Commercial Real Estate 2.0!

Welcome to The Allen Group’s Blog Page (TAG)

While attending various real estate and transportation trade shows TAG noticed there was a lack of tools to better connect a person with a project or company.  The usual brochures and confusing foldout maps just weren’t that intriguing. One of our goals as a company is to better engage the various audiences of our development projects by incorporating the use of new media technology.

Some of these technologies include interactive websites, online ads, emails and power point presentations.  These new mediums incorporate push-button technology for various maps, site plans and property listings as well as on-demand videos and transportation and real estate analysis calculators.  We also use 3D animations, virtual tours, streaming videos, blogs, photo viewers and sophisticated databases that allow us to quickly post secure and real-time data.

The interactivity and accessibly this new technology not only helps to visually explain or enhance a project, but allows the decision makers the tools necessary to draw conclusions about their company’s real estate needs and how The Allen Group can help them achieve their business goals.  A good example of all this technology coming together is our Dallas Logistics Hub project.  This massive 6,000 acre logistics park is surrounded by four major interstates, an intermodal facility, dual rail access and a future air-cargo airport.  We designed a number of high-tech features on the website for users to interact with, such as a fly-over 3D animation, trade patterns and highway and rail infrastructure maps, streaming video testimonials and a first-of-its-kind Drayage Calculator.

The Drayage Calculator was created to help explain the massive transportation costs savings companies can realize by locating a distribution operation adjacent to an intermodal facility vs. a similar site located miles away.  This calculator allows the user to plug in specific information about their company such as building size, numbers of containers received and then choose from 21 different locations within the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex to compare and contrast their shipping cost options.  This is a great way of incorporating the user’s data with real time drayage analysis to provide a quick “snap-shot” of total transportation costs savings.

Let’s face it, in today’s fast paced business world no one has time to read. You would be more impressed with this blog if there was a way you could hear it instead of simply reading it.  Business people want information that they can easily access, visualize and understand with the “click-of-a-mouse,” which is why we structured our websites the way we have. With maps, photos, site plans, renderings and downloadable reports on market trends, labor, population, real estate costs, transportation and trade, we believe we provide important information about our projects in both a visually impressive and user friendly way.

And it’s working….with some visitors spending 5 to 10 minutes on our sites, clicking through 10 to 20 pages. We try to capture your attention from the first moment you land on our homepage, as we all know the first few minutes of any introduction can tell you a lot about how people run their business and provide for their customers.

We hope you will continue to visit our Blog Page as many of our talented staff members will be submitting posts about the latest developments, industry trends and updates on our projects.