ARLA, the Association of Residential Letting Agents, is the only professional self-regulating body to be solely concerned with lettings. Before being granted membership, members must have been in business for a minimum of two years and hold professional indemnity insurance. With over 1200 members, ARLA employs several staff at its headquarters to administer the services that ARLA offers its members.

One of the key roles that ARLA staff performs is informing the general public about the benefits of using an ARLA member, yet it takes up a considerable amount of time. As Philip Cook, ARLA’s chairman explains "25% of our staff’s time is taken up simply dealing with telephone enquires about whether an agent is an ARLA member. When ARLA is mentioned in the national press, the amount of time increases. A Web site seemed an ideal way to take some of the pressure off our staff and increase ARLA’s presence".

Determining the Objectives…

To determine exactly how a Web site could help ARLA , a working party was formed from members of the ARLA national committee. The level of experience ranged from those people who had never been on the Internet to those members who have their own Web sites.

The working party determined three objectives for the ARLA Web site. Visitors to the site should be able to;

1. Search a database of ARLA member’s available properties.
2. View a complete list of ARLA members.
3. Download copies of ARLA leaflets.

After careful consideration ARLA decided to use Digital Nation to design the Web site. "Digital Nation were chosen for several reasons, firstly and most importantly they understood exactly what we wanted and created an Internet Marketing Strategy that encompassed all of our objectives, their prices were very competitive and they were able to produce a Web site to our timescales" commented Philip Cook.

The Internet Property Finder (IPF) had been chosen to provide the database which visitors could search for available properties. Digital Nation worked closely with IPF to ensure that the database could be easily accessed from within the site.

To ensure that visitors to the Web site could easily locate their nearest ARLA member, the ARLA Web site uses frames that allows different windows of information to be displayed on the same screen. The accompanying sheet shows how visitors can easily locate an ARLA agent by clicking on the appropriate county/city in the left hand window and then selecting a town.

This will display all the agents in the town with their contact details along with an E-Mail and Web site address (if appropriate). Visitors can click on an agents E-Mail address to send an E-Mail or visit the Web site by clicking on the link.

Digital Nation briefed Tornado Property Systems (who had developed ARLA’s internal database), to produce a system that will automatically generate a list of members that can be transferred directly to the web site. This list is run once a month and ensures that the Web site contains the correct contact details for all its members.

ARLA produces a number of leaflets for both landlords and tenants. The contents of these leaflets are now available from the Web site. "Callers to the ARLA office are now asked if they are connected to the Internet and are directed to the Web site to download the leaflets. This has meant that we can cut on our printing and postage costs" explains Philip Cook.

As well as designing the web site, Digital Nation has provided ARLA with a range of other services.

Integrating the ARLA office…

Digital Nation connected the ARLA office to the Internet and implemented an E-Mail system. As well as handling enquiries from the general public, the introduction of E-Mail has speed up communication between the ARLA office and it’s members and certain documents can now be sent by E-Mail instead of by post and fax.

Digital Nation set up and configured the E-Mail package Eudora Pro to process all incoming messages. Filters have been created which automatically transfer incoming mail from each member into their own separate folder. This means that any member of the ARLA staff can very quickly locate any piece of E-Mail. The system has also been setup with a series of standard responses to common questions, such as "Why ARLA membership is so important".

Educating the Members…

Many ARLA members had never been on the Internet and therefore their knowledge was limited. Digital Nation provided material for an ARLA "Agreement" magazine article which showed how residential letting agents could benefit from the Internet. A glossary of essential Internet terms was also provided to enable members to understand the terminology of the Internet.

ARLA organised a seminar in central London for it’s members and Digital Nation provided support and advice on the best sites to show, and provided a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation that was customised for ARLA’s requirements.

As more and more ARLA members connect to the Internet, ARLA sees an ever increasing role for the Web site in their future strategy. "We already have very positive feedback about how easy the site is to use and we want the ARLA Web site to be the first place to visit for people who are looking for information about letting and renting property" comments Philip Cook.