Real estate India - Brokers - Kolkata - NK Realtors vs. Pioneer Property Management. We test their online selling skills!

The NK Realtors Homepage

The Pioneer Property Homepage

Hello there. When it comes to real estate selling, brokers are doing everything they can to woo the customer, give out information and close sales. We, at Indian Real Estate for Dummies decided to start this new section on testing selling skills of Indian real estate brokers. The first of these weekly tests is between two large and famous brokers that started operations in Kolkata. You can see their familiar logos almost everywhere now and they are well known brands. But how do they perform when it comes to the real thing? We put them face to face and tested their online selling skills. Since we are a website and most of our activities are going to be online, we structured the test to be a valuation of how they perform in the dot com world!

The Homepage: The NK Realtors homepage is neat. White background, clear text and images, a couple of project highlights and a search box. As a buyer landing on this page and moving ahead from there is intuitive. The dark text on white background makes reading effortless for elderly folks. Overall the NK Realtors website has a matured and business like to feel it.

Pioneer Property Management need to get the look and feel of the landing page sorted out. The colour selection is childish and so are the icons, mooched off one of the free icons websites and pasted there. Creativity of the designer is at a minimum. There is no search box on the landing page and you have to look around to find it. We did after clicking on the residential link. Guys at Pioneer, change your web design pronto. Make it simpler. And for God's sake, remove the SEO tags! It makes the site look cheap and it also confuses the web crawler about what you really want to say. It brings down your search engine ranking. Use 2 keywords. Change your SEO consultant.

NK Realtors: Our search result page right from the homepage

Pioneer: The Search Page and Results returned

The Search: The search parameters were decided by us from the start. We were looking for a Residential Property, 4 BHK, in upmarket Alipore of Kolkata in the budget range of INR 2 to 3 crores.

NK Realtors have their search tool spot on. Their area divisions are locality wise and they have a drop down menu for budget and number of bedrooms. This setting made us (or the buyer browsing) feel at home instantly. We selected Alipore - INR 2 to 3 crores - 4 BHK and the result showed one property, links to get all details and a very neat active location map. Ten on ten to you NK, for being so user friendly.

Pioneer has a more general search tool. You can choose the zone in Kolkata (North or East or some of those. So if I am moving to Kolkata or I am an NRI, I could be left scratching my head and calling my friends in Kolkata to find out which is what.) Also, a second project search box and a keyword search make searching a little more confusing. At the Pioneer search box, we could only choose Kolkata as the city and South as the Zone. A list of all projects in the area showed up in the results. We chose one in Alipore. The search tool at NK Realtors is the way to go. There are no two ways about that!

NK Realtors: Online request for E Brochure

Pioneer Property: Online Enquiry Form

Requesting Information on the selected project from the Search Results: At the NK Realtors site, we clicked the request an e- brochure link and a little form popped up. We typed in the necessary information and the form minimized with a 'thank you' note. The search tool remained on the right hand side of the page and you could use that to make a new search or modify your search using nice filters which show up below the results of your search. The website returns a very solid feel. Quite as refined as searching for an airline ticket online.

The Pioneer Property website had a similar, neat form which we filled out and submitted. There was no acknowledgement of the submission. The screen just went blank. And a black, blank screen is a pretty sad sight. Our search parameters were nowhere to be found. Also, as you can see, half the links on the left hand side of the page, giving critical project information were not working. They were just texts with no linked url. It does not make you look very thorough Pioneer. Please take a look at that part as well. Also, when a customer is turning himself into a lead by making that enquiry, he deserves a small 'thank you' :)

NK Realtors: The prompt reply with the e- brochure attached

Pioneer Property: The blank screen after we hit submit

The final result: We received an email from Sumana at NK Realtors in 18 minutes flat! That is quite impressive. The email had a small 'thank you' note and an e- brochure attached to it. The brochure was no professionally designed genius but it had all the necessary information like flat sizes, specs etc. Please note NK, that if I am buying an INR 3 crore home from you, I would expect a neater and more attractive e- brochure. But, kudos to your team and processes to have that information reached to us in 18 minutes.

The last thing we saw from Pioneer was that blank, dark screen. Its been a few hours since we submitted that form and we have not received anything yet. When we hear from them, we will update this post with the turn around time that Pioneer took to deliver that information we requested.

Verdict: This is the easy part. At the onset of the test, we thought it would be a close one. But NK had an edge at every step. You need no rocket science to judge that NK Realtors, currently, are the better online sellers. Developers who are creating projects aimed at the tech savvy customer, need not look beyond NK Realtors for now. Is anyone at Pioneer Property Management listening?

Do leave a comment or a request for a similar test between your favourite brokers. We would love to flag off some more!

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