John L. Scott Real Estate (JLS) is delivering a unique social networking solution, called JLSconnect, that makes it easier for buyers to shop for a home and it will help JLS agents win new business and keep customers.  By building this new solution using Microsoft software and a Software+Services approach, John L. Scott was able to deliver unique customer value quickly and cost-effectively.  The company has easily repackaged existing Web functionality, combined it with new capabilities provided by Microsoft Live Services, and delivered it all through a user experience powered by Silverlight and optimized for the task at hand: collaborating with family, friends, and a John L. Scott agent when shopping for a home.

In previous posts [1][2][3], I’ve talked about real examples of S+S and how this new and emerging pattern of computing is helping businesses to meet demands, to support customers in new ways, and to differentiate themselves from the competition.

A History of Innovation

The JLS Web site receives more than one million visitors and produces more than nine million listing views each month, and was one of the first real estate sites to use the Microsoft Virtual Earth service to provide rich online mapping capabilities. 

“We’re an early adopter of new technology because it enables us to meet new customer needs,” says Pat Giles, Vice President of Marketing and IT at John L. Scott. “Fifteen years ago, potential home buyers first found an agent, who then used a printed copy of the Multiple Listing Service book to help them find a home. Today, the average home buyer goes online to look at homes before ever talking with an agent. Given that customers today expect to be able to go to our Web site and get all the information they need, the challenge we face is ‘How do we exceed those expectations?’”

This leads the discussion to what John L. Scott Real Estate is doing with JLSconnect, a new offering that facilitates social networking during the home shopping process. 

Ideas around JLSconnect began in mid-2008 when John L. Scott began looking at how to improve online collaboration when buyers are searching for a home.  “Purchasing a home is a social, collaborative event that often involves more than two people,” says Giles.  “For example, the main person an agent is working with may want to share properties and get input from his or her spouse, other family members, and so on.  Given that 44 percent of buyers already use social networking tools, and that online behavior in general is continuing to move that way, we knew that we had to support the trend.”  Additionally, JLS wanted to do so in a way that would make their Web site ‘stickier’ and capture buyers earlier in the home-search process, thereby benefiting their agents.

JLSconnect uses a Silverlight client to combine existing Web site features and several Live Services into an integrated collaboration experience.

The Solution

John L. Scott is leveraging Microsoft cloud services to encourage buyers to collaborate directly with friends, family, and agents on the company’s main Web site, which provides increased convenience for all parties while helping the company and its agents further differentiate themselves from the competition. JLSconnect, uses a software-plus-services approach in which software running on user desktops integrates with centralized, Web-based services hosted by John L. Scott and Microsoft to provide entirely new capabilities through a combination of existing, familiar tools.

This might a good point to backup slightly and to talk about the Azure Services Platform, of which Live Services is one of a growing number of building block components contained therein.

Live Services is highlighted in red as one of the major components of the cloud platform.  The other components are out of scope to this post, so (for now) I will concentrate on the Live Services and those constituent building blocks used in JLSconnect.

The solution uses Microsoft Silverlight to enrich the collaboration experience provided by the company’s existing Web site, pulling together preexisting Web site features—the ability for individuals to log in and save “favorite” properties—with new functionality that makes it possible for people to easily share and exchange comments on those properties with others. 

The Live Services that JLSconnect takes advantage of include:

• Windows Live ID, a hosted cloud service which provides single sign-on capabilities across the company’s Web site and growing ecosystem of Live Services by allowing users to login to the John L. Scott Web site using the same online ID that they use for Messenger and other Live services.

• Windows Live Contacts, a service that contains ‘contacts’ for every user identified by a Live ID.  Live Contacts offers a foundation to social networking activities because it all starts with the ability to identify and track friends and family, namely—your contacts.

• Windows Live Messenger, a client and hosted chat service, which users can launch from within the Silverlight client to chat with others (your Live Contacts) in real time.

• Windows Live Presence, a service which enables users to see which of their Messenger contacts are online and available to chat.

• Microsoft Virtual Earth, a service which enables users to easily visualize the locations of their favorite properties in a rich online map.

“A software-plus-services approach helped us to take existing features of our Web site, add collaboration and single sign-on capabilities to cloud services, and deliver all that functionality through a new and exciting user experience,” says Giles.

Work on the project began in June 2008, when John L. Scott began speaking with a local Microsoft field evangelist about how it could allow users to sign in to the company’s Web site—and thus take advantage of existing features like favorites lists—using a Windows Live ID rather than a separate user name and password. “As we started to educate ourselves on the possibilities, we realized that also integrating with Windows Live Messenger would be fairly easy—and that it would give us a lot bigger return in terms of business value,” says Giles.

Development and Architecture

Having minimal hands-on experience with some of the technologies it wanted to use, JLS enlisted the aid of SharpLogic and nsquared Solutions, Microsoft Certified Partners with proven expertise in Silverlight and Live services. “By assembling a team consisting of both our own developers and Microsoft partners, we were able to accelerate solution development and quickly bring our own people up-to-speed,” says Giles. “We now have new technology skills that we can apply to other projects as well.”

After a few meetings to discuss the envisioned solution, the project team began development. A designer used Microsoft Expression Design software to come up with a compelling user experience, while developers used Microsoft Expression Blend and the Visual Studio 2008 Professional development system to build the Silverlight client in which that user experience would reside.  Other developers began working on what would need to happen behind the scenes—such as which new Web services John L. Scott would need to expose, and how to associate Windows Live IDs with existing Web site user names and passwords.

“By using the Expression and Visual Studio 2008 tools, both of which are based on Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML), the team’s designer and developers were able to easily share projects, code, and UI designs—the end result being an improved ability to deliver the desired user experience,” says Giles.

The following high-level architecture diagram depicts the major building block components of the application and how the software-plus-services vision from Microsoft comes into play:

The high-level architecture of JLSconnect and how it enables S+S.

The JLSconnect experience is powered by Silverlight 2.0, which enables it to provide interactivity to the HTML markup. The Silverlight application uses the Live Presence service to show which other users are online, the Live Messenger client running on user desktops for online chat, and the Messenger service hosted by Microsoft to deliver those messages. Web services at the John L. Scott data center that the Silverlight client calls are based on .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF).

Compelling User Experience

With its new collaboration solution, John L. Scott is providing increased customer value during the process of shopping for a home. Users can log in to the realtor’s Web site using their Windows Live ID, save homes they like to their favorites, and then easily share those favorites with others.  Users can also see others’ favorites that they have been invited to view, and can post and view comments on individual properties in both their own and others’ favorites lists.  Users can see which of their contacts are online through integration with Windows Live Presence and can initiate a Windows Live Messenger session to collaborate with them at any time.

“We’re making it extremely easy for someone to find a property they like, share it with others, and get feedback—without having to cut and paste or share the same user name and password,” says Giles. “Not only does this provide increased convenience, but it can help buyers to make faster decisions—potentially enabling them to find the right house and make an offer on it before someone else does. And although the solution is optimized for buyers, it’s useful to sellers as well, in that they can use it to keep an eye on other homes that are on the market.”

By building on top of Live services, John L. Scott is delivering its new capabilities through tools with which users are already familiar.  “Lots of Web sites have built their own instant messaging clients, but many of them are quite primitive and/or have major latency problems,” says Giles.  “By integrating with Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live ID, we’re avoiding all those issues while enabling customers to use tools that they already know and trust.”

Bring Back Customers

For John L. Scott, the company’s main motivation for developing its new solution is an increased ability to attract customers to its Web site—and keep them coming back. “To successfully compete, we need to delight users instead of delivering the same mundane stuff as everyone else—and Microsoft software helps us do that,” says Giles. “Our new collaboration tool helps us to capture buyers earlier in the process, creates ‘stickiness’ on our Web site, and promotes customer loyalty—with a built-in social marketing aspect that drives friends and family to our Web site as well.”

John L. Scott also expects its new solution to help the company attract and retain agents.  “We compete for three types of customers: buyers, sellers, and agents—and the reality is that we have a solution that people want,” says Giles.  “I anticipate that some people with agents who work for other real estate companies will take advantage of our tools and invite their own agents to our site, and some of those agents may realize that working for JLS enables them to offer tools that their own companies can’t match.  Other Web sites will probably copy us, but by that time we’ll have figured out yet another way to offer unique customer value.”

Low Development Costs and Rapid Time-to-Market

With a software-plus-services approach based on Microsoft software and services, JLS was able to deliver its unique customer solution and begin realizing the corresponding business benefits with minimal investment and effort. “A software-plus-services approach enabled us to focus on the user experience, letting services ‘in the cloud’ do all the ‘heavy lifting’ with respect to security, reliable messaging, and so on,” says Giles. “In fact, we probably wouldn’t have taken on delivering such a rich solution if we had to develop it entirely from scratch. Many companies today are avoiding all software development, whereas our philosophy is to spend wisely, continue to innovate, and take advantage of the opportunity to pull further ahead of the competition.”

Increased Visibility as an Industry Leader

John L. Scott’s new JLSconnect solution further reinforces the company’s position and visibility as an industry leader, and a visionary in the use of technology to connect with customers in new and innovative ways. What makes this so interesting is that John L. Scott is composing four ‘cloud’ building block services—Live ID, Live Contacts, Live Presence, Live Messenger, and Virtual Earth—into its on-premises powered Web site, all powered by a Silverlight interface to glue the experience together.  JLS is the first real estate company to embrace social networking in such a way.  They’re targeting their Gen X and Gen Y agents with this solution to begin the process of reinventing how consumers and agents can collaborate around the home buying experience.  It represents the most advanced thinking to date in the real estate industry.

To see a short interview on JLSconnect with Pat Giles, please hit the play button below:



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