GeoDirectory helped Daft.ie to set up an advanced mapping system on its acclaimed website.
At the United Nations World Summit in November 2005, a panel of 35 international experts voted
Daft.ie one of the top five e-business websites in the world. This followed a major revamp of the site the previous year.
Daft.ie had already emerged as one of the dazzling new lights of Ireland’s online revolution. Founded in 1997 by 2 brothers aged just 20 and 15, the Daft.ie website had begun to transform the way people bought and rented houses in Ireland.
Instead of traipsing around estate agents or scanning local newspaper adverts, Irish house-hunters began to take to cyberspace.
To enhance the website, the dynamic entrepreneurs of Daft wanted to set up a system which could display individual properties visually on a map.
GeoDirectory makes it possible
Ireland has always been notoriously vague at defining where people actually live. In rural areas, for example, many houses have no numbers. Even street names in some villages are almost non-existent. Confusion can be compounded by spelling variations and interchangeable English and Irish place names.
To make its existing addressing software work effectively with a mapping system, Daft.ie needed a comprehensive, robust database of all 1.8 million buildings in the Irish Republic that would be regularly updated.
GeoDirectory was able to provide that immense volume of information. It was also able to offer exact geocodes for each building. Based on the national grid, this database of X,Y coordinates made it possible for Daft.ie to create an interactive map to allow customers to visually locate property.
Daft zooms ahead of the pack
As a result, prospective customers can zoom into any town on a map of Ireland and see the property for sale on a particular street.
Now anyone interested in buying or renting property anywhere in Ireland can go to the Daft.ie website and view property by:
1. Choosing one of three drop-down menus – sales, lettings or sharing
2. Selecting a location
3. Specifying details such as the number of bedrooms and the price range
4. Zoom into a location map and see which properties fit the bill – and where exactly they’re located.
In total, the website attracts three quarters of a million visitors every month – a colossal hit rate for a website serving a small country.
This new culture of online self-service requires clinical precision. GeoDirectory’s fast, accurate, comprehensive and accessible databases can almost certainly help guide your business through the ever-changing landscape of the 21st century.