Developing and Planning Your Real Estate Website

Real estate professionals are in the business of marketing and your real estate website is your marketing face on the Internet. The increasing importance of the internet to real estate sales is more evident everyday. Thus, gone are the days where you can afford to just slap up any old website and be done with it.

You need to have a flexible website that will serve as an efficient marketing tool and is focused on your customer. By providing your customers with a large variety of useful information, you will be showing them rather than telling them that you are an expert. The following information will give you an overview of what you will need in a website in order to be effective in acquiring new customers via the Internet.

To Template or not to Template?

The first question you need to answer when developing a real estate website is whether to use a templated system or to have a custom website designed for you. Templated websites will cost you much less in terms of development fees. These fees generally run from $200-$1,500 depending on the features you choose. Monthly hosting fees are usually comparable with a custom designed website and will vary from $15 to $100/month.

The main advantage of templated websites besides the initial cost are the amount of time and effort it takes to maintain them. All templated websites will include a “back-end” control panel which should easily allow you to add, delete and modify your webpges. Generally speaking custom designed websites are much harder to maintain and require more technical knowledge and time to do the same required upkeep. Also, a custom website will cost a minimum of $1,000 and can go as high as $5,000 for development costs.

Early on most templated websites had few options and were very “cookie-cutter” like. However, these days many companies offer very sophisticated templated sites that bear no resemblance to their “cookie-cutter” ancestors. In fact, many real estate web development companies now offer a hybrid templated/custom design that allows you to customize their templates in order to give you a completely unique look.

Thus, unless you are very tech savvy or have a staff person/assistant who is, we believe that most real estate professionals are best served by a templated or customized templated design from a company that specializes in real estate websites.

Basic Features You Need

  1. Easy to maintain and update are your first priorities—if your website doesn't ever change or grow, you are just wasting your money. So, it needs to be easy to do!
  2. You must have the ability to add photos to your listings pages-studies have shown that consumers respond best to listings that include photos.
  3. Many websites come with pre-packaged local content. You must have the ability to change and add to this content. Local content and information about your farm areas will not only benefit the visitors to your website, it will help you achieve a higher search engine ranking.
  4. Interactive tools that you can use to entice the consumer to interact with you such as: CMA (Comparative Market Analysis forms), "auto-responder" free reports and for the consumer to be able to email listings to someone else.
  5. Search engine optimization must be part of the package and it should include initial optimization with options for on-going SEO. The SEO should also include key word analysis for your entire website, not just inclusion in directories and title/meta tag optimization.
  6. Ability to add your local IDX and MLS data if it is available in your area.
  7. Finally, tracking is one the most important basic features you must have. You need to be able to track the visitors to your websites including: how many, where they came from, what key words they used to find you in search engines, most popular entry and exit pages, and the average amount of time a visitor spends on your website. These are the basics.

Things to Avoid

  1. Avoid using frames on your pages. Many early template websites were based on frames, but most end users dislike them and they can be very confusing to navigate.
  2. Don't use flash intros or anything else that makes the user wait to get to your homepage.
  3. Avoid using animation or sound effects—bells and whistles like these will not help you sell real estate.
  4. Avoid using dark backgrounds with white or light type. It is much easier to read black or dark grey type on a light background.

Choose a Specialist!

Fortunately for real estate professionals, there are now many options when developing a real estate website. Currently there are many firms that specialize only in real estate agent/broker websites. These are the firms that you should concentrate on when choosing a new website or a redevelopment of your current website.