When we bought our home it came with a free standing wood burning fireplace on a raised tile hearth. That hearth was a real toe buster! Every now and then one of us would misjudge our step and OUCH!! We didn't use it because of concern for our pets. While we have a near endless source of firewood and it would have been nice to reduce our heating bills, that savings would probably have been reduced by vet bills as each cat would have to learn that the top of the stove would be VERY hot! So we lived with this non-productive thing for decades, knowing that every now and then we just might pay a price for its presence.
Now as agents most of us probably have an individual website (or maybe even a whole bunch of them!). And we may have a site for years and years without making any changes at all. The inertia is there to just let it go. But is the site doing the job it needs to do or is it time for remodel?
When we first set up our Wordpress site some years back we had some free help from another Rainer seeking to build up his portfolio. I certainly didn't have the skillset to do more than pick out a theme (and looking back even that part I didn't do well!). But we had a new site and we took the required MLS course to get IDX access. We had a site with search capability, yeah us!!
But over time it was apparent that the site wasn't really doing what we needed it to do for us. We just weren't attracting the consumers quite the way we wanted and it was time for some major remodeling! And our IDX provider was offering a major upgrade in custom search capability so the incentive was there to make a change. And by now I'd learned just enough to be dangerous to myself and my site. I can lift the hood and tinker around (but I'm still no coder!). So a complete gut job followed. New framework, new theme, new look and better custom searches. And yes, a revised navigation menu that included a big section of patio home information.
We saw our traffic pick up (partially thanks to using ActiveRain blogging to drive traffic to our revamped site). We shifted focus on our AR blog posts with a much more concentrated consumer approach and a lot less typing to attract comments. The net was our traffic picked up and our opportunities to gain clients increased. We recognized a niche within a niche, so more emphasis was placed on new construction patio homes and that led to more calls and more closed business. The work is of course neverending and I do a lousy job of actually blogging on our WP site, but on the whole our approach is working for us, gaining us mostly buyers and some listings.
The same questions that led us to remodel our website need to be asked about our blogging here in the Rain.
Are we blogging to the right audience?
Are we blogging the right topics to make the phone ring?
It's an ongoing process. What is working today might not work next year, so we need to understand our business sources, shifts in the market and all that comes with it.
And when we're done, perhaps the toe busters will be out of our way, much like the old stove that is no longer part of our home...we remodeled :)
Until next Tuesday, just Ask An Ambassador if you need help!
Bill of Liz and Bill aka BLiz
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