If you leave certain things off of your real estate website, you’re leaving money on the table and daring your leads to go elsewhere.
You may have a beautiful and expensive website, with all the bells and whistles. But if you don’t have the following must-haves, you’re going to have an expensive site that doesn’t perform.
Every Real Estate Website Needs: A Simple Contact Form
Make it as easy as possible for people to get in touch with you from anywhere on your site at any given time. Don’t make them work! And don’t make them click around too much to get in touch with you.
Use a simple form or sidebar on all your pages as part of your design, but carefully consider what information you need to collect.
“A long contact form can be very overwhelming to look at and scare your potential customer right off your website. Keep the number of fields on your contact forms between 3 and 5 max,” wrote Marvin Russell, Founder of MySiteAuditor and Checkli.
“If your website offers a service, then your contact form shouldn’t try to sell that service. It should only try to get your foot in the door by asking a few basic questions. NeilPatel.com was able to increase conversions by 26% by removing 1 field from his contact form.”
Every Real Estate Website Needs: Local Listings
This is what many website visitors are here to see. Don’t put too much branding between your visitors and your listings. People may like you, you may be amazing, but they’re here to see houses. So keep your listings fresh, current, and easily accessible.
Use this great article that explains how you can quickly and easily integrate MLS listings onto your site (for free or cheap) by using Wordpress plugins.
Every Real Estate Website Needs: An Active Blog
The key word is active.
That can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people. This may mean twice a week, or twice a month. The number isn’t that important. The key thing is that you come up with a content schedule and stick to it.
Also, make sure your blogs have real value. Of course, every listing should get it’s own blog and landing page. But make sure your blog contains more. Helpful advice on how to buy a home is always welcome. It also makes you look like an expert, not just a salesperson.
Every Real Estate Website Needs: Local Events
Don’t ignore the value of this. It goes beyond just doing favors for local businesses and clubs. It makes you look like a pillar in the community, and in-touch with everyone. By listing local event on your website, you can become a go-to site for reasons other than your listings, which is great for your brand.
It also helps your search engine optimization (SEO) when these events’ web pages link back to you. Backlinks are SEO gold and what puts you above the other guys in search results.
Every Real Estate Website Needs: A Simple Web Address
Read your website’s web address (URL) over the phone to someone. How slow did you have to read it? Did you have to repeat it? Have you had people type it in wrong? These are all signs your website’s URL is too complicated. It should be easily read out loud and easy to remember.
“Forget about hard-to-spell, long and clever words or anything too complex—unless you want to make it hard for people to remember your URL. Do yourself a favor: dump the cutesy names and don’t use numbers—they won’t help. Best practice? A name with only one possible spelling,” wrote Tom Lowery, entrepreneur, author, corporate training specialist.
So if you’re building a new site, focus your time and money on simple and intuitive contact forms, dynamic listing feeds, a well thought-out blog, local events, and a simple and memorable URL. If you already have a site, review it for these things.
If you have a new URL make sure all your print materials like business cards and brochures have the correct info. If you need to update your print materials, you can easily create your own design online, and make sure your brand resonates.
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