Twitter integration is particularly useful because it allows agencies to update messages on their screens in real-time, without having to log into the signage software. Tweets that celebrate recently sold properties or profiles that welcome new staff really impress.

Our digital signage content creation studio is designed with a non-specialist end-user in mind – anyone can put together great looking screen designs in minutes using drag-and-drop widgets. But when you are just getting started, we’ll do the designing for you. Simply by looking at your website (copying your logo, colour scheme, even font choice) our team of graphic designers create bespoke templates for your screens. As part of the package, all initial content will be provided for you to your specification. That means you can be up and running straight away. Please note if you are using an automatic property feed we’ll set you up with a template and you won’t have to do anything else.

Digital Signage Hardware for Estate Agent Window Displays

This brings us finally to the digital signage hardware component for estate agents looking to install a window screen. Digital property displays are powered by plug-in media players: our device of choice being an Android Micro PC. These media players will arrive pre-programmed with digital signage software, configured to do the job. All you need to do is plug them into the back of your screens via HDMI.

To load your content, simply log in with the account details we provide you and press GO!

Choosing The Right Screen

Arguably the most important aspect of integrating a digital estate agent window display is the screen itself. You can have great looking content but if it isn’t visible, is there any point? That’s why choosing the right screen is paramount in ensuring your digital property display project is a success.

When you think of choosing the right screen the first thing that may spring to mind is screen quality (resolution). However, with a screen most likely being in the window of your estate agents, the brightness is the most important aspect to consider. You could have the best-looking display in the world, with the highest resolution and sleek looking bezels, but if it’s not bright enough, as soon as the sun comes out, your content will disappear.

Digital signage displays cover a large spectrum of brightness levels (usually measured in nits). From 300 nits (around the same level as a standard living room TV) to 4000 nits there will be a screen to suit your window. In some cases, such as windows that don’t get much sun, a 700nit screen can be adequate. However, on sunny days you may still experience screen visibility issues. That’s why we recommend going for a high bright screen or ultra-high bright screen. These screens range from 1500 nits and go up to 4000 nits. This extra boost of brightness hugely reduces glare from the sun. As a result, ensures your content is visible even on the brightest days of the year.

Click the link to learn more about high bright screens.

Normal Brightness Screen Vs. High Bright Screen

Our Top Uses Of Digital Estate Agent Window Displays

1. Automated Digital Property Carousels.

By far the most popular use case for installing a window screen in an estate agents is to take advantage of automated digital property carousels.

Through clever digital signage software, estate agents can link their screen to their preferred property CRM including Alto, Jupix, Reapit, and more. The digital signage software will pull data from the property CRM and place it into branded, great looking templates. This includes information such as location, prices, pictures, and more. When information is updated on the property CRM it is reflected on the screen. When properties are removed on the CRM they are removed from the screen. This saves a lot of time and money regarding having to constantly replace light pockets.

A further benefit of using automated digital property carousels is the data you can gather. For example, you are able to see how long the property was on the screen before it was sold. Or you can look at the data and see that a certain type of property was selling more than another type in a certain area. All this data is hugely beneficial to improve the estate agent’s operations and help them to sell more properties.

2. Touch Screen Windows

Touch-screen digital displays revolutionise an estate agency’s traditional window. The days of downloading property listings, printing, and putting up ads are over. With digital signage for estate agents, an office’s window feels larger and becomes self-sufficient. Agencies can display their portfolio with changing, and evolving information that updates as stock changes.

The estate agent could have their normal automated digital property carousel displayed when the screen is idle. However, once a user interacts with the screen it transforms into a navigational digital property catalogue. From here the user could have the option to search properties by individual features such as location, bedrooms, etc., or even book in a consultation.

With touch-screens, the browsing experience becomes interactive and personal. Passers-by might not want to come into an agency if they’re short on time, but they’ll be more inclined to do their own quick search on a touchscreen display from outside, or quickly browse using an internal screen. Salespeople often intimidate potential clients. To succeed in today’s business climate, companies need to empower the vendor

3. Property On The Go (NFC Integration)

Nearfield Communication technology (or NFC) takes the interactive experience one step further. Major cities like London are already familiar with a “tap culture” that includes Oyster cards and Apple Pay. With NFC integrated digital signage, prospects can tap window displays with their phones and engage with a sign. Without having to go inside for a brochure, vendors can share property information with potential buyers. While affordable, operating cutting-edge technology will establish a leading reputation for any agency.

NFC integrated digital signage for estate agents offers two additional benefits. Firstly, a company is able to analyse their customer metrics, keeping track of who’s using their screens. Secondly, these displays do not have to be limited to an office’s window. Larger estate agents can place screens elsewhere in public spaces to browse and take away property info while they shop.

4. Social Media

More and more estate agents are turning their hand to social media. It’s easy to see how following agencies on Twitter might become the equivalent of religiously checking property listings in the back of newspapers. Estate agents at the head of the game are using Twitter to field queries and Facebook to showcase client testimonials. Engaging with clients over social media in this way is crucial in a sector that is distrusted by 79% of the UK population. Digital signage for estate agents works perfectly with social media. Twitter and Facebook can be integrated around digitised property listings. Agencies can even introduce new sensor technologies linking to property profiles to enable data capture.

The possibilities of social media for estate agencies are only beginning to be explored. Instagram can become a property catalogue where strategic tags boost audience reach. Snapchat is even more innovative. Unlike with other platforms, on Snapchat, a user knows when they have their audience’s attention. Agents can send their clients snaps, even short videos as they tour properties.

5. Internal Touch Screens

Recently there has been a noticeable shift towards using touch screen content and digital kiosks in various environments, from Universities to retail environments – it gives the customer the ability to search for what they are looking for and not what you feed them. This now extends to estate agents.

More and more estate agents now opt for a lounge environment for their agencies to make the ‘sell’. A touchscreen-based solution is an ideal tool to aid an agent.
Each touchscreen’s content can be customised and tailored to match your agency’s sales process. By this we mean we can isolate property types quickly, favourite, compare, and view properties by location on a live map; then stamp on supplementary, beneficial information to help the prospect find the perfect property.

We work with various software providers to allow us to manipulate the data to work best for you. We can quickly isolate sales or lettings properties; properties in a particular area; as well as capture all the data you need about your prospect including all their search criteria, plus contact information.