5 Website DOs and DON’Ts
What should you be doing to maximize your website?
1. Have a clear definite purpose for the website. Create a niche for yourself, narrow in on your target market and increase your public presence by focusing on a particular area instead of trying to be seen in too many places. Reinforce that you’re the go-to agent for that area.
2. Add content regularly. I cannot stress this enough. Without sufficient new content being added to your website, it will hinder your search engine ranking potential. Adding a significant blog post once at least every couple weeks, or creating a new custom page and filling it with local market information about your farm areas are good ways to start adding new content.
3. Make sure to have several contact options available. While you may prefer a phone call to gauge the initial level of interest a person might have, that same person might prefer to write you an e-mail and gauge by the speed of your reply and its level of professionalism if they feel you’d be a worthwhile candidate to service their business. By providing multiple options, from phone numbers, to an e-mail address and/or contact form, you’re giving a person the freedom to choose how they want to interact with you, and this added freedom can go a long way in helping foster the right type of first impression a user gets on your website. If using a form, you may want to include a field indicating your visitor’s preferred method of correspondence.
4. Advertise your website. Paying for services such as PPC (Pay Per Click) and/or professional SEO (Search Engine Optimization) are useful ways of increasing your website’s traffic. Take the time and post on forums and social media networks, use these services to reach broader audiences and refer them back to your website for all their real estate needs. Include your website in the footer of your e-mails and on your signs, business cards and all print media advertising. If your website address has several words or initials, capitalize the first letter of each word. It is easier for people to read and remember “www.JoeExampleRealEstate.com” than” www.joeexamplerealestate.com”.
5. Show a bit of personality... preferably your own! By adding your own personal take on things, you break away from the cookie-cutter feel that many websites evoke. Put forth the effort to add a biography and an interests section. By detailing some of your activities and interests outside of real estate, you’re offering another way that clients can relate to you. Building a solid business relationship based on friendship can also lead to potentially fruitful business dealings down the road.
What shouldn’t you be doing with your website?
1. Do not clutter your website or make it difficult to navigate. It will frustrate users and discourage them from returning to your website. User-friendliness is essential to creating a website that makes people willing to return to use it again... and to tell their friends about it.
2. Do not encumber your website with too many images, especially ones of large file sizes. This will increase the loading time, forcing a user to wait before being able to view and access all the materials on the page. This too will act as a discouragement for those considering returning to the website. People dislike having to wait, especially online, so don’t make them when it isn’t necessary!
3. Do not mix and match uncomplimentary colours that turn the look of your website into an eyesore, instead an oasis of visual comfort. A cohesive colour scheme that embodies a sense of style and sets the appropriate mood, even if that might not necessarily be a reflection of your personal tastes, is often the best approach when selecting what colours to use. Any hue of neon is usually a bad choice for a background colour. Whereas subtle hints of baby blue over a soft white background can create a warming effect that sets the viewer at ease while browsing through your website’s content.
4. Do not misrepresent yourself. Not only is it contrary to industry regulations, it is plain unprofessional and a major no-no in any industry. Successful agents rely on word-of-mouth to help keep in business, and if people get word that you aren’t who you say you are, or do not deliver on the promises you make, it can spread like wildfire and present a major hurdle in your career that may take years to overcome. Honesty truly is the best policy.
5. Don’t try and make your website the one-stop-shop for ALL types of properties in ALL areas. It just doesn’t work. Although you might wish to offer your services to a long list of cities, by spreading yourself too thin, you aren’t properly attending to your core market. If you start to neglect your core market because you are trying to develop a foothold presence in too many other markets, not only will your core market start to dry up as they turn to other agents specifically committed to their area of interest, but you’ll also be failing to improve your presence in your core market, perhaps even decreasing in search engine ranking and potentially losing more business in the process.
Authored By: Bryan Coughlin, Client Relations