As an estate agent, your property listings are the most powerful tool you have to increase sales and generate new leads. If you don’t have your property listings optimised, you may struggle to beat the competition.
So, you’ve got a website, but how do you make sure it generates leads? Well, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that you must ensure your property listings are in tip-top condition to persuade your audience to make an enquiry about a specific property.
Your property listing page is the most important page on your website. Your ultimate goal is to sell properties and these pages are exactly how you can convert a user into an actual lead.
You don’t have to be a designer to realise that the way things are displayed on your website has to be conversion generated, this means having the most useful call to actions above the fold.
Are your enquiry buttons clear and visible on the page? Make sure your action buttons are contrasting colours to the brand so they stand out.
Is all of the important information the first thing you see on the page when you land on it? If you have to scroll and scroll to find the images and how to enquire about the property, chances are you will lose potential leads!
The view of your property listing page will be restricted on a mobile device and since over 72% of home buyers search for a property on a smartphone, it’s vital that their mobile experience is optimised.
Since you have less space to play with on mobile, make sure that the user can see the title of the property, the property images, the price and enquiry button – all above the fold if possible. You must also consider something that works on the desktop won’t necessarily work on a mobile device. For example, if you have a CTA that sticks to the left side of the page, this is great if you are on a desktop as it’s always there and stands out, but on a mobile device, it could cover text and important enquiry buttons.
So you’ve got your property listing page perfect on desktop and mobile, what’s next? How you communicate with your leads of course. This is a behind the scenes process but one that you must get right on your property listing page to ensure you don’t lose anyone from the point of entry to closing a property deal.
If someone submits an enquiry, what happens next? Ideally, you should get an instant notification of the enquiry with all the user’s information on that they submitted. Did you know that you should also set up an ‘automatic’ response to the enquiry so they know that someone will be in contact soon? It may seem like something simple that every website should have, but you would be amazed at how many new clients we have come across that don’t have a reliable way to make sure enquiries get contacted in the right way.
Depending on what type of estate agency you are and what kind of target audience you are catering for, you must consider any extra information that you could add towards the bottom of your property details page that essentially shows that you are the estate agency to go with. So, if your target audience primarily consists of families, you might have information on how close the local schools are to this property.
To establish additional information you need on your property listing page ask yourself the following question: What is your target audience looking for in the neighbourhood you’re targeting?
Property images are what initially spark a user’s interest, so you need to get these right to improve conversions. Here are our do’s and don’ts of how to display your images:
You might think that if a property is sold then the best thing to do is remove the page and that’s it, right? Wrong. There are so many more options you could implement on your property listing page that will not only drive traffic to other listings but can build trust with people who may land on these pages.
Option 1 – Promote similar properties. Ideal for if a property is sold and there is a possibility of someone landing on that page. Instead of having it as a ‘no properties found’ page you could add some content on about the neighbourhood and a list of similar properties to pique the user’s interest and ultimately keep them on the website. Making sure to include that the property is no longer available.
Option 2 – Include information about who bought the property. We are not talking about all of the personal details, instead, some sort of case study of why the client came to you and you could even include an anonymous testimonial of what the client thought about the service you offered. This builds trust and brand recognition for your estate agency website and it could help to generate more leads.
Option 3 – If time and resources are short, you would still like people to land on a page (in case they have saved the property for later) but you would have a simple message to say the property is no longer available and have a link back to the property search results page.
It’s not enough to create the perfect property page and expect users to flock to your website, you’ve got to market it well.
How can you do this?
In addition to traditional marketing, you need to understand the ins and outs of your target areas and audience online. Once you have understood this and your competition, you can personalise the content you are showing to your online target audience.
Not enough time to do this yourself? Check out our digital marketing package today to discover how we can help you achieve your online goals!
By Ben Spowart
By Ben Spowart
By James Sheldon