Showcase IDX, an Atlanta-based provider of IDX search plugins for WordPress, recently launched a new version of its product after redesigning and rebuilding it from the ground up. The innovations in the new Showcase IDX will redefine the IDX market and change how consumers search for homes.

"Since consumers began using online home search, they have been offered two main tools outside of the search itself: the ability to save listings and to save searches. Our research made it clear that these basic tools are not meeting the needs of today's consumers and that the search experience is falling well short of expectations — especially for Millennials," says Showcase IDX CEO Scott Lockhart. "We are pushing the industry forward by putting consumers first and focusing on engaging website visitors with tools that let them collaborate with the other decision-makers and influencers involved in their home search."

Innovations in the new version of Showcase IDX include:

• Social Search – Consumers can create a Search Party with family and friends then use Social Search tools to share and organize their home search together. Each member of a Search Party has their own account but can see and interact with others in that trusted group.
• Consumer Collaboration – Consumers can leave emoji reactions and comments on any listing for others in their Search Party to see. These are private by default until the Search Party invites a real estate agent into the conversation. Potential homebuyers are going to talk privately. Why not make it easy for them to do it on the agent's website to keep them coming back?
• Organizational Tools – New tools help consumers organize and track their home search together. A dashboard timeline shows all activity in a Search Party, and new listing tools let members view and interact with each other's activity in an easy-to-use interface.
• Search Subscriptions – Showcase IDX's research showed that very few people set up saved searches, so we reframed the concept as Search Subscriptions, which let consumers subscribe to searches by email and manage them more effectively.
• Listing Activity Timelines – Every listing detail page features a listing history, which not only features the MLS listing history but also their own and their Search Party's activity history for that listing.
• Pre-Rendered Content for Speed and SEO – Deeply integrated into WordPress, listing detail pages and embeddable hotsheets are pre-rendered as though they were natively generated from WordPress itself. To improve speed and SEO, Showcase IDX does not use iFrames.

About Showcase IDX: Showcase IDX is a real estate consumer engagement and IDX search company based in Atlanta, GA. Founded in 2005, Showcase IDX builds innovative search and organizational tools that real estate agents and teams use to connect meaningfully with online consumers on their WordPress-powered websites.