If you have a website built on a platform such as Wix, Webflow or Squarespace, you might have struggled to find a simple way to add your property listings. Most website builders do not offer a built in option for displaying properties and creating a custom integration can end up being expensive or time consuming.

Introducing PropEmbed

To solve this, we’ve created PropEmbed, a standalone product built by the Property Hive team. PropEmbed is a multi-platform property widget builder that uses live data from your CRM to create fully customisable widgets. Once your widget is ready, you simply copy and paste the embed code into your website and your listings will appear straight away.

We’re really pleased to share this with you. Let’s take a closer look at PropEmbed and learn how you can use it to display your listings on any modern website platform.

What PropEmbed Is

PropEmbed is a property widget builder that makes it easy to display your property listings on any modern website platform. You simply design your widget, connect your CRM and copy the embed code into your website. Your listings will appear straight away and stay up to date with your CRM.

There’s nothing to install, no coding is required and everything works through your browser.

Why We Built It

Our mission at Property Hive is to build tools that make building property websites more accessible for both estate agents and developers.

We often hear from estate agents and developers who want to use website builders like Wix or Webflow but still need a property feed that stays in sync with their CRM. The options have been limited until now, and many users end up asking questions such as:

• How do I add my property listings to Wix?
• Can I show my CRM properties on Webflow?
• What do I use if my site isn’t built on WordPress?

Many agents already use Property Hive for WordPress, and that remains the best choice when you need deep customisation or a fully tailored estate agency website. But not everyone works on WordPress, and some teams prefer platforms like Wix or Webflow. PropEmbed was created to support those situations, giving you a simple way to display property listings wherever your website is hosted.

What PropEmbed Lets You Do

Design

PropEmbed gives you a flexible way to display your property listings on almost any website. You can create a custom widget that suits the design of your site by controlling the colours, text, sizing and what information appears for each property.

This short demo shows inside the PropEmbed widget builder, where you can see options for layout, spacing and colours.

Using this interface, estate agents can customise widgets to match any brand style.

Try it now

Import

PropEmbed connects directly to your CRM, so once an import is running your listings stay up to date automatically. As shown beneath, imports can be managed in the account area of PropEmbed.

Embed property listings into a website

Your widget will work with platforms like Wix, Webflow, Squarespace, Shopify and most custom built sites. When your widget is ready, you simply copy and paste a short embed code like the one below into your website builder and your properties will appear immediately.

Main Features

Works with major UK CRMs

Your listings update automatically based on your CRM data.

Customisable designs

You can control colours, fonts, text, sizing, layout and property details.

Copy and paste embed

PropEmbed generates a short embed code that works in website builders, including Wix, Webflow, Squarespace and Shopify.

Create multiple widgets

Create unlimited widgets for displaying across your website in different places. For example, you might have a ‘Recent Properties’ widget for your home page in addition to the main property results page.

Multi platform compatible

Embed your custom widget to display your listings on any modern website platform.

No code

Estate agents, marketing teams, web designers and developers can all use PropEmbed with very little setup.

Who It’s For

PropEmbed is suitable for anyone who needs to embed property listings into a website without building a custom integration. It’s particularly useful for:

• Estate agents
• Developers working across multiple platforms
• Designers using website builders like Wix, Webflow or Squarespace
• Marketing teams creating landing pages or campaign sites

How It Works

Quick Steps

1. Visit propembed.com
2. Connect your CRM
3. Build and personalise your widget
4. Copy the embed code
5. Paste the code it into your website builder
6. Your properties will appear instantly

This approach works on almost any modern platform that accepts HTML embeds.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need WordPress to use PropEmbed?

No. PropEmbed works independently of WordPress and supports most website builders.

Can I customise the widget?

Yes. You can choose layouts, colours, spacing, fonts and which property details to display.

Does it work with my CRM?

PropEmbed connects with the main UK CRMs (e.g Alto, Street, Loop, 10ninety, Dezrez, Jupix, SME Professional and many more).  Please email info@propembed.com if your CRM is not listed and we will do our best to fulfill your requirements.

Do I Need Coding Skills to Embed Property Listings Into a Website?

No coding is required. You simply copy and paste an embed code into your website.

Try PropEmbed

PropEmbed is available to explore today, and you can try the widget builder for free. Head to propembed.com to begin.

The post How to Embed Property Listings into Wix, Webflow, Squarespace or Any Website appeared first on Property Hive For WordPress.

Are you an estate agent looking for a way to list commercial properties such as offices, shops, warehouses, and more? If so, Property Hive is a great option. Our plugin is well known for supporting sales and lettings properties, but we also offer specific support for commercial properties too.

In this article, we’re going to look at how Property Hive can be used to list your commercial properties. We’re going to explore the specific fields we’ve added to Property Hive for commercial listings and how to get started.

Commercial specific features and fields

We understand that commercial properties are marketed differently to residential ones. That’s why we’ve added support for commercial specific fields and features including:

• Floor area and size ranges
• Commercial-specific property types such as warehouse and retail
• A property can be marketed as ‘for sale’ and ‘to let’ at the same time
• Prices can be unit-based, e.g., £12 per sq ft
• List individual sub-units belonging to a property record
• Rent and price can be displayed as a price range
• Allow users to filter and order properties by floor area

How to get started listing commercial properties using the Property Hive Plugin

Using the Property Hive plugin, you can get started with building your WordPress website for your commercial properties right away.

Download the free core plugin and get started by enabling the commercial department in ‘Property Hive > Settings > General’.

Once this department is activated, the options presented to you in Property Hive will reflect those required to manage and display commercial properties.

How to import commercial properties to your WordPress website

It’s easy to import properties from your CRM to WordPress with the Property Hive import feature. With this feature you can import properties from all major CRMs including Kato, Alto, Reapit, 10ninety, Agency Pilot and Street.

It takes just seconds to set up an import, meaning your properties can be quickly displayed on your website. The import process is fully automated, saving you lots of time when managing your commercial properties. What’s more, you can even select the frequency of your imports and access detailed logs following your imports.

Importing properties from your CRM to WordPress will require the import add on. You can test out this feature with a free 7 day trial to see if it’s right for you before you commit.

How to export commercial properties to portals

In addition to importing commercial properties to WordPress, you can also export your properties to portals such as Property Link, Nova Loca, Zoopla, Rightmove and OnTheMarket.

Exporting commercial properties from Property Hive means you can fully automate your exports and manage them all from one place, saving you valuable time. As with imports, it’s quick and easy to set up portal feeds using Property Hive.

Exporting properties from WordPress to the portals will require premium Property Hive features. You can test out these features with a free 7 day trial to see if it’s right for you before you commit.

Sites using Property Hive to list their commercial properties

Justice & Co

Dobbins & Sullivan

If you think Property Hive is the right choice for your commercial website, click below to select the right package for you.

Get Started 

The post How to List Commercial Properties with the Property Hive Plugin appeared first on Property Hive For WordPress.

What are shortcodes?

Shortcodes are a key feature when building a website in WordPress, allowing you to drop in functionality to a custom location on a page. These shortcodes and the associated functionality will most likely come from a third party plugin, allowing users to perform specific actions or embed complex functionalities into posts, pages, or widgets without the need for any coding knowledge.

They are encompassed in square brackets (i.e. [my_shortcode]) and can also have attributes and additional information passed through to them (i.e. [my_shortcode attribute1=”X” attribute2=”Y”]). The name of the shortcode and the attributes it can support will always be dictated and documented by the plugin providing the shortcode.

Shortcodes in Property Hive

In Property Hive we have a range of shortcodes available. These are all documented here and can offer a variety of output; from showing featured properties on your homepage to outputting maps.

Below you’ll find a summary of the shortcodes available in Property Hive:

Output a certain set of properties

Maybe you want to display a list of 10 properties for sale in London. Using our [properties] shortcode you can output a specific set of properties:

[properties department=”residential-sales” posts_per_page=”10″ address_keyword=”London”]

There are a whole host of attributes you can filter on (bedrooms, property type etc). This is particularly useful if you are creating landing pages for popular searches on your site.

View [properties] documentation

Output featured/hot properties

It’s not uncommon to see an agent listing featured properties on their homepage that they want to make stand out. This be achieved like so:

[featured_properties per_page=”3″]

The above would show 3 properties marked as ‘Featured‘ inside Property Hive in a random order. If 5 properties were marked as ‘Featured‘ it would pick 3 at random each time.

To confirm, properties can be marked as featured in Property Hive under the ‘marketing‘ tab of a property record.

If you’re importing properties to WordPress automatically and the agent has set a property as featured in the CRM you’re importing from, this should import into Property Hive accordingly.

View [featured_properties] documentation

Output new/recent properties

Another common sighting on an agents site is a section displaying newly listed properties. This can be achieved using the following:

[recent_properties]

This would output the latest properties that exist in WordPress ordered by the date they were put on the market.

View [recent_properties] documentation

Output similar listings

When viewing a particular property you might want to output properties that are similar to the one in question. Fortunately we have a shortcode for this too:

[similar_properties]

With this in place, properties will be displayed that have the same about of bedrooms and a price 10% either higher or lower than the property being viewed.

View [similar_properties] documentation

Output a property search form

Let’s move away from the properties themselves, and instead to the search forms that allow you to filter the properties. To include the default search form you can simply use:

[property_search_form id=”default”]

Notice that we’re passing an ‘id’ through as an attribute? This is because in Property Hive it’s possible for multiple search forms to exist; maybe you have a simple on the homepage and a more advanced one on the results page. These search forms can be managed using our free Template Assistant feature.

* Link to other search form blog post if published by the  time this one is  *

View [property_search_form] documentation

Output a Google or OpenStreetMap map showing a property’s location

On a property details page it’s easy to display where the property is exactly on a map:

[property_map]

This will use Google Maps or OpenStreetMap depending on which map provider you have opted to use in the Property Hive settings area.

View [property_map] documentation

Output a static Google map showing a property’s location

Similarly to the map shortcode above, we can also output a static Google map which is in essence just a fixed image which then links to Google Maps in a new tab when clicked:

[property_static_map]

By using this approach you can also reduce the number API calls to Google. Great if your site gets lots of hits.

View [property_static_map] documentation

Output a Google Street View showing a property

Sticking with mapping for the moment, you can also output a Google Street View embed showing the property at street level:

[property_street_view]

View [property_street_view] documentation

Output contact details for a property

We all know that the most important CTA (Call To Action) on a property details page is the ‘Make Enquiry / Book Viewing‘ functionality and getting the lead. To aid with this we’ve got a shortcode as follows:

[property_office_details]

The above will output the address, email address and telephone number of the office that the property is assigned to.

View [property_office_details] documentation

Output login and registration forms

If you’re allowing applicants and vendors to login to your site to manage their details, requirements and track any sales going through, we’ve got a bunch of shortcodes to facilitate this as follows:

[applicant_registration_form] – Output a form allowing applicants to register their details and requirements.

[propertyhive_my_account] – Output the user dashboard when logged in

[propertyhive_login_form] – A simple form allowing users to login and access their account area.

For a full list of shortcodes and the attributes they support please head over to our documentation.

Additional shortcodes

Note that the above shortcodes are all part of the core plugin. Pro features and other free add ons developed by ourselves may contain additional shortcodes too. For example, our Map Search feature has a [property_map_search] shortcode available, and our free Mortgage Calculator WordPress plugin can be embedded using the [mortgage_calculator] shortcode. Please check the documentation for the add on in question to see if any shortcodes are available.

The post How to use Property Hive Shortcodes in WordPress appeared first on Property Hive For WordPress.

Why do anything at all?

Before we get into the individual suggestions on how to get your website Christmas-ready, you might be asking why you should do anything at all.

Show you’re on the ball – If someone lands on your property site and finds references to Christmas then your business appears current and active.

It’s your online shop window – Do you have a Christmas tree or tinsel in your high street office window? Then why shouldn’t there be a little Christmas dazzle on your website too?

New beginnings – The Christmas and New Year period is a time where people re-evaluate their lives. They consider changing their jobs, they plot their aims for the upcoming year, and lots of people consider moving house. You might therefore see a spike in traffic so you want your website to be as relevant and ready as possible.

People love Christmas – It’s a simple truth; people love Christmas! Capitalise on this to create a positive and engaging experience for your website visitors.

How can I get my website ready for the festive season?

Add a themed logo – Give your logo a festive makeover by adding elements like holly or other Christmas symbols. It’s a subtle yet effective way to infuse the holiday spirit into your brand.

Update your homepage hero/banner image – Refresh your homepage with a festive-themed hero or banner image. This can instantly capture visitors’ attention.

For some inspiration here’s some agents sites from last year:

Communicate your opening hours – Update your opening hours on your website, as well as any other platforms where this information is listed, such as your Google Business profile. You might also consider sending out a newsletter to applicants and vendors/landlords informing them too.

Write a festive-themed blog post – If you have a blog on your estate agency website why not write a festive/new-year focussed blog. Some examples of blog posts you could write are:

• “Our Christmas opening hours”
• “A look back at 2023”
• “A look forward to 2024”
• “5 reasons to use us to move house in 2024”
• “10 New Year’s resolutions for your home”

Don’t forget social media – Don’t let your social media presence dry up just because you’re not in the office. If you need to you can schedule posts to go out automatically so you don’t need to worry about it.

One more thing…

Please don’t forget to revert it back after Christmas. Make sure you don’t have a Santa hat on your logo in March or you’ll have the opposite effect and look dated!

The post 5 Ways to get your Estate Agency Website Ready for the 2023 Festive Season appeared first on Property Hive For WordPress.

So, how do you actually achieve this engagement? Yes, quality and varied content, providing helpful information and communicating with your customers in a post are all very valid ways of getting your customer interested. But, don’t forget the basics. What your customer doesn’t see is the key to what they do see.

Essentially, it’s all well and good posting occasionally and adding a quirky visual but that’s not going to cut the mustard. Knowing what to post, when to post and how often to post is key to the success of your engagement and that all comes from good planning. Below we discuss our favourite tools and tactics for organised social media management.

Use a content calendar

We’ve been there. You start off with the best of intentions but fall short when the other daily demands of your business get in the way. Especially if you’re a small business, it’s easy to get caught up in the noise of the day to day and push social media down your priority list in favor of reactive, high urgency tasks.

Creating a content calendar that outlines which days you’ll be posting, how frequently, the type of post and on which platforms will allow you to maintain consistency in your presence. You could simply do this in a spreadsheet, or there lots of online tools available to choose from.

We like HubSpot’s downloadable Content Calendar Template. Not only is it free but it’s also fully customisable, encompasses helpful hints and tips and helps you tailor your content for each platform you’re doing content for. Helpfully, HubSpot have also provided their input on other calendars, tools and templates for content planning in their blog: 13 Social Media Calendars, Tools, & Templates to Plan Your Content (hubspot.com)

Use a scheduling tool

So… you know what you’re posting and when. Hooray! Equally important to maintaining consistency in your posting is actually remembering to do it.

This simple task can not only be an easy one to miss but it can actually end up being pretty time consuming. A scheduling tool can give you the ability to link multiple accounts and pre-schedule your posts, meaning that even if you’re out having coffee with a client or taking a few days well earned rest, you don’t need to worry about achieving your planned cadence.

Buffer and JetPack are popular scheduling tools that will also helpfully monitor the engagement of your campaigns. Once you’ve posted, it’s critical to understand what’s resonating with your audience and what isn’t so that you can inform your future content strategy.

Be patient

It can take months, if not years, to grow a page on social media so don’t be disheartened if you don’t start noticing results and interaction with posts right away. Maintain consistency through organisation and planning and get to know your audience.

As much as it’s important to post regularly, be tactical, don’t over post and remember that social media is a two way street. Make sure to comment, like and engage with content other than your own!

The post How to Create a Steady Stream of Content for Social Media Growth appeared first on Property Hive For WordPress.

In this post we’ll be looking at how you, as the property owner or estate agent, can prepare the property in question:

Declutter

This will make the house look more spacious and give the buyer a better idea as to whether they can see themselves living there or not.

Clean home

This is an obvious one but ensure that surfaces are gleaming and walls repainted where necessary. Shut cupboard doors and drawers, hide unnecessary items, ensure toilet seats are down and tv’s are off

Light it up

Turn on all the lights, and open all the windows and doors to let in as much natural light as possible.

Don’t forget about the outside

The outside of a house is often what will be seen first so ensure lawns are cut and gardens deweeded, move any cars out of view, and hide any rubbish bins and kids toys.

Stage your property

Arrange decor to be visually appealing and make it easy for someone to imagine themselves living there. If the property is empty maybe bring in some furniture, or hire a property staging expert to get the most out of the virtual tour.

Remove people and animals

Make the property out of bounds to family and pets whilst the virtual tour is being filmed. If the virtual tour is being talked over whilst being filmed make sure there’s nobody talking the background, no babies crying or dogs barking.

Get ideas from other virtual tours

It doesn’t hurt to spend some time looking at virtual tours of other properties to see what they do well, or not so well, using these for inspiration.

The post Tips on Preparing a Property for a Virtual Tour appeared first on Property Hive For WordPress.

Below we’ll highlight the different ways in which you can add a currency conversion tool to your website:

Use Our Free Template Assistant Add On

We’ve just released version 1.0.46 of our free Template Assistant Add On. As part of this new version you can add a Currency field to your search forms:

This adds the field to the search form like so:

As with all search fields added via this method you can customise where the control sits, as well as the options shown within the dropdown.

Create Your Own Links

If you want the currency links to not be part of the search form, but instead sit elsewhere on the site, you can simply link to your site but pass a ‘currency’ parameter through in the query string. So to display all prices in EUR for example, you could link to the following:

https://your-site.com/?currency=EUR

In doing this all prices will be displayed in EUR throughout. This allows you to output a currency selector anywhere on your site, such as this example we’ve found on MoveAgain:

We’re seeing more agents use Property Hive for overseas properties so hope that this additional functionality makes your WordPress site a more viable tool for finding property.

The post How To Add Currency Conversion To Your Property Website appeared first on Property Hive For WordPress.

The first step is to install our Property Import add on on your WordPress website.

Once installed, you can navigate to ‘Property Hive > Import Properties‘ from the left menu and begin the setup wizard.

The first stage is to setup your new import. Select ‘automatic’ and click ‘Continue’.

Once you’ve progressed you will then be able to choose the format you require from a dropdown. In this case you’ll be selecting ‘Vebra / Alto XML API’. Enter your Vebra Alto username, password and Datafeed ID when prompted. Alto can provide these to you upon request if you’re unsure.

Under additional options you can specify a whole host of advanced options relating to how the imports run, including selecting how regularly you want them to run. This could be every 15 minutes, hourly, twice daily or daily.

The final step is to map custom fields such as availabilities, property types and more. This step allows you to map any values in Vebra Alto to the values you have setup in Property Hive.

Once this final step is completed your import will run automatically going forward and any changes to properties made in Vebra Alto should be reflected in Property Hive as soon as the next import runs.

Another great feature of this add on is the logs which allow you to see exactly what happened every time an import ran, including the date and time, how many properties were imported, how many items of media were imported per property, as well as any errors that occurred as it ran:

To get the most out of the Property Import add on, you can purchase our annual license key which gives you access to all the latest updates and priority support.

For additional information on setting up your import or to debug issues with existing imports you can take a look at our documentation page.

Buy Property Import add on

The post How To Import Properties From Vebra Alto to WordPress appeared first on Property Hive For WordPress.

We’re going to show you how you can keep your estate agency website up to date and functioning with this ‘how to’ guide.

What Are WordPress Updates?

For many WordPress users, there will be three elements that you need to focus on with your updates. These are;

• The core WordPress software
• Any plugins you have installed
• Any themes you might be using

With core updates, usually these are broken down into major releases – typically introducing new features or big changes and minor releases – these normally contain security and big fixes. For minor releases, we recommend updating these as soon as possible as they often deal with security and fixes. For major releases, you can wait before applying these if they contain a new feature without affecting the security of your site. Of course it’s always important to check what the available updates contain so you can make a decision as to whether you should go ahead with applying these.

For some users, updates are automatically applied. Since WordPress 3.7, the default setting is to automatically apply updates for minor core releases so this should do it for you. You will need to check your settings to ensure that this is enabled.

What About Property Hive Updates?

There are a few elements to our own updates. We too have major and minor releases. The most important update is that of our core plugin ‘Property Hive’. These will include new features, bug fixes and improvements to existing functionality.

We also regularly roll out updates to our free and premium add ons, which are also found in the ‘Plugins’ area within WordPress. Usually updates to these will contain improvements, updates and sometimes new features too. If you are using our premium add ons, you will need a license key to update to the latest version of these.

How To Prepare For Updates

Usually you can apply your updates to the core WordPress software, themes and plugins you’re using with no issues. But there is always a chance that things can go wrong. For example, when updating to a new version of WordPress, you may find some compatibility issues with plugins you are also using on your site. It’s not always the case, but it can happen.

To prevent this, you should always backup your estate agency website before applying updates. There are many plugins available to help you create a backup of your site. Many of our users use plugins such as UpdraftPlus, BackupBuddy or Jetpack Backup, Alternatively, for the more tech savvy, you can take a copy of your website files via FTP and also download a copy of the latest database files if you have access.

How To Apply Updates

Once you’ve backed up and are ready to update, this is the super easy part.  There are a few ways to update WordPress plugins. You can navigate to the dashboard link on the left hand side of your menu and go to “Updates”. This will show you both core WordPress updates as well as any updates available for plugins. You can also go to “Plugins” on the left and click on “Update Available”, this will then show you all of the plugins you have installed that have new updates.

You should see a screen similar to this;

You can then choose to “update now” or look at the release notes available. For plugins, it will also show you the compatibility with the version of WordPress you are running, which should assist you in making a judgement as to whether or not you want to apply updates there and then. If there has been a new WordPress version released, some of your plugins may not have declared compatibility, so in this instance it may be wise to wait a little while before applying updates to these until they show “100% compatibility” with the WordPress version you are running on your website.

To summarise, keeping your estate agency website updated by applying the latest WordPress releases alongside any new updates from your installed plugins, will keep your site secure and functioning to an optimum level and should be something you should be scheduling in to check on a regular basis.

If you’re interested in more “How To” posts and relevant articles about Property Hive, follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn or signup to our mailing list in the form below.

The post How To: Update Your Property Hive WordPress Plugins appeared first on Property Hive For WordPress.

With more and more estate agents making the switch to Property Hive as their chosen estate agency CRM we wanted to demonstrate how migrating your data across is possible.

As part of our dedicated Data Migration Service we can perform migrations from all of the leading estate agent CRM software providers such as Jupix, Reapit, ExpertAgent, Vebra Alto, Dezrez and many more. The only thing we need to be able to do this is access to the data in CSV format and we handle the rest.

For those of you that are a bit more hands on we’re going to show you just how easy it is to migrate your own data into Property Hive.

To start you’ll need to purchase our Data Import And Migration Add On.

Once you’ve installed and activated the add on you will need to navigate to ‘Property Hive > Data Import’ from the WordPress menu.

From there you will be given the option to upload CSV files containing everything from applicants to sales.

When you have uploaded your CSV file you will be taken through a step-by-step wizard where you’ll be able to choose the fields you have present in the CSV and map these to the relevant Property Hive fields.

Once your CSV data is imported and you’ve mapped your fields correctly then you’re all done!

Did you know you can also sign up to our mailing list below to keep up to date with new products, services and updates that are available?

The post How To: Migrate Your Data To Property Hive appeared first on Property Hive For WordPress.