{"id":330,"date":"2010-07-28T13:16:56","date_gmt":"2010-07-28T21:16:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.managemyproperty.com\/blog\/?p=330"},"modified":"2010-07-28T13:16:56","modified_gmt":"2010-07-28T21:16:56","slug":"can-rental-listing-sites-compete-with-craigslist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.managemyproperty.com\/blog\/2010\/07\/can-rental-listing-sites-compete-with-craigslist\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Rental Listing Sites Compete with Craigslist?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Our recent <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.managemyproperty.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/top-rental-sites-seo-rankings-report\/\">rental listing site report<\/a> underscored the fact that Craigslist commands a strong presence in the search engines when potential tenants search for rental property.  This, in addition to Craigslist&#8217;s large and loyal userbase, has arguably made it the most widely used &#8220;rental&#8221; site on the web.  <\/p>\n<p>Dave Dugdale, founder of <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rentvine.com\">Rentvine.com<\/a>, recently posted a <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rentvine.com\/blog\/index.php\/how-compete-craigslist\/\">great interview with David Borden<\/a> discussing the challenges and opportunities presented by Craigslist to the rental listing industry.  (Click through to <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rentvine.com\/blog\/index.php\/how-compete-craigslist\/\">see the video<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>I see three important takeaways from this for owners of rental sites:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>User experience is key, and it really shouldn&#8217;t be difficult for a specialized site to do a better job.  However, remember that Craigslist has two native advantages: tons of content, which users want to see, and a very simple, completely familiar interface that everyone already knows how to use.  So, user experience should not be confused with simply having more features, your site also needs to be <strong>really<\/strong> intuitive.<\/li>\n<li>Rental scams still abound on Craigslist, and if a rental site does a better job of shutting down this activity, it could be an important selling point for users.<\/li>\n<li>Because Craigslist does not allow companies to competitively differentiate their listings, the shelf-life of a rental listing is very low.  There is money to be made in allowing companies to compete.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our recent rental listing site report underscored the fact that Craigslist commands a strong presence in the search engines when potential tenants search for rental property. This, in addition to Craigslist&#8217;s large and loyal userbase, has arguably made it the most widely used &#8220;rental&#8221; site on the web. Dave Dugdale, founder of Rentvine.com, recently posted [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.managemyproperty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.managemyproperty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.managemyproperty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.managemyproperty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.managemyproperty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.managemyproperty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":333,"href":"https:\/\/www.managemyproperty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions\/333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.managemyproperty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.managemyproperty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.managemyproperty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}