Swiss Commerce first took RetailMLS’ existing website and improved it. The website was extremely slow in terms of database optimization and the pages were lacking features. Swiss Commerce reduced the website load time from 18 seconds to 4 seconds, improved the performance of the content delivery network databases, code, and queries and enhanced the user interface which combined, resulted in a much more efficient and user-friendly experience.

Swiss Commerce then turned to develop the RetailMLS application, providing a streamlined and low-tech backend to uploading new listings and updating existing listings to the platform, ultimately to gain additional exposure for agents and brokers and help them better connect with potential tenants and owners.

The one major challenge RetailMLS and all of their competitors face with developing a property listings application is that listings all need to be up-to-date to achieve the end goal of having a functional application that end users can rely on. Swiss Commerce conceived and then developed an API feed that was friendly to the real-estate agents and brokers who are not tech savvy by utilizing a basic Excel sheet already familiar to the real-estate agents. This feature allows agents to download a unique Excel sheet from their account, enter the new listing information, and the data automatically gets updated within the application. Swiss Commerce cleverly built in a two-step validation process to ensure information security and proper formatting of the uploaded information through a private key. Through this process, agents and brokers never have to go into the back-end of the website or application to update existing listings or set-up new listings. No other real-estate company or application offers any of these features.

In addition, Swiss Commerce designed a new interface initiative that allows users to search specific locations through offering a function where users can draw geographic boundaries within an API in Google Maps. The application then automatically follows up with users when properties within their preferred geographic boundaries come on the market through email and application alerts. This approach allows for optimizing conversions by offering very targeted emails and alerts instead of overly broad emails that act as clutter in user inboxes.

During and post launch, Swiss Commerce had a tech support team on stand-by for any outstanding issues and therefore could address anything unexpected in real-time, ensuring a seamless launch and ongoing user experience.