Just as they do in real life, first impressions can make or break your potential to generate leads online. The best real estate websites have the perfect balance of form and function to convince visitors they’ve come to the right place. Beyond that, well-crafted realtor websites are more than just advertising platforms. They are essential tools in growing the business they represent. Your website has the capability of not only attracting interested viewers, but also generating quality leads and converting those leads into clients. Before you begin, you’ll need to know the 6 features of a successful realtor website.
Upon opening your site, what’s the first thing your visitors experience? Will they like what they see and stay, or search for something better? Your website is the digital face of your business. This is where you make a connection with many potential clients for the first time. In order to be effective and add value for your clients, your website must be thoughtfully designed, intuitive, updated frequently and user friendly.
Easy Navigation
Intuitive navigation is key to a good user experience and one of our 6 features of a successful realtor website. Your website design should be user-friendly, with a well-planned navigation structure. You’ll want to make it easy for visitors to find their way from the homepage to any other page they seek. Keep your website clean and uncluttered by placing navigation buttons where users can easily find them – usually at the top and bottom of the homepage. As visitors scroll down the page, there should be easy to find prompts and call to action buttons that lead them to other pages and features.
Searchable Listings
Buyers come to your website wanting to see properties. Provide access to your area’s MLS listings
using an Internet Data Exchange (or IDX). Display local listings and provide a call to action button to let visitors know you’re there to help when they find properties they love. Design-wise, plugging in a ready-built IDX tool while marrying it to your brand and look can pose a challenge. IDX search features typically come with default settings and a one-size-fits-all style for their layouts. To achieve a seamless design, themes like our My Community Pro offer IDX service integration to easily integrate with your real estate IDX service. You can also use another listing plugin to show your properties right on your own website. This can elevate the whole search experience for website visitors and create a professional look that will help you stand out from the crowd.
Neighborhood Guides
Buyers want to know everything they can about the area in which they plan to buy. Comprehensive neighborhood guides allow you to give them a good picture, promote your region and help in their decision making. Not to mention, they are among the best real estate website features that significantly boost your chances of being found online. Additionally, offering neighborhood guides helps establish you as the local expert. You can feature real estate listings and market trends in the area as well as restaurants, shops, parks and more. You’re selling the lifestyle, not just the property. Therefore, neighborhood guides are one of our 6 features of a successful realtor website.
Easy Setup
Every page created during the My Community Pro one-click theme setup includes easy-to-use
and beautifully designed blocks that allow you to build and customize your site with the WordPress Block editor. It includes theme-specific block patterns that allow you to add groups of blocks to create the design you want quickly. Not to mention an infinite choice of color options without using code! Add your own logo or text name, change colors, add social icons or broker logo, and include header search function. Choose between a sticky or scrolling header. Change page layouts between full-width or include a sidebar. Customize the widget areas in the message bar, footer and sidebar. The theme is translation ready and mobile-friendly. You can also add plugins and use demo content to conceptualize the site of your dreams.
Ownership
It’s extremely important in today’s climate to own your own website. Many agents rely solely on using their real estate firm’s website to represent themselves. However, a single-page profile on a company site is not sufficient, as viewers only see the agent’s umbrella brand. This places them at a disadvantage and means they are not in control of incoming leads. Not only that, but agents then end up competing amongst themselves within the same firm. If you as an agent should ever choose to leave your brokerage, you would be faced with the task of not only creating a new website, but rebuilding your online presence from scratch. It grants you access to rich analytics reports, most likely unavailable on a brokerage website. These reports provide valuable information about how visitors reach your website, keywords used in searches, pages visited, and what content drives the most traffic. Agents can use this data to better understand their visitors’ behaviors and make changes to their website content accordingly.
Management and Support
Another important feature to consider is site management and technical support – because we
know the average realtor isn’t also a development expert. Installing your My Community Pro (whether an IDX powered site or one with your own independent listings) is easy and will automatically be set up for you with our sample content and all recommend plugins in seconds. However, with Winning Agent you can reach out to our experienced development team with any questions as you’re setting up your theme.
Now that you’re familiar with the 6 features of a successful realtor website, you’re ready to get started on yours. With our help, you can elevate your online presence and generate more leads for your business! Let us know if we missed any of your favorite website features in the comments below.
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