One Ingredient You Need for Successful Real Estate Website Design
Sure, there are lots of factors that go into a real estate website design. But there’s one word that best describes what any agent or broker must aim for in their website design – and that word is “wow.”
Yes, the “wow” factor. It’s not a very technical web design term such as HTML, XML, PHP, MySQL, CSS or SEO.
But at the end of the day, it’s not web technicians who you are looking to impress with your real estate website. It’s home buyers and sellers. And the one item that will have the most impact on them, can best be described with this least technical three letter word.
Because, as real estate professionals know, it’s not the technology that sells homes, it’s the emotion. When people check out local real estate websites, they are not going to care about the number of bits and bytes that went into your real estate website design. They are going to be more affected by its appearance. The First Impression!
As they rapidly click from one real estate website to the next, does your site have the grabbing power to stop them?
Can they see within three seconds or less, that your real estate website has the information they need to make one of the biggest purchasing decisions they will ever make in their life?
Take the Roywheeler.com website design.
Here’s why this is a great example of “wow” real estate website design.
– A simple search field on the home page. Do you know Google, that gazillion dollar company, has hardly changed the format of their home page since they started in 1998. Meanwhile, their search competitors such as Yahoo and MSN have desperately gone through dozens of design transformations.
Want to know why Google has never changed? Because Google’s website design answers the primary reason why people came to the site in the first place. To search for something.
People don’t want to think or dig or flip through multiple pages when they are looking for information. On RoyWheeler.com, you can see the home search functionality right there in the middle of the screen. Consumers know this is the place to start.
Your real estate website design must also have these key elements:
– Powerful Background image. As a real estate professional, you are selling specific items – homes, a lifestyle, a location, a service. You don’t want a boring background on your website. You want people to get excited about the neighborhoods you serve and the properties you can find for them.
RoyWheeler.com has a powerful background image that evokes a nice warm feeling that yes, this area is a pleasant place to live. This site reflects the positive attributes of this neighborhood. That is going to create a warm feeling for any visitor.
When you consider the stress and anxiety people face when choosing a home, a nice background image almost has a soothing effect. In the minds of the consumer, they can feel that “I am making the right decision searching for a home in this location.”
— Simple navigation. One simple test of a great real estate website design is this. Does it make you struggle in any way, even the tiniest bit, to help a visitor find what they want? If it does, you risk losing a prospect.
Real estate agents and brokers spend a lot of time and money promoting themselves. They don’t want to lose even one potential buyer (or seller) of a $750,000 property just because that person got frustrated trying to get around their real estate website.
As you can see on RoyWheeler.com, all the key channels – Home, Resources, Communities, Exploring Charlottesville, About Us, Farms and Estates, Relocation and Contact navigation buttons are all easy to find.
— Valuable data. This one is the game changer. In this era of big data, it is the next big thing. As everyone knows, there is a lot of ancillary information that goes into choosing a property in addition to picking the number of bedrooms and bathrooms.
For too long, many real estate agents and brokers just threw up a bunch of listings on their site and let the home buyers try to find all the other information they needed on their own. They made their customers scramble to try to find reliable sources of information on schools, home values, neighborhoods, etc. This is bad real estate website design!
Want to know the secret to separating yourself from the rest of the real estate pack? Be the resource for people with this other vital information.
See RoyWheeler.com. He’s got channels right in the middle of his home page showing this information. This site lets consumers know, right up front, that it is a resource for everything they need to know about the neighborhoods where they are searching for homes.
Real estate website design Items that appeal to your Seller audience.
It gets even better. Check out a featured property. There you will find buttons for Details about the Home, Maps, Schools, Area information, Businesses and Home Values.
It’s all there. A consumer doesn’t have to bounce all over the web universe to dig up this information. That’s a million-dollar resource. Buying a home is a huge decision – offering the tools for people to make this decision is a lifesaver.
This is what real estate web design boils down to – when a person visits a website, they can tell which sites care about them and which sites don’t. The ones that go the extra mile with their layout, their navigation and their information. That shows the owners of this site truly care about home buyers and sellers. That represents an agent who will go the extra mile for his or her clients.
As you can see, while the word “wow” is a simple one, there’s a lot of work and details that go into earning that distinction.
For more information on the real estate website design services offered by Home Junction request a free no obligation demo.
