Biz App: Liberty National Appraisals Management Company

Not too long ago, well about 6 months ago, a friend of a friend contacted my company, Brownstone Strategies, in regards to getting advice about a site he wanted to build for his company, Liberty National Appraisals Management Company.  Our initial conversing discussed everything from design, content, and purpose of the site to hosting and how to best utilize the site to efficiently operate his appraisal company.

Little did we know at the time that of our initial conversing, his true reasoning for building the site was more out of fear and compliance to the US Government’s Home Valuation Code of Conduct as of May 1, 2009.  Long story short, we released a very good looking, comprehensive, and functioning online business application to allow his company to comply and accept appraisals online and then redistribute those appraisals to qualified and certified appraisers nationwide.  The redistribution of the appraisals occurs based upon the home state and county of the appraisal and appraiser.  We utilized PHP and MySQL databases to capture all information as well as the FPDF library to produce on-demand pdfs of appraisals.  Although the site is mostly tables, we utilized CSS to address the styling of the site.  Using Google Analytics, we’re able to track the obvious web results, but at the same time were able to track how appraisers are utilizing the system — their section is locked down and not visible to the general public.  There are definitely many more features that we are currently adding and will add going forward to generate leads — homeowners utilizing the system and appraisers signing up to utilize the system and make more revenue.  At some point, there will be a need to even monetize the site more with advertising and newsletter subscriptions.

Overall, this was a great project and we did learn some great tricks and tips along the way in regards to the changing landscape of the mortgage and real estate industries.  Cheers to Liberty National Appraisals and we wish them much success! 

Tools Utilized: PHP, MySQL, Photoshop, CSS, Java/Javascript, FPDF, Google Analytics, PayPal API

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Tags: Marketing, online business application, small business, startup, Technology