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My initial, very positive review is for WebsiteBox's Legacy (former) Sites. However, because WebsiteBox does not yet offer iFrames (embedded content) on its New System Sites, we have not upgraded to the New System with the much more attractive edge-to-edge page headers/images.
From an SEO point of view, you should strongly consider buying WebsiteBox's $99 SEO Tool and $99 Blog Gadget. Together, with a modicum of time, effort and common sense, you can achieve shockingly high Google Rankings like we have done (essentially for FREE) on our website at www.MacLW.com. While we get high Google rankings for a number of key search terms, we still struggle, like everyone else, to convert "eyeballs-to-calls".
Our website is too wordy (text-heavy) and now looks long in the tooth because it's not an edge-to-edge site like WebsiteBox's New System Sites. We're having to wait to upgrade.
As for the IDX Integration Issues that I see other Brokers and Sales Agents complain about, I cannot really comment. We are 100% Commercial Tenant Reps and so we don't use a Local Residential MLS Property Database. We use a National Property Data Feed by 42Floors, which we integrate with a simple iFrame into our Search The Market page at http://MacLW.com/Search-the-Market. It works fine on a WebsiteBox Legacy Website. But it's one of the reasons that we cannot upgrade yet to a WebsiteBox New System Site.
In general, if you're willing to be patient, do some things yourself, with reasonable counsel from WebsiteBox's Team, and use their self-help/Support Tools, then you can accomplish a lot and gradually climb the Google rankings in your Home Market.
You'll read a mixed bag on-line about WebsiteBox.com's websites and blogs. But we think WebsiteBox is super, if you're willing to be patient and figure out ways to work within their template system. And you can still accomplish a whole lot by being reasonable with WebsiteBox.com's Support Team. Just be clear, explain what you need and why and stick with it. They will bust their butts trying to help you. I have received great service from Mark, Jonah, Jade and Travis.
What's all the complaining by some WebsiteBox.com customers about nickel & dime charges?
For $252 USD, we got a "responsive" Website Template, a great Blog Gadget and an SEO Tool. Sure we had to do a lot of work to make things work successfully for our Commercial Tenant / Buyer Representation company; we are not Residential Brokers.
But with an outside Web Design Firm, we could have paid $3,000 to $4,000 (or more) for the same thing and we still would have had to spend a considerable amount of our own time during the development process.
But now we 100% control our own website and blog, which is a HUGE benefit. We make changes, add new pages and new features whenever we want; not waiting weeks for an outside Web Designer to get to our large or tiny improvement projects.
After only six months, Google started ranking our website in the Top Ten natural search results on Page #1 for certain key search terms for our business, like "Denver tenant broker" and "Boulder tenant rep," without the quotation marks. I'm no expert but WebsiteBox websites seem to have a certain amount of SEO built-in. Still, I'm very glad that we bought their easy-to-use SEO Tool.
In my opinion, Our Blog is probably the strongest feature of our website, with great blog-sharing tools using the ShareThis App.
If you use lots of PDF files on your website, which we do, for example, our Market Reports, then, you should know that WebsiteBox cannot display them to your Web Readers in Preview Mode. As a result, we tried Dropbox Pro ($99/year), which can display PDF files in Preview Mode. However, we eventually switched to using Google Drive to display our PDF files, as Google Drive requires less clicks by your Web Readers, has a simpler interface for your Web Readers and loads documents in Preview Mode waaaay faster. Take a look for yourself on our Market Reports page at http://www.MacLW.com/market-reports
So our amazing results with WebsiteBox.com speak very loudly for themselves. You just have to do your part, too.
For the record, I note again that we are Commercial Tenant / Buyer Reps and we don't use a number of WebsiteBox.com's features available to Residential Brokers, including integration of an MLS, Community Page and other kool bells 'n whistles.
If interested, you can view our WebsiteBox.com site and Our Blog at http://www.MacLW.com and/or http://www.MacLW.com/our-blog
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