Homes.com and WorldLingo Announce Marketing Agreement
Multi-lingual Realtor® Websites
San Diego, Calif. (Sep 25, 2002) Homes.com, Inc., a leading provider of Internet real estate products and services to brokers and agents, announced today that it has signed an agreement with WorldLingo, one of the Internet's leading translation services.
Homes.com now offers its broker and agent clients the opportunity to enhance their website with a translation engine, powered by WorldLingo. At the click of a button, consumers visiting BrokerAdvantage™ and AgentAdvantage™ websites can translate the website content from English to Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Greek, Japanese, Chinese, or Korean.
Website translation is one of the major growth areas in the translation market today. Internet usage continues to exceed all time highs, both in the United States and abroad. "This is a Lead Generation opportunity. Homes.com realizes how important it is to provide the necessary tools to help our clients effectively communicate to anyone interested in purchasing a home in the United States, regardless of where they live or what their native language is," says Patty McNease, Homes.com Director of Client Services. She continues, "Most of our major markets have an ethnic diversity. The Internet itself brings us all closer together, nationally and internationally. We saw the need for both the Realtor® and the consumer, and are confident that WorldLingo's comprehensive technology fulfills that need."
RE/MAX of New York and Beazley Real Estate in Connecticut, as early Homes.com customer adopters, have already added this enhancement to their BrokerAdvantageTM websites. Carolyn Weber, Vice President, RE/MAX of New York says, "We were gratified to see that in our first week of the translator being up, that we received two referrals; one from Korea and one from Sweden. Our website, on a daily basis, garners a great deal of domestic hits and the ability to attract international buyers and sellers is of tremendous value to our agents." Fiona Beecy, Director of Information Technology at Beazley says," I think we all need to conduct business in the consumer's language of choice, whether it be on a website or in person. As a forerunner in the marketplace and in a diverse community, that means providing a translation feature on our website and listing all of our multi-lingual agents."
Tanja Hill, business development director, WorldLingo says, "According to Forrester research, the chance of converting a website visitor to a customer increases threefold if you speak to them in their native language. If you cannot communicate with potential customers in their language of choice, they will simply look elsewhere. Homes.com BrokerAdvantage and AgentAdvantage clients have the opportunity to be the "elsewhere" consumers will look for and find. They can be the ones with the leading advantage and never miss a customer relationship opportunity because of a difference in language."
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About Homes.com
Homes.com, Inc is a premier technology enabling business solutions provider for the real estate industry. The Homes.com family of products includes the IDX-compliant BrokerAdvantage and AgentAdvantage website development and hosting solutions. Additionally, Homes.com offers e-Coaching, Advertising, PREP Suite 4.5, a customer management software system. The Homes.com portal website receives over 500,000 unique visitors each month. Homes.com is one of the nation's largest network of participating real estate professionals.
About WorldLingo
WorldLingo is a leading provider of integrated, online translation solutions. The company's services range from cost effective machine translation solutions, to professional human translation and culturally sensitive localization. A global network of over 5,000 professional translators produces human translations. WorldLingo also offers unique, real-time translation solutions for two-way email and instant messaging. These solutions make it easy for businesses and professionals to interact with internal and external multilingual audiences anywhere in the world. By combining accurate and cost effective translation, WorldLingo is taking great strides towards breaking down language barriers in the world of commerce.
WorldLingo produces thousands of translations every day. Clients include AT&T, Sony, Eli Lilly, Belkin, Cadbury Schweppes, Qualcomm, Priceline, and Tribal DDB. WorldLingo is also an official supplier of translation services to the European Union. In addition, Microsoft has integrated WorldLingo's technology into Office XP and Word 2002. WorldLingo is a global organisation with offices in the US, Australasia and Europe.
For more information: contact WorldLingo