Ten Things You Should Know About the New WRA Website
Date: March 8, 2011
Welcome to the new WRA website, complete with better organization, more intuitive design and easier access to the features you need most. Here are some tips on the new website.
Main Home Page Enhancements
The new website offers a fresh, new look with bolder, brighter colors; a cleaner design; and more intuitive graphics. The completely redesigned homepage includes a series of rotating banner ads showcasing upcoming events and courses as well as a hot spot bar for accessing the most popular destinations on the website. Hot spots allow you to get to the content you want fast and without the need to sift through multiple pages. You will also find quick links to top events, industry news, videos, upcoming courses, consumer resources, career information and the WRA’s social communities.
Powerful Searching
An improved WRA search tool at the top of every page provides a stronger indexing engine allowing you to drill into content faster and with more accuracy. Two enhancements include limiters and an advanced search option. Limiters allow your search to be refined by media type to designate whether you want to search Web pages, documents or even images. An advanced search option includes search filters and Boolean search logic so you can fine tune your search criteria with a high level of precision.
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Find a REALTOR® Auto-Complete Suggestions
The WRA still maintains the largest REALTOR® referral database in the state. The newly-updated Find a REALTOR® search gives you additional help when trying to find referral contacts. Simply type in a few characters of a first name, last name, company name or city and WRA.org will suggest close matches. When the search results appear, you can designate how many matches you want in your list and sort your results by last name or company name.
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More Robust Handling of Housing Statistics
The new housing reports include state and regional data in addition to county data, so it is easier than ever to perform comparisons of your local market against larger geographies. Reports dating back to 2007 allow you see market performance over time and perform detailed trend analysis. In the near future, you will also be able to download housing reports directly to Excel and JPEG formats for use in other documents.
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Wisconsin Real Estate Magazine – All News Under One Umbrella
Formerly published under a separate microsite, Wisconsin Real Estate Magazine and its seven years of back issues are now published and available on the main association website. Here you will find the magazine published alongside other news publications, such as the Legal Update, Appraisal Newsletter, RealTrends, press releases, videos, home sales reports, RSS feeds and more.
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myWRA Improvements
myWRA has been reorganized and streamlined to make accessing and updating your account information easier than ever. A new profile options page allows you to update your profile – contact information, password, mailing address, e-mail subscriptions and virtual business card information – all in one location. Your education history, certificates of completion and on demand education is also available in one place under myEducation. Easy access to your WRA contacts is also available for quick reference.
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Easy Log In and Password Recovery
The WRA’s login area remains at the top of every page. If you forget your username or password, simply click ‘help’ and follow the onscreen instructions. Your credentials will be emailed to you. Once you are logged in to the website, you will have access to the members-only section where you will be able to update your profile, register for courses, access special pricing and download publications.
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Sales and Marketing Tools At-a-Glance
Sales and Marketing tools were scattered all over the old WRA website leaving many members wondering how to access them. The new website centralizes all of these tools in one location. You will now be able to see all of them at once as a list of downloadable set of links. Maybe, you’ll even discover something you didn’t know was there.
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Follow the Path Gets You Back Again
Think of Hansel and Gretel’s trail of breakcrumbs when visualizing the new website structure. A path indicating where you are and how you got there is at the top of every page so you can easily find the information again.
Simplified Legal Section
The WRA’s legal section contains 100s of pages of legal information, publications and reference materials. In simplifying the section, the WRA’s Legal Updates and Legal Update videos for a given year are now conveniently listed on one main page. This allows you to access content with fewer clicks. What’s more, articles published in the Wisconsin Real Estate Magazine are cross-referenced in the global navigation. Simply click “Legal News Articles” under the Legal tab to get instant access to the latest articles from the WRA’s legal team.
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Shopping Made Easier
The website’s overall shopping experience was improved to make the process more intuitive for visitors. For example, now you can view your entire shopping cart from anywhere on the website without having to checkout. Additionally, when you add an item to the shopping cart, a pop-up screen appears showing the item, the quantity ordered and a picture of the item when available. Quantities can also be adjusted directly from the cart, such as with forms, making checkout smoother and more streamlined.
Let Us Know What You Think
These are just a few of the exciting changes you will see on the new WRA website and more features are yet to come. Also, check out the Wisconsin Real Estate Magazine and the WRA’s Facebook Fan Page for more tips and tricks about the new website. If you have suggestions or requests related to the new WRA.org, please do not hesitate to let us know.