SearchChicago.com’s Classified Trio
The Sun-Times News Group has just launched their free real estate site that enables
The launch of the residential site is the arrival of what is being called their ‘classified trio’. Via SearchChicago.com, browsers can look for cars, jobs and now homes. All the big elements normally found in an online classified entity.
The birth of SearchChicago.com came out of the original concept, to create a content heavy classified site that would attract both private users and commercial advertisers, and obviously allow Sun-Times to romp with the big boys, online. The smartest way for them to build the type of content necessary (fast and effectively), was to combine the classified listings in their regional publications (the Greater Chicago area), all on to one site.
“SearchChicago.com is one-stop shopping for people in Chicago and surrounding communities who are looking for necessities of life – jobs, homes and transportation,” said Cyrus F. Freidheim, Jr. , Chief Executive Officer of Sun-Times Media Group, Inc., the parent company for the Sun-Times News Group. “Users will have the advantages of our broad classifieds listings across the more than 90 newspaper titles that make up the Sun-Times News Group network and reach millions of readers each day.”
The SearchChicago Classified site has some distinguishing qualities that will allow it to differ itself from the rest. Mainly, the sites search capabilities are what stand out the most. The options and user tools to find information is extremely robust and user friendly. And just as impressive, the information served from a search, is delivered in a plethora of ways, allowing all viewer types to find items quickly.
When looking for a job, the sites advanced search allows a user to choose from 11 different criteria and at the end of the search form, the user has the option of receiving their job profiles in a long or short format view. This is extremely useful for those just wanting to browse. The newly launched homes vertical of the site, also has some interesting options to aid home buyers in making decisions. In addition to allowing browsers to search by community and home type, the site offers an interactive map search and video tours of homes. Another notable application on the homes site is their ‘School Report Card’ section. This allows browsers to review ratings of schools in a particular area they are thinking of moving to. This is key for all families with children and is usually information not found on a classified site – again promoting one stop shopping for site users.
Given that this is a fairly new venture for Sun-Times, I have excused some of the obvious fixes still required with the site. For example, while searching for autos you don’t have the option to hyper-link out to homes. If on either the auto or jobs section of the site, there is no easily navigated way to get back to the principal home page. Lastly, there is great content mix for both homes and jobs on the site, but auto results were somewhat light.
The one-stop shopping feel SearchChicago.com promotes, could be a real success for the Sun-Times News Group. However, ensuring the presence of healthy content that is easily found, will be the differentiator between success and heavy site traffic, versus being just another classified site attempt, by a group of newspapers, trying to compete against the online only elephants, in the publishing space.
