Is your website usable?

I am in Hawaii. I get a lot of traffic and not that high of a return considering. With over 2,000 unique visitors I got about 5 actual contracts and listings, about 7 leads for the future. I think my problem is that I am in Hawaii and a lot of the lookers have found my site by accident while searching hawaii information and are just looking at pictures and information I have on my site. I have trackers on each page and the trackers that are important to me are the listings page and featured homes. You said to ask someone to look at the site. How about you? You are the expert. Take a look at my site and tell me what you think. I look forward to your comments.

www.kaucountryhomesandland.com

I would certainly like to make my website more productive, but of course it's a matter of TIME VS MONEY.  Either find the time to do it or find the money to hire someone to do it for me.

My site generates about 6 transactions a year but I would really not consider it effective until it generates at least 2 transactions a month.  That's a BIG step from 6 to 24 I would guess!

That was harsh... and surprising because I have had people send emails and call just to say how wonderful they think it is. so I am very shocked at your opinion.

My site gave me 5 last month ... I just wanted to clarify myself in regard to my original post that is was months. I have only been tracking site visitors since January and March was the first month I tracked actual lead generated. This month I have only had 4 strong leads but nothing has lead to paper just yet. I am expecting to write a contract late this afternoon on one of my listings. That lead was generated from my site ... that's where they saw the listing and am also waiting for a listing agreement the seller sent back snail mail. I still have a couple weeks left for the month of April to improve.

Patrick, was that 5 registrations or how do you quantify your 5?  My site averages about 75 registrations a month (or at least it used to as it has slowed a bit lately).  Maybe it's just my follow up which is very passive.  I get those registrations WITHOUT a single penny in PPC advertising too. 

I think the "Less is better" statement is very accurate. We work with clients all the time that try to make their website everything to everybody, but by doing that they are hurting themselves... I have been on Real Estate websites that dont even include the agents listings! Some agents buy the hosted template site from one of the big providers, put their contact info on it and call it a day.... thats not going to generate any leads!  If someone ends up on your Real Estate website, they're usually there for two major reasons... 1) to find out more information on one of your listings or 2) to find out more information on you (or both)... the canned out of the box approach gives them neither... Alot of agents have alot of "filler" on their websites thats not needed.... a simple layout and an easy path to the information the user wants will render much more results...

My advice is to follow these simple steps;

1) What is the main purpose of your website?  Define exactly what it is you want your website to do, is it advertise your listings? advertise you? advertise your market area? advertise your niche? 

2) Rank in order of importance what you want your website to do

3) build the site in that order, if you rank advertising your listings as #1 priority, then make your website reflect that and then ask your friends inside and outside the business to take a look at it and provide honest feedback... and in my opinion remove the "filler"...

The finished product (your website will never actually be finished!) should give the user the information they want in the quickest, easiest manner possible

Justin - I totally agree with your comment about less is more. Here is the way I learned to think about this idea.

Think of the white space on your web page as the isles in a retain store. You need ample room to walk around the merchandise, in our case the content on a page.