What Should Be On My Real Estate Website?
While the real estate business has increasingly catered to online searches, many real estate professionals are still struggling with what to put on their websites. So what pages, details, and information should you be sporting on your real estate website? What can’t you afford to miss out on?
Optimizing Your Website Map
One of the biggest dilemmas facing those building real estate websites is how big it should be. Do you need a broad site with hundreds of pages? A single landing page? Or just a mobile app or Facebook page?
Before you can answer that, you’ve got to get real clarity on the purpose of your real estate website and what you want it to do.
Is it an authority for all things real estate in your market and niche? Is it just a presence on the web? Or is it purely for generating leads and business? What outcomes and results do you want to come out of having a web presence?
Every real estate professional and business can benefit from having a site up on the Internet. It’s essential for legitimizing your business. Those that really want to dominate will probably want to work on building much larger sites, but that takes time. You must steadily add more resources and blogs each week, and month. Those specifically looking to the Internet for real estate lead generation may also want to test out brief one pagers designed to generate specific actions.
Today all websites should be mobile friendly, as that is where the majority of traffic is coming from. However, while looks matter, trends change over time, and that means smart budgeting to account for future changes.
The Basic Essentials
The basic essentials of any real estate website likely include:
Name
Branding (i.e. logos)
Contact information
What you do and the services you offer
There should be sufficient information for website visitors to make the next step you want them to take. Less can be more, but only if that is effective in achieving the goal. Long copy may also have SEO benefits, but it shouldn’t sacrifice effectiveness and user experience. The most successful real estate pros and brands will invest in the words on their website.
Extras
Some of the extras include:
Local area and niche information
Blogs and articles
Credibility items
Social media links
Opt-in forms
Today, most experts would consider the blog the heart of most real estate marketing and lead generation efforts. If list building is key to your strategy, opt-in tools should also be prominently featured.
Who is Visiting Your Website?
It is vital to consider who visiting your website, and who you are trying to attract as customers. Everything should be tailored to them. What words and features will resonate with them? What might be an obstacle for them? It’s worth creating a well-defined customer profile or two in order to map the best path to success.
One of the most critical, yet overlooked, parts of this is where your website visitors are coming from. Whomever is creating your website, website content, and other marketing needs to know this. There is a big difference in what works depending on whether you are cold marketing prospects on the web, bringing them in from direct mail, or they are personal contacts or existing email subscribers.
Don’t Forget
1. Unique Content: Whatever you do with your real estate website, make sure you content is unique. Copy and pasting existing material from other people’s websites is just going to devalue your own. Create or commission your own copy, and keep it fresh.
2. Call to Action: You can’t expect action without calls to action. Make strong and compelling calls to action to get real results.