Thai property portal goes mobile

PHUKET: Thailand-Property.com, one of the biggest real estate portals in Thailand, has launched a new mobile site, shifting focus from growing on-site content to delivering more than 100,000 property listings to its user base in the palms of their hands.

As the portal’s main site already receives nearly 50 per cent of its traffic through hand-held devices, the new mobile site presents a stripped down, clean interface to facilitate quick, effective interaction.

“The mobile site’s clean design and simple functionality take into account the differing behaviors between desktop and mobile users,” said the site’s Marketing Director, Martin Schmidt.

“We know that mobile users are on the site not necessarily to browse leisurely, but to efficiently identify a property and get in touch with the right agent.”

The mobile portal’s homepage has been stripped down so that 90 per cent of the screen is taken up by a simple drop-down property search engine. Users can narrow results down by property types for sale or rent, with specific price ranges and number of bedrooms.

The option to select not only a province or city, but even the precise intersection and public transit station is available as well.

The other 10 per cent of the homepage allows users to translate the site into Thai, access the user dashboard or see the full desktop site.

The launch of the mobile site comes at a peak in Thailand’s overall mobile usage. In March 2014, Thailand’s mobile telephone subscriptions reached 93.7 million; far exceeding the country’s total official population of 66.79 million.

Accordingly, Thailand-Property.com anticipates the mobile site will increase the number of returning visitors, lower bounce rate and improve word-of-mouth referrals by creating more satisfied users and agents.