Lesson 1: Establish A Real Estate Branded Site On The Web

You’ve heard it a thousand times already, especially as a realtor, but it bears repeating anyway: First impressions mean everything! This is never more true than in the online world. In your offline business, you may get numerous opportunities to make that first impression, or even more second chance opportunities to change that impression if you blow it the first time. Things are a little bit different for your online business.

If you’re lucky, you have a whopping 8 seconds to make your first impression online stick. That’s not 8 minutes mind you, that’s seconds and only if you are lucky. Because you’re website is under the gun to perform, your site needs to already have the elements in place that will persuade a visitor to stay. The following are some tips to help make that happen while looking sharp in the process.

Feature A Professional Eye-Catching Home Page Design

Of course, the best way to make a good first impression is to look like a professional. Your web site’s home page should be top notch and feature current design techniques that are popular and en vogue. Limited use of animation is a great idea to catch a visitor’s eyeballs. I say limited for a reason. It’s very easy to overdo animation on a page. There is no exact formula to help you decide on how much animation to use. Whatever your final editorial decision, be sure that the animation only serves to accent the page or create a more interactive experience.

Too much animation can actually hurt your business. An all flash animated page, while good looking, is unreadable by the search engines and can radically limit the depth to which your web site is indexed for search engine searches, that’s assuming the site gets crawled at all. Too much animation can also cause slower page load times which eat into the precious 20 seconds of time available to hook that visitor. Don’t assume that anyone has the patience to wait for a long page load time just because the design looks good.

Currently, flash animation is the most popular among website designers. CSS, Javascript and Dynamic HTML are also methods of employing animation to serve your home page needs. All of the previously mentioned methods have the potential to really enhance the visitor experience of your home page when used in moderation. When these elements are working properly on a page, they not only attract a visitor’s attention, but they also encourage them to explore further.

Websites have become a marketing staple now for the real estate industry. This is good for realtors because it gives them the opportunity to benefit from the massive amounts of prospects that flock to the Internet on a daily basis. However, the website can also present a challenge for realtors because their competition can be stiff. Every edge you can gain is a feather in your cap, and a prospect’s experience starts with a strong home page.

Be sure to use a professional company or consultant for your website design and hosting. Just because your nephew knows how to surf the Internet better than you do, and does more with his computer than check email, doesn’t make him an Internet professional. This also goes for your neighbor or friend who dabbles in web design. Trust your site design to a company that has a proven track record of serving realtors just like yourself. If you fail to do this, your site will not only look unprofessional, but it will also lack many of the key strategic content elements needed to make it a rousing success for your real estate business.

To really set yourself apart, your web site’s home page should be a reflection of your unique way of doing business. If you have an established brand that you have been using in your offline marketing, then that branding should be integrated into your online marketing as well. If you don’t already have an established brand, then your web site is the perfect place to start one.

A brand is largely understood to be a distinctive product, service or concept that sets you apart from your competition. As a realtor, your product is your service so it would benefit you to really identify how your service is different and establish a branded solution on that basis. Develop a strategy for expressing this difference in service that includes choosing distinct colors and features for your business.

The ultimate goal is to create a synergy between your offline and online marketing. Ideally, a prospect’s marketing experience should be consistent and similar, whether they are viewing an open house flyer or your home page. If successful, your branding will not only raise awareness about your real estate services and make them more recognizable, but it will also make your prospects more comfortable and trust you enough to take the next step.

Give Visitors What They Want, Quickly and Easily

Navigation is a crucial element of web design. You can have the most beautiful home page in the world, but if your visitors can’t find what they want and figure out where to go, then your 8 seconds of opportunity to hook them will be for naught. Being a realtor, the most important service or feature you can provide on your website is the property search. We will go into more detail on what makes a good property search in a later lesson. Let it be enough for our purposes in this lesson to know that the property search is the primary reason visitors will be taking the time to seek you out.

Knowing that bit of information obviously makes it key for you to feature the property search prominently on your home page. There are marketing studies like Eyetrack III that clearly reveal how people read. In a previous eyetracking study by Eyetrack, it was learned that the hot zones for visitor eyeballs are clearly locked into the top left portion of a web page. The diagram to the right is a rough summary of the Eyetrack results. The diagram is based on an ordinary web page’s viewable space broken up into three zones of importance for a visitor viewing the screen. Priority 1 is interpreted to be the most important content with zones 2 and 3 following suit.

If the top left portion of the page is where your clients are looking, then you need to feature the services they want in that spot. Additionally, any other special features or services you offer should find a home in that portion of your home page as well.

So now you know where to place the key features of your home page. You also need to make the other important services and features that you offer easily accessible to your clients. That means that other services, like a free home evaluation form, need to be available on the home page navigation. Don’t bury these items deep in your site hoping a visitor will find them. These services should be plainly visible and accessible. That means they shouldn’t be more than two clicks away from a visitor if you want them to be effective.

Let’s review the major points of what we just discussed above:

• First impressions are everything and this is never more true than in the online world
• Make sure your home page design is impressive enough to get your visitors’ attention and make you look like a pro
• Brand your website to reflect your unique way of doing business
• Give visitors what they want as quickly and easily as possible
• Put what visitors want in the hot zones of your home page where they will be looking for them

You keep the five main points above in mind when crafting your website design and your visitors will thank you with added business and positive word of mouth.

Keep a sharp eye out for the next lesson. In that lesson, we will get more technical and talk about the most important element of any real estate website.