My website is pretty but not generating leads!
As we have been speaking with agents across the country this seems to be a common theme, yet a point of frustration. The main frustration comes as a result of “everyone” saying an agent’s website is pretty but that website doesn’t generate any leads! The reality is that websites don’t need to be pretty in order to generate leads. Most real estate agents get sold on a “pretty” website without thinking that generating leads is certainly more important.
As most professionals in the business will tell you, it is certainly hard to get appointments and more business without any leads. So in that vein I thought it would be helpful to point out 5 “pretty” things on your website that aren’t doing you any good to convert those visitors into contacts.
- Intro Movie – The intro movies on agent’s website is an absolute waste of space. Anything that you have to put “skip” on as an option isn’t worth having. I have seen people spend thousands of dollars on these and have yet to hear someone say “wow, my intro movie gets me deals every month”. They don’t help and they won’t get you any more deals (not even if you are in a luxury market either!).
- Large Picture of Agent on Home Page – This should be obvious by now, but the mistake is repeated time and time again. The home page of an agent’s website has a large picture of themselves and content about them. This is a waste of valuable real estate, so remove that picture and change the content. And for those that say “but I have a really well known face”, trust me all those people trying to find information about your area that are out of state have no idea who you are and don’t really care.
- Flash Based Templates – Although Adobe is working on ensuring Flash is more search engine friendly, how do you know that the web vendor you are using is really going to make sure your new Flash based site can really succeed in the search engines? The flash based templates cost more and it’s hard to see that they can help you get any more business. Save the money and go with a simple HTML/CSS based template.
- Navigation Menus – Providing 26+ choices for a web visitor to choose on where to go on your site does not show that your real estate website is thorough, it just confuses your visitors. Limit your navigation to just 5-7 choices so you get people digging deeper into their website. Concentrate on the fundamentals that people are looking for (like listings).
- Company Logos – Ok, for those who don’t know only 1% of people decide to choose an agent based off of their company affiliation. So, why then would you put the logo of the company you work for so large at the top of your page? You need to disclose what company you work for, but you can certainly put that in small font in your footer. Save that valuable space at the top of your page for important things like your phone number!
We could certainly keep expanding this list, but the point is to start with some changes on your website. Removing the distractions on your website will help your visitors to your real estate website focus on important things like your content and calls to action. Little changes on your website often have the biggest impact. After reading this post what changes are you going to make on your website?
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