It's interesting how agents can drive up to a potential listing and start making mental notes before leaving the car about what needs to be done to the yard, the front door and the windows to give the house some curb appeal.  Inside, the mental note-taking assesses what clutter needs to be removed: knick-knacks, crowded framed photos on every wall and shelf, stacks of reading material, too much furniture in the room, the outdated floor lamp, the faded sofa pillows.  And so very tactfully the seller is told that some "staging" needs to be done so their home shows better.  The idea is that nothing should detract from the home itself.  Furnishings should enhance the home, not be distracting or take away from what the potential buyer is actually thinking of buying  - the home.

But when you visit agent websites, profiles and yes, even blogs, this good sense seems to have vanished for many.  Sites have lists, logos, links, maps, menus, buttons, banners, drop down boxes, graphics, music, videos, flash animation, counters, the weather report, forms, translator buttons, photos, icons, downloads, .pdf files and paragraphs of text on everything from the history of the town to information on the local zoo.  All in a riotous display of colors, fonts and graphics on multiple pages. 

At what point did good sense leave us?  It's when we stopped looking through the eyes of the consumer - which we encourage home sellers to do - and we became the sellers ourselves.  No one is telling us our extensive and noisy collection of wind chimes is not adding a thing to what we are trying to sell.  The goal of having a web presence is to tell the consumer what it is we can do for them as experienced real estate professionals.  It's not just information they need, it's the services of a great agent.

We talk too much.  We tell everything we know on every subject we can think of.  It's like handing the web visitor a big brown paper bag full of information and assuring them that inside there - somewhere- is really valuable information they want.  The problem is they can't see it very clearly and they aren't willing to work that hard to find it when they have a hundred other choices one mouse click away.  What we need them to do is contact us.  A good website, profile or blog should be compelling enough to make the person reading it reach out and engage us.

Don't take your consumer hat off when you become the service provider.  One of the most appealing things about websites like Craigslist and Google is what they chose to leave off.