Randy Eagar, CRS

Design and Content Issues

 

 

Above all is being found. What’s the point of having the best website on the planet if nobody knows you’re there? SEO, or Search Engine Optimization is to website marketing as real estate agents are to home and condo marketing.

Create your own website without the use of a professional to market it for you makes you a FSBO with your website marketing. And you wonder why you’re not getting leads.

Design can heavily affect the site’s success. The reason why a viewer will stay on your website is primarily content.

But with a pleasing and professional design, it will force the viewer to look just a little bit longer than they originally would have to see where the content is. This affects the site’s success.

Websites rise or fall depending upon content. If you never show the viewer good content, you’ve lost them. The content and design must dove tail one with another.

 The interesting thing is that Good content can make up for poor design. If the viewer is engaged in reading compelling content, they won’t care what the site looks like.
Focus on content first, and then build your design around your content. Know what you have to say, and then figure out a way to show what you want to say.

1- IDX/MLS Access

This is how your prospects are searching the MLS. They are going through agent websites in the comfort of their own homes looking for homes that meet their needs. One area of conflict is whether or not to force these prospects to sign a contact form in order to gain access to the MLS data. In many cases I’ve heard agents say that they feel that this causes buyers to go elsewhere, and others say that this is the only way to get the names and email addresses of their viewers. The best way that I can advise you is to try it both ways and see what works for you.

2- Featured Listings

One thing that we know is that sellers want to stand out from the crowd. They want to know that their home and their situation is unique and worth paying more for. Therefore, your marketing must exemplify this need.

3- Drip Marketing Campaigns

It’s only natural that we should spend just a little more time on some specifics of Drip Marketing as it’s so important, and is done in many different ways. Many of you think of “Drip Marketing” as sending out email notices or newsletters on a regular basis. However while that is “drip marketing”, that’s not the kind of drip marketing that will make your buyer’s socks roll up and down. What is most effective for “drip marketing” is when you give your potential buyer the ability to fill out a form of their preferences in a new home or condo and notify them of any current listings that meet their needs or an instant notification when a new listing comes on the market that meets these parameters.

Do you think that your prospects would like to know when new listings come out that meet their particular parameters; even before other agents know about them? You bet they do. And by definition, you’ll need to get their name, phone number and email in order to process this information for them. It’s a real win-win. For our clients that are making consistently over $100,000 just from their website, every one of them use this kind of drip marketing to magnify their leads to sales.

4- “Static” Page Content

Remember this one word: Compelling. The question is how can you make your website more compelling? A great deal of this can happen because of your content. The question is how can you write the kind of text that will make it persuasive for your prospects to want to stay around?

5- “Dynamic” Page Content

Dynamic page content is just the opposite of Static page content. Where Static page content can’t be changed by the viewer, it’s the purpose of dynamic pages to be changed by the viewer.

6- Video Tours

Video tours are now coming into their own. With faster bandwidth and more common video players and receivers, this is becoming the viewing method of choice. Note how our first example even gives a floorplan of the home, and shows which room we are viewing. Click on a different room and you jump to the video of that room.

7- Web 2.0 Blogs, Podcasts, Video, Social Network

Web 2.0 brings with it an entirely new way of communicating on the Internet.

For example if we look at blog sites, most of them were originally built as you see here with the use of text. Two important things that you’ll want to make sure that you take advantage of is the use of hypertext that will link your viewer to more information, and the use of RSS Feeds. The later gives your viewer the ability to “subscribe” to your blog site so that as you post new ideas and thoughts, these get sent to those who subscribe, just like a newspaper or magazine subscription.

8- Mash-Ups

Mash-ups are the combination of two or more technologies. The ones that we typically see are the use of the IDX with home searches and mapping software like Google Maps.

For a quick 2-minute video see Website Content Features at our WebsTarget website.

www.WebsTarget.com