Improve Your Online Visibility Through Responsive Website Design!

As an estate agent, it is crucial that you have a website that can function on a variety of devices. Your website is put in place to provide users with information efficiently and effectively. In this blog, we are going to explain what a responsive website is, how it can benefit you as an estate agent and how the process of making one responsive website is a lot more favourable than creating multiple websites that function on different devices.

What is a responsive website?

A responsive website, often called a ‘mobile-friendly’ website, is an approach to the design and functionality of a website. It enables a single site to operate and adapt to a range of devices, screen and window sizes.  This means that a website can optimise itself in order to be easily use and fit the screen resolution it is being viewed on, on a variety of devices such as mobile phones, desktops and tablets. 

With the varied range of handheld devices such as tablets, mobile phones and iPads, responsive websites are essential. Responsive websites also take into account certain features such as touch screen, so it is much easier for the user to navigate around a site. When looking for property, users typically spend at least 5 minutes running through a website they like. However, if they come across an error in functionality or design they are highly likely to leave your website and go straight to another agents!

What are the benefits of a responsive website?

Having a responsive website sounds like a good idea, based on what has already been discussed. However, let’s turn that into an excellent idea! Here is a list of the main benefits of having a responsive real estate website:

• Attract a wider audience/ Improved online visibility: Having a website that is responsive, allows people to access the site from multiple devices. As an estate agent, this could mean you are gaining leads by having an increase in traffic. 

• Additional mobile traffic: In 2014, mobile sales rose above desktop sales. So it is expected that mobile internet usage has increased beyond desktop internet usage. In 2020, over 4.8 billion people own a mobile phone. This is really important for an estate agent, as a site that is mobile friendly will boost the rate of sales and leads. 

• Improved SEO & loading time: As an estate agent, it is very important that your site loads at an exceptional speed. When looking through property websites, there are a lot of different links you need to access in order to view multiple properties. When someone comes across your site and clicks on various pages, they will expect the loading time to be especially fast. Having a website that is mobile friendly routinely loads in great time, leading to positive user experience, therefore, a potential higher google ranking.

• Increased social sharing: With a responsive website being able to adapt to a range of devices, the increased traffic gives your website the opportunity to be shared by its viewers. This could be based on the website, services, and properties you provide. It also gives your clients the chance to share a review about your agency. A lot of people take these factors into consideration when choosing an estate agency. Seeing someone share a website will inevitably mean they’ve had a positive experience. Similarly, seeing positive reviews could sway someone towards using your agency. 

• Finer user experience: With a responsive website having attributes of improved loading time and the ability to function on a variety of devices, users will be satisfied with their experience of being on your site. Whereas, if your site worked great on a desktop but not so good on a mobile, the user may not be so pleased and either go off your site or choose a different one. It is important for an estate agent to ensure the people visiting their site are satisfied and don’t have any reason to choose a competitor’s agency instead.

Making a responsive website:

As previously mentioned, there are many benefits to having a responsive website, which also includes low maintenance. Having one website that can optimise to function on all devices will be much more cost effective than paying to host and manage two or more websites. In the long run, this will end up costing much more when moving forward. In addition to the cost, having multiple websites would cause you to duplicate content which isn’t good for SEO. However, one responsive website will enable you to have one domain name for all devices, meaning your SEO ranking will not be affected. 

What a responsive website looks like:

This is one of the websites we have produced at Property Webmasters.The challenge on this project was to bring properties together with golf resorts/courses in various locations worldwide, whilst also offering an intuitive search system so that users could search for properties freely and easily. Creating a responsive site for this project allowed the site to be accessed on multiple devices while still being able to function, display images and content beautifully. 

If you are interested in seeing how your branding, imagery and colour scheme could look on a new AgentPlus website solution from us here at Property Webmasters, how about you take up the opportunity to receive a free website mock-up? Give us 48 hours and we will return you a fully functioning mock-up for you to take a look at, with all of your assets. Find out more here!