You might be a business owner or marketer in the real estate business, and you might as well be a business man or entrepreneur wanting to enter the business of real estate from the online perspective, you might know how to start or you might not. This article is for you anyhow
Let me talk about some forms of online existence and how to benefit from each.
If you are an agent you might want to build your own website to announce your services. But the fact is that the web is not only used nowadays as a medium of just introducing oneself, it is heavily becoming a medium of conducting real business, and becoming a way to get new leads for every item of product or service you deliver.
Now let’s be practical and enter directly to the subject, what should be included in your site then? There are some basic sections that have to be included anyhow like any business as: About your company (who you are, vision, mission, …), services, projects, contact details and contact forms to let your client contact you, a Google map that shows your office location and how to reach it. Then the most important part relevant to your business is your current projects and listings.
Projects section: The current projects section should contain everything about each project you are marketing with the ability to let the visitor inquire about any specific property or the project itself. This will get leads to your mail box or phone. This section should have all information as the location of the place on Google Map, the master plan of the whole project, the name of the project with all identity branding signs as the logo, slogan, and colors. Another section will have the details of the project such as a Photo Gallery containing a set of rotating photos that show different sceneries of the project even if they are virtually drawn, also Virtual Video tours can add a great impact and can be used as a viral marketing tool if put first on Youtube. Then there is a section for the available unit designs (unit plans) where you can see the different unit layouts and plans that give the internal details of the properties. You can also add a section for the project stages documenting the real work in photos as an evidence of rightful delivery.
The listings section: this section is dedicated to all the individual units you want to showcase to site visitors, so if you are selling projects you can list all units into that section so that every unit can be inquired or booked directly from site. You can also have separate properties not related to a certain project that you want to announce, so they are also located into the listings section. Actually you do not have to be selling whole projects in order to have a listings section. Some real estate agents only sell separate properties so they do not need a “Projects” section in their web site.
Design considerations: as every site the website should be elegant and give the right first impression about your business, so the targeted visitor to the site can understand from first sight that he is in the right place, that is essential for any website representing any business, but let me add some important specific aspects you should take care of:
Powerful Search: The website should be equipped with a powerful search engine with an advanced search that can facilitate the visitor’s search and has all the needed information that he is searching for as: city – type of unit – rent or sale – no. of bedrooms – …. This will give him the results he need with less effort and time, this is enough to make your site attracting property finders and have repeat visits and hence direct leads that will be transformed to more sales.
Those were the most important aspects of the site itself. However you will have to make online marketing efforts in order to have traffic on your site. The good news is that using online marketing is much easier and cost effective to attract leads as the can easily move to your site after they see your advert somewhere without having to move in the heavy city traffic. Please search our blog for ways to market your site or contact me through this form.
Now if you are an investor and want to enter the real estate business, then you can read that article: Real Estate Online Portals and how to make profits out of them
