You can learn a lot in a week—especially if you spend that week as a client of CorporateHousing.com.

Just a few months after opening her own corporate housing company in Chicago, Deborah Nilles, owner and president of Key Connection, Inc., started advertising on CorporateHousing.com (www.corporatehousing.com), a site dedicated to helping people find the right temporary lodging needs, including extended-stay hotels, corporate apartments and furnished condominiums, as well as privately owned homes and seasonal vacation properties.

"We’ve only been a customer for a week and we’ve already gotten calls—good calls that are quality leads," she says. "The leads that we’ve gotten from CorporateHousing.com were people moving to Chicago and familiar with what corporate housing is."

That’s an important difference, she says, from leads derived from other means and other Web sites.

"If someone finds you in the Yellow Pages, they’re not sure where they’re calling, and some other corporate housing Web sites are intermingled with apartments and furnished rental information, so it’s sometimes difficult to narrow your search down to corporate or short-term housing," she says.

But not on CorporateHousing.com.

"CorporateHousing.com has it structured for someone looking for this type of service," she says. "When you click on CorporateHousing.com, the top of the page has the search links; you just can’t miss it. It’s really well designed."

Companies like Key Connection, Inc., that list on CorporateHousing.com can take advantage of everything from photographic slide shows of their available units to virtual tours.

"The slide show feature gives us the opportunity to showcase more than one property in our listings, which is important because we have several locations throughout Chicago," Nilles says.

To change or add to her listings, Nilles just needs to contact the Web site’s representatives, who are trained to assist corporate housing professionals in achieving clients’ goals. The changes are made online immediately. Clients like Nilles can also make the changes themselves, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

One of her favorite features of the site, Nilles says, is its online listing rotation system. That means, as the listings cycle through the online system, there is always a chance for her listing to be in the coveted top spot.

"That’s a huge selling point for me," she says. "Whoever is first on the list is most likely going to get that first call."

And being first on the list is all the more important, she says, as more and more companies are offering their employees lump-sum financial relocation packages, requiring them to find housing on their own. Those consumers, she says, are looking to the Internet for their corporate housing needs.

"A person unfamiliar with a city is not going to know who to pick up the phone to call, so the Internet is a great vehicle for them," she says. "If I was a customer logging into Corporate-Housing.com, "I’m immediately directed to a focused group of information for my needs, and I don’t have to surf around to find the furnished housing sections."

Once that consumer finds a listing they like, such as Key Conn-ection, the person can contact Nilles’ company directly by e-mail, direct link or telephone.

"The technology and some of the things they were able to do with the graphics was very appealing to me when I looked at it from a consumer point of view," Nilles says. "As soon as I opened the site and looked around, I knew I had to be there. It was really an easy decision to make. I bought it on the first call.