TOPS Home E-Zine
Issue #18 - August 2003
August 2003: Inside TOPS Home
1)
Welcome to TOPS Home!
2)
Reap the Benefits
3)
The Bottom Line
4)
New Knowledge Base Items
5)
New Features on Your Site(s)
6)
Gauging Community Opinions
7)
T.W. Finnerty
8)
Real Estate Listings
9)
5 More Revenue Generating Ideas
Welcome back to TOPS Home, the web site e-mail magazine (e-zine) for the TOPS Community Web Site Service. Once again, we filled this e-zine to overflowing with interesting and useful information covering many different aspects of the TOPS Community Web Site service! Enjoy your reading, and if you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us. We look forward to speaking with you!
TOPS Web Sales: (800) 556-7852 WebSales@topssoft.com.
TOPS Web Support (800) 899-5689 WebSupport@topssoft.com.How to reap the benefits of TOPS Community Web Sites
I'm sure we have all heard the saying that you only get out of a project what you are willing to put into it. The same principle is true for your TOPS Web Sites. When we sold you your web site, we told you that you could use the site to produce three key benefits:
- Save Time
- Make Money
- Retain Clients
These three benefits still stand, and every new feature and change we make to the web sites is specifically intended to answer one of these benefits. Therefore, I want to take this opportunity to show you exactly how you can take full advantage of your TOPS Web Sites, and experience these three key benefits for yourself.
Save Time by reducing phone calls from owners
This is by far the easiest benefit to achieve, as TOPS does most of the work for you. The first order of business is to get web sites up for the communities you manage. If you stop at a Management Company site, you are eliminating most of the timesaving abilities of the service. Assuming you have already taken this step, you need to make sure that you set up your data uploads on a regular schedule--at least once a week if not daily. Take advantage of the built-in scheduling to have your systems perform this step automatically. You will also need to educate your residents about this resource. Send an email bulletin once a month to let residents know that accounts have been updated. Be sure to include the login and password information (there is a checkbox at the bottom of the email bulletin creation screen) so that residents will easily be able to access the site.
Make Money through online Advertising
Online advertising has gotten a bad reputation due to the crash of thousands of dot com businesses relying on advertising revenues. However, your livelihood does not rely on this income, and you have an advantage over these companies. You already have a ready-made group of advertisers in your community vendors. These vendors (particularly global vendors) receive a lot of business from you, making them only too willing to spend $10 or $20 per month advertising on your community web sites. The vendors receive the added benefit of a targeted audience. You can present specific information about the readers of their ads, including location and approximate household income (based on the value of the homes in your community). It takes only a little extra work on your part to send a letter to your vendors, but it can generate a lot of additional income for your company. See the downloads section of our web site for some sample documents that you can customize and send to your vendors.
Retain Clients by binding communities closer to your company
This benefit may be the hardest to achieve, but it is also the most rewarding. In our experience, it is the communities with the most active community web sites that are the closest to their management companies. The secret is to involve the residents in the community web site. The single best way to do this is to find a volunteer resident within the community that is willing to act as the community web site administrator. This person should have administrative rights to add, edit and delete most content on the site, taking that burden off the community manager. Other successful methods include exclusive online content, including newsletters, legal documents, bulletin board, and financial reports, and online promotions, such as a 'Yard of the Month' contest. Of course none of these methods will be successful if your owners are not aware of your community web site. We have included some examples of ways you can inform owners of your community web site in this month's Support Tips.
If you would like to reap these benefits for your communities, contact Susan Sanders at 1-800-556-7852 or websales@topshome.com.
The Bottom Line
This month, we have created a flier in MS Word that you can customize, print out, and distribute to community officers at board meetings. The flier, called "The Bottom Line". is a simple, easy to understand handout that spells out features that will save time and money for the community. This handout speaks to the accountant in every board member. It is located under the downloads section of our web site: www.TOPSHome.com/topshome/Administrators/downloads.htm
New Knowledge Base Items
In the last two months we have added more than 35 new topics to the TOPS Home Knowledge Base. If you haven't been to our web site in a while, you really should check it out: www.topshome.com. The knowledge base is located under the Administrators tab, which also contains all sorts of useful features including sample customizable documents, help manuals, eforms, archived issues of the TOPS Home Ezine, and more!
New Features on Your Community Web Sites
- Enabled each event in the "Events for a particular day" screen to act as a hyperlink to more details for that particular event.
- Made list box in Feature Text edit longer for less scrolling.
- Added sorting feature on 12-month history page.
- When data is uploaded to a site, the system will now automatically create a zipped backup of previous data to assist in troubleshooting and correcting data load errors.
- Debugging info for orphaned person/login records is now automatically sent via email to TOPS web support for further investigation.
Gauging Community Opinion with the Surveys Feature
This month's feature teacher will introduce you to a very helpful tool, the Surveys feature. The Surveys feature is a polling device that lets you describe a question or survey, and set up multiple choices that residents can vote on. As votes are submitted, the results will be displayed in a bar graph that shows how many votes each option has received. Here's how it works:
You can have between 2-8 choices for each survey. An example survey might look like this:
Survey (No Vote By This Owner)
Survey Results (Owner Has Voted)
When a resident goes to a survey that they have not yet participated in, it will display the options as links. When they click on the option they want to vote for, it will submit their vote for that survey and also flag the survey that they have already voted for this survey. Each login record in the web site (including the administrator) is only allowed to vote once for each survey, and a vote cannot be edited once it is submitted. The next time they visit that page, the options will display as bar graphs that show how many people have voted for each option. This aspect of the Surveys feature is useful in that it prevents residents from submitting their vote over and over again to boost their choice in the survey.
Surveys have been used to gather a variety of information on community opinions. A few of its uses have been deciding on the best date/time for special events, getting opinions on constructions and renovations, and finding out what residents feel are their top priorities in the community. Many associations would not allow the surveys to be used for official voting, but it is very useful as a guide to community opinions.
Each survey will act like one multiple-choice question, so be sure to fully describe the question in each survey. If you add a follow-up question in a separate survey, make sure to fully describe the previous situation so as to avoid confusion to the person taking the survey.
These surveys are meant to be quantitative, not qualitative. A computer program can easily display the number of votes cast for a particular option, but evaluating freehand user input is more complicated. This is where it can be useful to pair up the surveys with an eForm. If you create an eForm that users can submit to give additional information on a survey, you can get additional information that helps you to setup future eForms. You can even create a link on the survey that links to the eForm, allowing users to submit the eForm while the topic is still fresh in their minds. For more information on how to create this eForm and a link to it, contact websupport@topssoft.com.
T.W. Finnerty Property Management, Inc.
T.W. Finnerty's web site, www.twfinnerty.com, recently underwent a major design overhaul, complete with some custom flash work. I asked the principal, Tom Finnerty to share with us what has made his company a success:
T. W. Finnerty Property Management, Inc. was established in 1994. Over the years we comprised a client register of over 35 condominium and homeowners associations. Our success in the property management business can be attributed to the utilization of TOPS Software. This program has enabled us to organize every aspect of management, i.e., bank accounts, receivables, late charges, payables, budgets, vendor histories, covenant restriction letters, letters, notes, service requests, pool passes, etc. into one computer program - TOPS 2000™. This is the only management program that grows with the client and enables management to limit the cost of overhead expenses.
Since we purchased it in February of 2001, we have been very happy with the web site service. The community web sites provide homeowners with the ability to query their accounts, work orders, meeting dates, etc. Owners can post notices i.e. garage sales, etc. The board can also review the complete financial status for the association - bank accounts, balance sheet, profit and loss, check register, etc. All of these features make the web sites very useful to us and our clients.
In conclusion, I feel that every association and management company must include TOPS Software to the list of things to review if they intend to keep on the cutting edge of the business.
Get in The Spotlight!
Would you like your company to be profiled in the TOPS Home Ezine? Send us a two or three paragraph email. Be sure to include a description of your company or community, tell us what led you to getting a TOPS Community Web Site, and let us know what features you like best. Send your spotlight to websupport@topssoft.com.
Homes For Sale/Lease and Lots for Sale
This month's tutorial article deals with three closely related features: Homes for Sale, Homes for Lease, and Homesites(Lots) for Sale. All three of them are real estate listing tools and function in a similar way. So similar, in fact, that Homes for Sale and Lots for Sale are both pulled from the same list! This might sound a little confusing, but read on for more information.
When you click on Homes for Sale, it will display any built homes that are for sale. If you click on Add, Edit, Delete Homes for Sale though, it will list both the built homes and the empty lots that are for sale. If you edit any of the homes/lots for sale, you will notice a field labeled 'Empty Lot?' that is a checkmark box. This box is a flag that is the only difference between a home for sale and a lot for sale. However, since they are still listed in the menu as two separate features, they do have different feature descriptions.
The fields in all three of these features are very similar. Homes for Lease works in a similar manor to Homes for Sale. The only differences are that the Asking Price field is renamed Monthly Cost, and the Lot Size and Lot Number fields do not appear. There are several standard real estate fields to fill out. Notice that when a resident goes to any of these features and wants to add something themselves, it automatically fills in the address of that resident's account. If an owner owns more than one property, then they would have to login with the login information that is associated with each property. If a real estate professional wants to add a listing or a resident wants to list a property besides their own, they would have to submit an eForm to the web site administrator requesting that their listing be posted. Most new community web sites come with this eForm already setup. This is a great way to generate additional revenue for your community or management company! Simply charge a monthly fee for every real estate listing that gets added here.
Although residents cannot change their address when they list their property, they can add photos, give robust descriptions, and even limit how long the listing is posted. The last field listed is the date to automatically remove the listing from the site. Administrators can add, edit, or delete any listings they want, so they can maintain control over which listings are posted. For more information on any of these real estate modules, contact websupport@topssoft.com
Five More Revenue Generating Tips
- Offer to design an e-form for them.
Create a form such as 'Apply for a Loan Consolidation, and save money!' This would be stored under e-forms, and be sent directly to the vendor, or through you TO the vendor. The form could be as simple or complex as you and the vendor want to make it, from name and address to salaries and more. Charge an initial setup fee to design the form, and then a monthly fee to keep the form on the site.- Offer advertising through the e-mail bulletins feature.
With this feature, residents sign themselves up to receive an e-mail whenever something new occurs. Bulletins might include community events, information for facility members (golf course, or swimming pool) or even a community newsletter. The great thing about this option is that you can sell ads that are supremely targeted - A lawn care company might place an ad in the golf e-bulletin to entice people to let them do the yard work while the owners play golf. This is a great hook for the vendors, and good content for the members of your community at the same time!- Use Announcements to Advertise.
Create an announcements category like "Special Offers" or "Contests and Giveaways" and populate it with appropriate ads. Look for this as an up-sell or added value for advertisers that might have a coupon, special offer or contest on their Web sites.- Use Advertiser Content.
Offer advertisers with their own useful content the opportunity to infuse it, appropriately, with your own content on your site. In the documents section, for instance, you might upload a document informing residents of the dangers of chemical lawn treatment, which could have been written by your lawn care vendor.- Use the surveys section to feature an advertiser.
For example, infuse a client's product into one of the responses on a web site poll.Did you know that TOPS Software will provide you with a free
community web site CD demo? Follow this link to apply for your free demo today!
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About the Authors
Susan Sanders is your Community Web Site Sales Representative
Brandon Kelley is your TOPS Community Web Site Support Representative
Andrea Master-Drennen is the Internet Services Manager at TOPS Software
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websales@topshome.com
1-800-556-7852
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