The product team at PropertyBox, part of the Focal Group, is working hard behind the scenes to continually develop this innovative product to help estate agents look the best they can online with enhanced photography. But that’s just the start of it. We caught up with Product Director Michael McHugh and Product Manager Victoria Znamenskaya to find out what’s new at PropertyBox and what exciting announcements are in the pipeline this spring.
Working alongside PropertyBox’s designers and developers, Michael and Victoria use in-house artificial intelligence (AI) to refine and develop the product making it the best in the market.
What’s the thinking behind PropertyBox?
MM: The best way to help the 60% of agents who take their own photos and need to get them enhanced is to offer them a really fast high quality result every time, so we can add value to their business and help them win the click and the instruction.
VZ: We’re using AI to achieve this so we can make improvements, upgrade the service and add features making our customers’ jobs a lot easier and helping them to work faster and more efficiently.
So what’s new this spring from PropertyBox?
VZ: We’re now offering “try before you buy” so customers can upload up to 10 photographs from one property and see the amazing results in seconds. The photos will be brightened, straightened and blue skies added and then they have the option to sign up and pay if they want to get those enhanced photographs back and ready to upload to property portals and their own websites. This gives new customers the opportunity to see what we do and give the service a try.
MM: We’re adding more flexibility to our pricing, with two further price plans for agents who need to enhance fewer photos cost-effectively. The first is “pay as you go” with no monthly fee, you just pay 70p for each enhanced photo; secondly our new “starter plan” for £39.99 per month, per branch, for up to 100 photos and 35p per extra photo. For agents with more volume, they would pick the current “pro plan” at £79.99 per month for up to 250 photos, then 25p for any extra photos. Larger agents can contact us for tailormade packages.
What do you like most about your roles?
VZ: It’s about being creative and finding the perfect solution to all the challenges faced by agents who want to look good online.
MM: I think it’s being able to take an idea and using the constituent parts from AI and design, building it into something that processes images for estate agents in seconds. It’s like you’ve got a problem and how do you solve it. When we show people what we’ve done they are genuinely blown away, it gives me great satisfaction.
What other innovations are you planning at PropertyBox?
VZ: There are a huge range of possibilities – we’ve only just started! We want to grow and add many features to our product to make estate agents’ lives easier – making sure everything is possible in one place.
