As a real estate professional you know that potential buyers judge a home based on how it looks from the outside. The same thing applies with your website’s look and functionality. You only get one chance to make a that great first impression with your viewers and in most cases it is decided within the first 15 seconds of them arriving to your website. The look of your website speaks for both you and your real estate company, so do not take it lightly. Ask yourself
- Do I still convert as much traffic into leads as I did in the past?
- How long are people staying on my site before leaving?
- What are they looking at on my website?
- Is my website still the same as the day it was developed?
- Where does my site rank within the search engines?
- Does your local competitors web site look and navigate better then yours?
- Do you have the funds to have your website revamped?
Do I still convert as much traffic into leads as I did in the past?
This is where analyzing your website data becomes crucial and many real estate professionals either do not know or just skip this all together. Look at the traffic data from the past (go back a year or more) and look to see the amount of traffic you were receiving compared to the amount of leads that were made. If the traffic has stayed the same and the leads have dropped, a change will be in order. If the traffic has dropped a lot, then a change in your marketing strategy is needed. If you never had the traffic or the leads then once again, a change in our marketing strategy will be needed. Your real estate website speaks not only about what you sell, but about you as a person and why viewers can trust you when either finding them a new home or selling their current home. Traffic is nice, but if it is not converting for you then that traffic is not doing you much good.
How long are people staying on my site before leaving?
Again you will want to analyze your website traffic data and see how long people are staying on your website. Are they hitting the front page and leaving soon after? Are they hitting an internal page and not looking at anything else? This is a problem for many real estate professionals and they think getting more traffic will solve that problem. It will not solve anything, it will just lead to a bigger problem with why your marketing budget is costing you more then it should. Do you have some type of call to action on the home page that stands out telling people what to do? Can they easily find potential things they may be looking for? Ex. search properties, find out more about you and your services, contact information, etc. Keeping the visitor is important because you want them to continue looking through your website. This is where properly laid out content, easy site navigation and a clean layout are important. If your website has the look of 2005, cluttered with links to basically crap nobody clicks on, site loaded with banners or has a navigation menu that is a mile long it could be to much for the viewer and they will leave. People want information and they want it now, so give it to them and remove all he fluff and cluttered crap.
What are they looking at on my website?
Find out what pages your visitors are looking at and see what tweaks you can make on those pages. Are they hitting the home page and then leaving? Are they going to the search page but not looking at any properties? Are they doing a search and only looking at one property then leaving your website? These are all key factors in determining what changes you need to make within your website and why analyzing your traffic data is important. Some search features you may think are nice are actually hurting your conversion ratio, like making the viewer fill out a short form before being allowed to search your site. See how many people are hitting that form then leaving your website, in most areas people skip that and move on as they do not want to give out any personal information. Google maps are nice, but does it make searching your site a pain in the ass? Get rid of them and make it easier for the viewer to find what they are looking for.
Is my website still the same as the day it was developed?
This is a problem for many real estate professionals and they think it does not matter, just bring more traffic, more traffic and more traffic. If your website is older and has the same boring layout or used a built in template from your hosting company, no longer looks professional or has the same out dated information then in most cases it is time to make some serious changes. They say never judge a book by it’s cover, but on the internet how your site looks is a huge factor if people will stay or continue to look around. The same applies when trying to sell a home, you may tell the owners “you might want to consider updating the kitchen appliances to help sell the house”. Keep that in mind when looking at your own website, the same thing may hold true to you.
Where does my site rank within the search engines?
This is one you have to be careful with as it can either boost your conversions or kill your ranking. If your website is not ranking for any of your targeted keywords then change making changes (if done properly) can do nothing but benefit your website. However, if your website is ranking well for certain keywords but not converting then you need to be careful as to what you change on the site. Making drastic content changes may lower your ranking within the search engines, so you may want to consult with someone first. The same thing applies to your website layout, going for a cleaner, less cluttered CSS based layout can be much better then the heavily coded table based layouts from years past. Once again, be careful with what you update if your website is ranking well.
Does your local competitors web site look and navigate better then yours?
Look at other real estate website within your local area and compare it to your own. Does it look more professional? Is it up to date? Is the layout much cleaner and information easy to find? Remember people will judge a website simply on how it looks, you may have better services or more experience but if compared to a better looking website people will go with them instead based off of the look. You want to out rank your local competition, so revamping your website can not only help you do that, but help you convert that traffic into leads for yourself.
Do you have the funds to have your website revamped?
I know times are tough for people in the real estate industry, but be warned hiring just anyone to revamp your website can make or break it’s success. Trying to do these things yourself to save some money would not be wise either, if it were then you would not be reading this article. Do not just hire anyone to revamp your website based only on price, I know several web design companies that do sites for cheap, but they are harder to rank for within the search engines based off of how they are designed. You want someone or a company with not only design skills, but marketing skills as well. Building a website that looks good is easy, building a real estate website that looks good and is built with future marketing (search engines included) plans is KEY.
You get what you pay for and that is why going the cheaper route can end up costing you more money later down the road. If you do not have the funds to have your website done properly, you may want to just wait. You want it done right the first time so you can have a website that not only looks good, but from a marketing standpoint acts and converts as good as it looks.
Conclusion
Keep these things in mind and realize why you should start analyzing your website traffic data. If you have no way of doing that, Google Analytics is free and can be installed into any existing website. Remember your website is the face of you and your company, you dress nice when meeting clients, so dress your site the same way to help boost the potential it may have on your business and marketing strategies.
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