What Buyers and Sellers Can Get from Emerging Technology

It's a digital world or the internet age. A decade ago, online shopping and online selling were still far from being considered popular choices among buyers and sellers of products, but now it is all the rage and is expected to be the norm for the years to come. Lumina Homes, one of the real estate companies in the Philippines, sees the rise and necessity of digital transactions even in an industry that is inherently physical.

Even individuals who don't associate themselves with the internet age could not deny the convenience of today's hyperconnected world. They could wax nostalgic over the good old days of playing outside with dirt and sweating it out in the great outdoors, but the internet age has come, and it is here not to rain on anyone's parade but to further give convenience and ease for everybody. Millennials and young professionals can even purchase their dream house online with the aid of emerging technology.

The Convenience of Buying Online

Some would argue that shopping online is tricky. This is true in the context of purchasing products that somehow require physical touch and scrutiny to determine likability. On social media, it is a funny banter when a buyer buys something online, like a pair of shoes secured at a significantly lower price, only to be disappointed that the product he saw and bought was physically different than what he saw in the displayed picture.

Buying products and services online, needless to say, also necessitates smart buyership. Still, there are many benefits and conveniences that online shopping gives digital shoppers. Below are the key benefits that make online shopping popular and preferred by many Filipinos.

1. Online shopping is time-saving.

Aside from the hassle of going to a physical store to buy products, store hours are also limited, typically from 8 AM to 10 PM. Online shopping allows anyone to virtually hunt products to purchase any time of the day and anywhere in their house and lot in the Philippines. No need to take a bath, dress up, and commute to a physical store. All you need is a working internet connectivity and a cellphone.

2. There's a wide variety of available products.

In physical stores, if a product is unavailable or sold out, you have no other option but to travel to another store to check if the product you're looking for is available there. So there goes the uncertainty, and it's time-consuming. In an online shop, there's little chance that the product you're searching for is out of stock. And if it is, you can browse through other online boutiques. There's a high chance it's available in another online shop, something you cannot guarantee in physical stores.

3. Relatively lower prices, plus discounts.

If you frequent Shoppee or Lazada, you know that a multitude of products is offered at relatively lower prices. Take clothing for example. Supply is bountiful since demand is also equally strong, prompting sellers to sell their products at a lower price to gain thousands of loyal customers, which will result in lucrative profits. Also, promos and discounts are offered during seasons when digital buyers are expected to come in droves. This means lower prices, discount vouchers, and free shipping offers that appeal to a lot of online shoppers.

4. Convenient payment methods.

Buyers have two potent options when it comes to payment: paying directly through an e-wallet or opting for a cash-on-delivery (COD) arrangement. The e-wallet payment option is ideal for office employees who are not in their homes most of the time due to their nature of work, and hence run the risk of nonpayment if the parcel is delivered at a time of the day when a person is still at work. In consequence, creating an e-wallet to pay for bills and product purchases prior to the actual delivery is less hassle and eliminates conflict involving payments.

According to a report issued by Rakuten Insight, a Japan-based research partner in Asia, COD is the popular choice of payment method among Southeast Asians, including the Philippines at 85 percent, Vietnam at 69 percent, and Thailand at 61 percent. Interestingly, this payment method is less common in countries like Japan, China, and the United States.

5. Customer feedback serves as buying guide.

Technology also made online buying more smooth-sailing and scam-proof by developing certain features, such as customer reviews and ratings from previous buyers. In online shopping sites such as Shoppee and Lazada, people can browse down the product listing to see a wealth of reviews to determine the veracity of product features being boasted.

Through this mechanism, prospective buyers can check whether there are more dissatisfied buyers than there are satisfied ones. Previous buyers also post pictures of the product, make a comment on the packaging, and air their utter dissatisfaction by giving a poor rating and a commentary detailing their frustrations. This will help future buyers to decide whether to make the purchase at a particular online shop or look for others and check their ratings and customer feedback as well.

6. Brand comparisons and getting detailed information.

Online shoppers have all the time to compare brands and products, as well as obtain detailed product information to examine features. This is not easily doable at physical shops, where displayed products may not have the detailed information handy and hence would require a salesperson to discuss product features. It is also time-consuming to go from one physical shop to another just to compare brands, prices, and features. This is not the sorry case in online shopping, where shoppers are given optimum convenience to have the best possible virtual shopping experience.

How Sellers Can Keep Customers Coming to their Online Shops

With tight competition an integral part of online businesses, sellers can foster an edge over their competitors by developing marketing strategies that will work to achieve customer retention. This entails making the buying journey of online customers hassle-free and convenient.

Bad seller behavior is not limited to rudeness. You can send perfectly fine replies to purchasing inquiries and still receive bad feedback from your customers for mediocre and inadequate customer service. This could be as simple as failing to reply at the soonest possible time for customer queries that warrant immediate attention. If you have a solid market base, a delayed response to a mass of customer questions clogging your inbox is understandable, but still not wholly so.

It goes without saying that responding as soon as possible, irrespective of the number of customers in your inbox, is of the essence for any business with an online platform to entertain digital buyers. It would be a major downer for customers to receive a response so late for a query that only requires a short sentence or two. Also, it is a best practice to personalize your responses to give the impression that customers' concerns are being directly addressed, and not responded to with a ready-made template that fails to empathize as well as fully understand all the details indicated in a direct message.

Having mentioned this, there is also technology for responding to customer queries and having their names automatically mentioned at the start of a seller's response to give a personalized touch. But aside from that, it is crucially important to make sure that every customer concern is read and fully understood. Buyers are smart and could differentiate what a sincere response reads like from an inauthentic and pretentious one.

The Future of Real Estate Technology

As mentioned, the real estate world is essentially physical. But the idea of real estate properties purchasable purely online, hence without the need for a property site visit, has been all the more popularized during the peak of the coronavirus pandemic.

COVID-19 has necessitated businesses to offer their services online in addition to having a physical office, shop, or establishment. The availability of virtual tours also made it possible for real estate to still thrive during such a crisis of COVID's magnitude.

Aside from the availability of virtual tours as exceptional alternatives for physical site visits, there are other real estate technology trends that make the global real estate market promising more than ever. Let's explore these trends in commercial real estate technology and property technology for real estate businesses and companies.

Automated Advertising

Advertising a product or a service could be a chore to do, but technology also made it possible for advertising to be done in automation through efficient software systems, and will provide relevant data on statistics for the number of page views, clicks, and reaching the target audience by having an ad display of your property listing to the appropriate channels and websites.

Aerial Inspection of Properties

A drone is another technology device that enables an aerial inspection and a much larger view of properties. Drones offer the convenience of merely having to remote-control the device like a toy but give the tremendous convenience of not needing to hop on a helicopter ride to inspect properties panoramically.

Virtual Marketplaces

The ever-growing popularity of virtual marketplaces to book a home reservation is an industry disruptor. Such a platform acts as a middleman between property sellers and property seekers. A perfect example is Airbnb, a service provider that functions as an efficient marketplace for real estate owners to rent out their houses and lots for travelers looking for temporary shelter. Travelers have the option to rent a space for different people to share, or have the entire property all to themselves.

In such a setup, you won't need a real estate agent to transact with as the marketplace itself already acts as the middleman. This makes for a hassle-free process of seeking a good place to stay during a vacation trip to a tourist destination.

Metaverse Real Estate

Just as when people thought there's no way that properties could be virtual and have an actual price for investment not even remotely possible, comes the emergence of metaverse real estate, a virtual reality setup that makes buying and selling virtual lands lucrative and profitable. It is still relatively new, but there's no denying it that the metaverse real estate industry is gaining massive popularity for its legitimate provision of income taken from virtual reality.

What is more, it is less hassle in the virtual world, where one does not need to transact with a real estate agent or deal with overwhelming paperwork to secure virtual houses and lots. If you have the necessary amount of money now, you can consider investing soon and enjoy the great potential of multiplying your investment into ridiculously large sums of real money. But caution: make your research first as the industry is also notorious for price swings.

Virtually Tour Real Estate Properties with Lumina Homes

Since the pandemic hit globally, it has also greatly altered the buying and selling process of various goods and services. Even real estate professionals in the real estate industry, a sector so notoriously physical, felt the need to shift online to make a home deal with property seekers and for the latter to transact with property managers and real estate agents.

The virtual property tour feature on the Lumina Homes website is catered to aspiring property owners to make an initial inspection of available properties virtually. Embarking on a virtual tour of affordable house and lot for sale with Lumina Homes entails the convenience of virtual scrutiny without the need to schedule an immediate site visit.

Notably, Lumina Homes is also the first real estate brand in the Philippines to open online shopping carts through its Facebook, Instagram, and Viber pages to enable convenient online transactions between a developer and a prospective property owner.

Inquire about your real estate concerns through our website or any of our Lumina Homes' social media channels. For relevant updates on industry trends, tips on property management, real estate investing, financial literacy, and more, check out our blogs and vlogs through our website.