MostlyGeek

Sutton.com 2.1 was launched this morning around 10:00am PST. In this we’ve added some really cool features to improve the usability and functionality of the web site:

1. Google Search Appliance Integration
2. Ajax Quick Search
3. Mini-links
4. Miscellaneous site tweaks

Google Search Appliance Integration

The web site was seriously lacking a search option. Rather than build one from scratch I opted to purchase a Google Mini Search appliance. Setting it up and configuring it took about 2 hours. Tweaking the search results be a project of constant improvement.

What we did:

1. Have the Mini index the entire sutton.com website. Since our site has hundreds of thousands of documents, when you count all the images and dynamically generated pages, we filter out a lot of unnecessary content. This gives a happy medium between our site’s specialized searches (listings, Realtors®, offices) and the brute force mini.
2. We use the XML search results. This gives us a lot more flexibility in how we display results. The extra work will pay off when we begin to sutton-ize the search results.

Ajax Quick Search

I was often frustrated at how long it took to simply pull up a phone number and an address for a particular office on sutton.com.

In 2.1 you can get an office’s contact information in less than 3 seconds (depending on how fast you type ;).

How to use it:

1. Type in approximately what you’re looking for, say North Vancouver, into the site’s search.
2. An Ajax call will go and fetch information that matches. It’s sorted, offices first, Realtors® and then listings.r
3. Try searching for an MLS number or the address of a property you’ve seen. Try typing in “2 bedroom condo”…

How it works:

1. We use the Ajax Auto Suggest script.
2. It does a HTTP GET request which returns the XML search results.
3. The JavaScript parses it and displays the pretty results.

The challenge for this feature was getting the XML search results to come back fast! How did we do that? That’s our little secret. ;)

Mini-Links

This feature came out of a personal need to share search results on the website with other people.

How do I send you a list of all the Sutton Group - West Coast offices in BC?

In 2.0 I would have to send you this:

http://www.sutton.com/office/search?officename=West+coast&city=&province=11&subm…

In 2.1, the URL is nice, short and email proof:

http://www.sutton.com/l/1p

Mini-Links are available on Sutton.com wherever you see this:

Other Miscellaneous Tweaks:

1. Flexi-Site redirection pages are now Google friendly. They no longer index as “you will be redirection in…”. Take a look at the new one. You can also pause the redirection so you have time to write down the contact information.
2. View an office’s roster by photo. Good with faces but not with names? Well this feature is for you.
3. We added a sitemap. Since the release of 2.0 the new pages have slowly been trickling into the search engines. The sitemap files, mostly unseen by users, will help improve indexing of our web site. Take a look at our robots.txt or our sitemap.xml. The information at http://www.sitemaps.org was essential in getting this built.

Whew! Look out for more cool features and updates coming out in the next couple of weeks.
[tags]sutton.com, google search appliance, ajax[/tags]