If you want to be competitive in the real estate industry, you need to ensure that you’re providing potential customers with the best experience from the first sighting. It kind of goes without saying that your website is the biggest weapon in your arsenal. It acts as an online hub for your agency, that showcases all of your properties, it tells your story, it allows people to contact you and inquire further. It is, in essence, an extension of your stores, but one that can reach a virtually endless audience. That’s why it is imperative to make sure your website is the best it can be.
Think about it like this, the best websites are the ones where you don’t have to think about anything. There will be countless sites that you use that don’t necessarily impact on your life, but they don’t make you think anything, you don’t sit there thinking that every page loads up in a second, or there is an ocean of information available, you take it for granted as it has been made easy and effortless for you, they just DO. And that ladies & gentleman, is what makes a good website.
That doesn’t just mean it needs to look the part, it needs to act the part. You want to provide potential/existing customers with a seamless experience, it needs to be visually appealing, it needs to be easy to navigate, it needs to provide them with all the information they need to make an informed decision and it definitely needs to have fast loading times.
If you’re unsure whether or not your website will need a redesign, then you need to consider these 5 reasons.
These may be trivial reasons to the uninitiated, but in reality, these key factors are stopping you from reaching new heights of online exposure and are sending customers straight back out the door. Never to return again.
Here are five statistics that will make you realise how important having a well-maintained website is.
There are a lot of things that are considered when it comes to ranking highly on search engines. Everything from Estate Agency SEO, content freshness, through to loading times. There are approximately 200 factors that come in to play with ranking on Google & it’s not as easy as making an attractive website and that’s it done. If you’re not appearing on people’s searches then all of that glamour is for nothing.
Our websites are created in a way that all factors are considered, giving you the best chance of generating traffic. 55% of all organic online clicks go to the first three search results, so them podium places are definitely worth striving for.
If you are producing more content and putting more into your marketing efforts and are still struggling to generate leads, sales or enquiries. It’ll be down to your website… & before jumping in guns blazing, discover what is wrong your website first. So if you can pick out the key reasons, for example, you notice load times are slow, or it is looking dated, or there is a lack of content. Then redesign it based on your findings. We recommend looking on Google Analytics to find out the issues by finding what pages have the highest bounce rates and working from there.
We create a website that is tailored to your market, increasing the likelihood of conversions and leads. We are also well equipped to produce content through blog posts and pillar pages, ensuring that once a potential customer lands on your site, they explore the website and stay on there a lot longer than they typically would.
If your website looks like it is straight out of the ’70s then it really needs updating. Even if it was changed 3-4 years ago it will most likely still need a redesign. Trends and styles change, customers are enjoying new visual stimulation on sites with animations, hand-made illustrations and much more. It allows people to make emotional decisions as opposed to using a logical process.
You shop with your eyes… Just think about how much people love to use Instagram, YouTube & Pinterest to help in their decision making progress. They offer strong visuals that allow people to imagine what it could be like in a real-life setting. It takes people 50 milliseconds to decide whether they like the look of something, if your website doesn’t visually stand out from the word go, then you need to change it. Your competitors certainly will have.
We are living in a world where everything is available instantly. 53% of mobile site visits are abandoned if pages take longer than 3 seconds to load. Have you tested how long yours takes to load on both desktop and mobile formats? If it’s more than 3 seconds just think how many potential customers are leaving… Oh, and 79% of people who aren’t happy with your site won’t be returning.
Think of it like this if a site made £100,000 a day. A 1-second delay could end up losing £2,500,000 in lost sales every year. Think about how much money your agency makes in a day, can you afford to miss out on that many customers.
Up to 70% of web traffic is from a mobile device, that means you need to make sure your website is easy to use on a mobile device, it needs to adapt for all screen sizes and not just be a bog-standard desktop version that needs you to zoom in all the time, and use your fingers like a surgeon to pick out buttons. It’s 2019 if your website isn’t catered to mobiles, then you seriously need to catch up.
If you don’t have a responsive website, then your website is going to look awful on anything that isn’t a desktop. That potentially means a huge portion of visitors are going to see your website in a negative way, with the screen not fitting properly, making it difficult to navigate, making information and directions hard to follow. Which again, is going to deter people from enquiring & cause them to leave with negative associations of your estate agency.
If you want to feast your eyes on our portfolio, you can see how many different stunning website designs we have created for estate agents all over the globe. You can also browse our different website design options !
