More than ever, buyers are taking time to ‘shop around’ to find the best deal and compare products and prices, using the internet in particular to facilitate this need. And property purchasing is no exception. According to Google 90% of buyers now do their initial research online.

Although it is not just for the purposes of finding a new home that web users look online. A recent survey conducted by property-search website Globrix.com (part owned by News International, parent company of The Sunday Times) found 22% of us spend an unhealthy amount of time looking at properties we could never afford. And 38% use the internet to try and establish the value of their own home, by looking at the price of neighbours’ houses.

The Strutt & Parker website receives an average of 8,000 visits a day. On average the site receives 93.5% of its daily traffic from within the UK. Specifically, 40% of the traffic to the site comes from London as the highest city of viewers, with Edinburgh second and Birmingham third. If you are looking to sell your home in 2008, this suggests that it will be best to use a national agent with presence in our major cities, who will draw traffic. The month of June this year saw an increase of 6% in the number of visits, compared to the same month in 2007, indicating that whilst the market may be tougher, demand for prime property is ever-increasing. So, as well as a national agent, if you are looking to sell in 2008, it is essential to use an estate agency that has an attractive, up-to-date and easy-to-use website. It also needs to be highly informative. Buyers want to know as much information as possible about a property before they take the time to see it in person.

The Strutt & Parker website gives buyers unparalleled access to a vast database of nationwide properties, allowing them to tailor property information to their exact requirements. One of the strongest features of the website is the search facility. It enables buyers to choose properties within a set radius of their desired location, which helps to prevent unsuccessful search results and features more properties appropriate to the buyer’s needs. For the vendor, this means that each property is automatically marketed up to 25 miles from its location.

Key Tools:

- Users can view schools in their search area and link through to Ofsted reports and additional information.

- Users have the opportunity to view properties as a slide show

- The site uses the latest technology to predict the location being typed.

The site also uses Microsoft Virtual Earth to give as much information about the area as possible. A map of the search area, including forests, golf courses, major road connections and train links, can be shown and combined with satellite imagery if desired.

For those window shoppers who want to get straight to the best deal on offer, there is the ‘Hot Property of the Month’, which on average will receive 70% more visits than other uploaded properties.

According to the website analysis, buyers prefer to ‘shop around’ on their property search at the beginning of the week with Monday being the most popular day for the website giving 16.32% of all traffic for the week, whereas Saturday is the least popular day with only 10.35% of traffic for the week.

Daniel Fulbrook of Strutt & Parker's Rural Head office comments “Over the past year there has been an increase of 90% in the number of properties viewed using the new search.”