What Are The Most Important Elements To Look For In A New Real Estate Website?
What are you trying to achieve with your real estate website?
As a Realtor, you want your website to be a valuable resource to your current and prospective buyers. You know you want easy search functionality, bold photos, and quick access to featured listings. These are all simple requests and easy to accomplish…
…but what else should a real estate website have in order to serve a Realtor’s business and clients?
We have helped many Realtors optimize their existing websites and develop new websites for their business, and we have found that there are specific features that every Realtor website requires.
These tips go beyond just boosting visitor engagement and simplifying real estate searching; they also drive traffic through social media, digital marketing, and organic search results.
So, What Should Every Real Estate Website Include?
1. Eye-Catching Photography
All real estate websites should be oriented around real estate photography. Make sure your site supports the use of high quality photos in slideshows and listings to allow for better property viewing.
Today’s buyers search properties extensively online before they pick up the phone to talk to a Realtor, so help them out by providing access to the information they will need later in their buyer’s journey.
2. Visitor Registration
Once a client or prospect gets to your site, you want to encourage them to come back to your website and use it as their online real estate home base.
All real estate websites should offer the ability for clients or prospects to register for updates on certain properties, alerts for new listings in certain towns, a monthly newsletter, or blog updates.
3. Social Media Integration
Social media is proving to be a wonderful playground for Realtor engagement with prospective clients, current clients, and partners. Providing easy access to your listings via your Facebook real estate business page (yes, you want social media marketing too!), or Instagram feed, ensures that you are giving your clients easy access to good information.
4. Community Pages
Sites that provide quick searches for towns and communities make it easier for their visitors to find what they are looking for.
We encourage our Realtors to include community pages for every town in their area, which include all MLS listings and are numbered on a map and featured on the page.
5. Featured Listings Slideshow
This enables Realtors to highlight their own listings on their home page. Customizing a site to reflect your region and listings will provide your clients with an easy view of what you have available and further markets existing properties.
6. Search Engine Optimized
Many websites today come with the SEO framework enabled but not completed. The challenge is that Realtors are busy focusing on their own listings and their own clients and don’t have time to learn how to optimize a site for SEO and take advantage of plugins.
Make sure that the website you implement is search engine optimized for your towns, your region, and your name. SEO is one of the most important things that your website MUST have to be found online.
7. Integrated Blog Functionality
Writing a blog on your website is a fantastic way to increase your site’s search engine value and make sure your website ranks well on Google’s result page.
Maybe you are not ready to commit to writing a blog, but if you’re getting a new website make sure you have a platform that supports blogging so that you have the option to blog in the future.
Having a successful website is one of the most important steps a Realtor can make for his or her business. The design process can be exciting as you define or refine your personal real estate brand and pick and choose the colors, images, and photography that reflect your style and what you believe will appeal to your clients.
Your website is your best opportunity to tell your unique story and attract new customers. Create a website that is not only visually appealing but is also a valuable resource to your target audience.
These tips will help support and grow your real estate business. As you enjoy the process, keep in mind the elements in this post so you can get the most out of your new site.
Thanks for stopping by,
Laura
Editor’s Note: Originally published in 2016, this article was updated and edited in October 2018.
