For those in the real estate industry, a good website is essential if you don’t want to leave money on the table and stay ahead of the competition. Marketers are exploring new ways of advertising real estate but you can never go wrong with a well-built website.
Why?
A website is a key ingredient in making a critical first impression. This gives you credibility and helps you generate new prospects. We need to acknowledge the fact that the competitive landscape is getting tougher and a microsite or a basic listing isn’t enough anymore.
So the question remains, how do you stand out from the competition?
After working on a few projects and concepts, we came up with key things to consider when building a good real estate website. One that will help capture interest, increase user engagement and help you create a lead generation machine.
Functional Design
With the increase of digital channels, website design needs to be more functional than ever. Your website needs to be functional across a range of devices. Our research has shown that about 60% of searches start online, half of this on mobile devices. Simply put, you need to make sure your website looks great on all devices.
As designers, we have discovered that User experience (UX) is more than aesthetics. Quick and easy access to information, minimal gaps in navigation, clear and easy to understand copy is important in creating a good UX.
Don’t bury useful information five or six clicks deep on the site, and wonder why people don’t convert on those pages.
Expectations have evolved in the last few years to where people won’t put up with poor design, frustrating navigation, or inconsistent layouts. If it’s hard to find what they need, they’ll leave and go to another site.
Great SEO Titles and Descriptions
Search Engines have completely changed how people find and consume information. Primarily, when people look for information on real estate, they often use search engines. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a set of techniques that we use to lift a website’s search results to the top of the list and get targeted traffic. It’s not as straight forward as it sounds – however, there are a few key things you can do to get visibility. These are;
- Page Titles – (60 char max)
- Meta Descriptions (150 char max)
Page Titles – This is the blue text that you’ll normally see in the search results. It is one of the most important elements that search engine algorithms analyze when choosing pages. To appear for a given search, keywords that closely match the search most normally be in the page title.
Meta Descriptions – This is the description that appears underneath. It needs to be attractive so that more people click on results when they do appear.
Great titles and descriptions, together, can make a big difference to website traffic – and ultimately sales and leads. But remember that SEO is supplementary to having great content on your website after people get there.
Maps & Amenities Information
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I would argue that a map is more than a thousand words. Location is very important in real estate. Why explain so much when you can display information intuitively using a map?
It’s not just the physical location of a commercial real estate property that’s important but also the amenities nearby: bars, restaurants, banks, transport links, and other services. Even better if you can highlight those too.
Photography
The best way to sell space is by using photos. Having a striking combination of professionally done photos is fundamental. The main image should be bold, hi-res and attention-grabbing. You need to have a good balance of images that show off the space at it’s best. Most people will be tempted to fill the website with large hi-res images but this will just slow down the website. You can use Kraken.io, a freemium tool or Compressor.io which is free to compress your images.
Soto in New Zealand has used hi-res images throughout their website to showcase their property.
Be Extra
Technology is rapidly changing the web space. Increasingly, commercial real estate businesses are utilizing advanced technologies to showcase their properties, including virtual tours, 360-degree camera coverage, and interviews. Keep these things in mind as they will only become more prevalent in the space as the technology becomes more accessible and expected by your potential tenants and investors.
There is a lot to unpack when it comes to real estate websites. Project briefs vary and may not look alike. However, by implementing most of what we have covered in this post, you will be in a very good position to start selling on digital. You can download this short presentation on our development process to better understand how to go about it.
You can also give us a shout out on hello@brand2d.com and find out how we can take your real estate business to the next level.
Just before I sign out, here are a few of our favorite, hand-picked real estate websites.
