Real Estate Website Considerations and Selection Criteria
If you are a newly licensed real estate agent or broker you are ready or soon will be ready to invest in a real estate website to enhance your business prospects. For many new real estate agents, it seems that the outgo for expenses far exceeds the net incoming revenue. You have had the initial expenses for training and education to obtain your real estate license in the state or states that you intend to conduct business in. You have purchased new business cards; enrolled in one or more MLS Boards in your area and paid the initiation fees and annual dues; paid for a number of electronic key lock boxes; started advertising in local newspapers; increased the limit on your gasoline credit card; purchased calendars and other advertising media; and now you are receiving marketing calls from a number of website builders and designers all offering you the “best money can buy”.
The intention of this article is to expand your horizons on what to consider when narrowing down your choices in real estate website selection and not to recommend any particular supplier or vendor. Some of the particulars to consider before making a final real estate website selection are:
Availability of real estate content and the quality of the content to be provided by the website vendor. At a minimum, there should be 100+ pages of relevant real estate content that can be easily changed or modified by you on a real time basis versus having to submit changes to a Webmaster to be made on a time available basis.
An automatic email responder to anyone requesting additional information on your listed homes, questions etc. The auto response to any inquiry should be immediate with a copy provided to you.
The ability to quickly add/change/delete real estate listings and to have the changes made real time. Timely and accurate real estate listing information is an absolute must!
Superior website hosting capabilities where response time to user searches is ultra-fast. Slow website page load times will cause prospective customers to abandon their use of a website in favor of websites that load quickly. Assume your website visitor is using a dial-up connection and design or modify pages to assure quick load times on the slowest connections. High-speed users will be delighted as well on page load times.
The best real estate website in the universe will be of little value if it is not being found by the top search engines such as Google, MSN and Yahoo. While most website developers promise to submit any site they sell to the major search engines, that doesn’t mean you will be found anytime soon. Being on page one of any search is the ultimate objective but achieve by few. Being within the first 5 pages is somewhat more realistic but in major metropolitan cities with thousands of real estate agents, only 50 can be on the first 5 pages so how will you ever be found. Discuss this point in depth with your short list of website developers to determine what it is going to cost to maximize your SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Beware of anyone promising page one results as they may well be using “black hat” methods that can get a website domain black listed and in essence rendered unusable.
Take special care when selecting a domain site for your real estate website. The name should be short in length, must of course be unique, and be available and easy to key in by your prospects and customers. Over time you will be creating a valuable asset and carefully consider using a more generic domain name that one day could be sold at a premium versus using your own name and limiting the value should you move to a new market or exit the business.
Try to select a real estate website vendor that offers a free trial period for evaluation purposes. You likely will have to bear the cost of purchasing a domain name however. User and technical support should be available 24/7/365 with short hold times.
Remember, selecting the right real estate website vendor is one of the most important decisions made in your real estate career. It will take a number of months before your website is producing meaningful leads and therefore take the time now to make the best selection.
