5 Secrets of The Best Real Estate Websites

What do the best real estate websites all have in common? Well, they do a few things really well.

The most successful websites will help drive visitors, educate or entertain them, and keep them around long enough to build trust.

This trust, along with having systems to provide your visitors with immense value is what will make the difference when it comes down to generating leads.

So if generating leads is high on your list of priorities, make sure you focus on the following 5 things...

1) Beautiful Design

Did you know that 94% of consumer mistrust stems from bad website design?

If you’re looking to have the best real estate website possible... One that is built to convert visitors to leads, you should focus first on your design.

In our experience, these are some of the most important real estate website design principles:

• Simplicity (De-clutter, remove text blocks)
• Usability (Easy to navigate and consume content)
• Consistency (In styling, like colors and fonts)

If you’re interested in learning more, check out our process behind designing real estate websites.

2) Hyper-Local SEO

I mentioned providing value above. A big way to do that is through blogging/content marketing.

Writing articles, and creating pages on your website that are dedicated to providing valuable information about your local market is essential. Especially with the higher-level searches taken over by Zillow and Trulia.

Not only is hyper-local SEO the best way to generate visitors to your site. It’s also the best way to capture more leads.

Why? Hyper-local content inherently targets buyers and sellers further in the process.

3) Mobile Optimization

In 2015, Google put mobile optimization at the very top of their list of ranking factors.

This meant that a ton of websites lost their spot on Google searches simply because they weren’t optimized to show across all devices.

If you want your real estate website to generate leads (especially using SEO), make sure it’s mobile friendly.

4) Content Tools

Blogging is a hot topic for a lot of agents right now. It’s important to keep in mind that consistency is one of the dividing factors between successful and unsuccessful content marketers.

For this reason, it’s important to make content creation easy. WordPress really helps with this.

We also use our own plug-in called Blog Assist which makes it easy for our clients to write and cite local newspapers/blogs.

5) Value Based Lead Capture

Lead capture is the place where a LOT of agents go wrong.

Too often we’ve seen that people want to stick a lousy form up, with no value proposition and expect the leads to come rolling in.

This is why we built our REV (Request Exchange of Value) system. If you want people to opt-in, you have to offer something:

• Free buyer or seller guide
• Personalized CMA
• Automatic Home Valuation
• Property Search (W/ IDX)

Offer something of value, and get the permission to market to your leads in return...

6) BONUS: Trust & Authority

The best real estate websites demonstrate trust and authority. Do this in a few ways:

• Reviews & Testimonials
• Case studies
• Important Figures (Yrs. in biz, # of clients served)

Make sure your visitors see you in the best light possible. This helps them envision how you will serve their real estate needs.

In Conclusion

This article covered 5 tips for the best real estate websites... But at it’s core, the ideas are simply about providing value, and a great experience.

Creating a user experience that is friendly and promotes consumption of your content are the biggest ways you can affect the amount of leads you generate online.

Focus on value, and the rest will fall into place.