7 Essential Website Fixes for Real Estate Agents
In today’s real estate world, it’s not enough to just have a website; it has to be an effective one. You need a clear and easy path for interested visitors to convert into leads. Your website has to promote your brand, speak to your professionalism, and encourage visitors to explore.
Is your website converting leads? Try these seven tips to make your website more effective:
- Make it easy to contact you.
This is one of the simplest website fixes, but it’s probably the most crucial. Put your phone number and email address in multiple prominent positions, such as your top navigation or your footer, so that leads never have to look for it. Using interactive contact features like forms or click to call buttons are even better. Many people will visit your website from their mobile phones, so they are less likely to dig deep into your website to find contact information. Make the jump from reading about you to contacting you as simple and speedy as possible. You need to capture a lead’s interest in the moment to prevent them from going elsewhere.
Make sure these contact opportunities are accompanied by calls to action in the form of text. Use clear verbs, like “Buy or sell your next home with me” or “Learn more about what sets us apart” to encourage visitors to engage. To make a truly effective call to action, combine verbs with an explanation about why the action will benefit the lead: “Contact me! I’m here to help with all your real estate needs” or “Contact us to experience our award-winning customer service” or “Click here to download my exclusive advice on searching for a new home.”
- Know your brand story.
What sets you apart? Your website is your best chance to show a lead what they will get out of working with you that no one else can provide. Convince them by showcasing what you’ve done for others. Leads are more likely to respond to stories with an obvious how and why: how you’ve helped other clients, and why your experience makes you the right agent for them.
If you’re having trouble getting started, consider these questions and build your messaging from the answers: who are your clients? What part of buying or selling are you best at? What do you enjoy about being an agent? What part of the market do you know the most about? What kinds of industry or community connections do you have?
- Push traffic to your site.
Post and publicize quality content that reinforces your brand story. The key to a traffic generation is posting original content and posting often. Fortunately, these two tasks don’t have to completely overlap. To get your post count up and make posting easier, subscribe to a service like ZipperAgent that includes automated social media posting. Then use some of the time you’ve freed up to create personal, local content. When planning this content, come back to your brand. What information is relevant to your demographic? What questions do clients routinely ask you?
Consider making videos. It’s not as hard as it sounds, and because it’s easier for viewers to interact with videos, they’re a great way to increase credibility and name recognition. Videos give viewers a more personal sense of who you are and how you run your business. They’re also a great way to show off your knowledge of the market and the local area. Consider profiling local business owners or answering some questions you commonly get from new clients.
Videos are also useful promotional tools because they work well on multiple platforms. Share them to your social media profiles to drive traffic to your website. If this doesn’t bring in enough traffic, consider targeted, paid advertising. Facebook Ads and Google AdWords are two of the most popular ways to drive traffic to websites.
- Put your listings front and center.
Most potential buyers visit agents’ sites to look for listings, so give these visitors what they’re looking for. If they’re interested in the listings you showcase, they’re more likely to explore your website, find your other resources, and reach out to you. Again, it’s important to know your audience. What price ranges and towns do you sell the most homes in? Give these listings higher billing, and don’t forget to include a “contact me to learn more” option.
- Optimize your website for mobile.
Think about how many things you look up on your smartphone every day. Leads are doing the same thing. Don’t design for one screen size, and stay away from complicated graphics or tiny details. Make sure important information doesn’t get buried on the mobile site and that everything is large and clear enough for users to navigate without a mouse. If the mobile version of your website is difficult to use, unpleasant to look at, or devoid of useful information, leads will look elsewhere.
- Get an integrated CRM.
If you follow these tips, you’ll be getting tons of leads, but that’s only the first step to building a successful business. You also have to manage these leads and follow up with them. For that, you need a good CRM. The most important thing to keep in mind when selecting a CRM is why you need one in the first place. Any tool that doesn’t fulfill your needs isn’t worth your time and money.
So, what should a good CRM do for you? It should help you systematically stay in touch with all of your contacts to speed up your contract to close process. It should automatically pull all the contact information captured by your website so you don’t lose leads by shuffling between systems. It should also pull other publically available data, like social media profiles, into its system so it’s easier to learn about leads. ZipperAgent does all of this, and we’d be happy to show you how.
- Combine these!
You’ve probably noticed that these tips rely on one another. That’s because an effective website doesn’t focus solely on any one tactic or tool. Like your marketing and your services, your website needs to be flexible, friendly, and clear. When all of your website’s features are working together with a CRM, you’ll generate more leads and follow through with more clients. Follow these tips to build an engaging website that brings in leads.
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