Over-Qualifying of Website Visitors Can Cut Your Leads
There should be little or no argument that the primary purpose of a real estate website is lead generation. No matter which niche markets you serve or what customer types you prefer, the website must generate real estate leads, or it's just a billboard to look at on the way past it.

3 Ways to Refresh Your Tired Real Estate Website
How long has the anchor content on your website been up on the web? Take a trip through your real estate website with an eye on how many images and how much text could be updated for a fresh new look and better usability. As you look through the site, keep one question top-of-mind: If I am a regular visitor, would I be bored having seen this content over and over? Here are some tips and ideas for refreshing your site that will make it more interesting, especially for repeat visitors. You could also generate more leads.

Realtor.com Introduces New Web Experience for Home Search
Realtor.com today introduced its new home search web experience which emphasizes visually engaging design to support a faster, simpler and smoother home search experience. Consumers using realtor.com's desktop and mobile web platforms can explore the new search experience starting today. "Searching for a home is a very stressful process, especially in today's market. The new realtor.com web experience puts more listings at our users' fingertips and makes it easier to compare homes side-by-side," said Chung Meng Chung, realtor.com's chief product officer. Realtor.com's new web experience better equips users to access the information they want quickly and efficiently. A few key highlights: No "FOMO" - New Listings and Open Houses: For serious home shoppers, the "Fear of Missing Out" is real. Users can now see at first look how many hours ago the listing was added to the site as well as the date of any upcoming open houses. More listings per page: Users can now see more properties per page and make visual comparisons, as total listings per page increased from 15 listings to 48 on desktop and from 50 to 60 on mobile web. Updated listing page design: See the listing information you want, when you want it. Listing page sections, such as "Property Details" and "Property History," are collapsed upon page opening for easier navigation without overwhelming the user. Listing pages load up to 10 times faster: Navigating between search results and listings is now up to 10 times faster, saving users time as they explore multiple listings. More immersive photo gallery experience: Mobile users will now see all listing photos in a single page rather than needing to swipe through each photo. "Mobile is our fastest-growing platform and our new web experience is designed to make it even simpler for people to search for homes on the go," said Suhail Ansari, realtor.com®'s chief technology officer. "Consumers can now seamlessly transition from one listing to another, browse property photos on a single page, and easily connect to a real estate professional."  

Homes.com Nails New Website Design
Homes.com has been running in fourth position in the portal race, tucked in behind Zillow, Realtor.com, and Trulia. I thought that their old site was fine, but their new site adds in artificial intelligence in ways that make the consumer experience fantastic. In a world of sameness, Homes.com has changed the game. The first experience for a visitor is incredible. The site is the first major portal to look at my machine's IP address and make the site conform to what I probably am looking for. In this case, I run my Safari browser in Private Mode and I had not logged in, just visited the site. It knows that my IP address is in Arroyo Grande, CA and pulls up other criteria based upon the average home in my town – three bedrooms around $730,000. Yes, California home prices are outrageous, but that is a conversation for another day.

Is Your Real Estate Website Outdated?
In today's hyper-connected, digital landscape, everyone is using the internet to look up information, check references and find the tools, resources and services for just about everything in their lives—including real estate agents and brokers. Homebuyers and sellers work with real estate agents because they provide industry and market expertise. A real estate agent's website needs to portray that same industry and market expertise. Your website should be an invaluable tool for your clients and prospects, and it should be a source of quality leads. If your website is not up to date, you risk missing out on those clients and losing them to other agents. Attracting new clients starts with providing the best information and the easiest and most pleasant user experience online as possible. If it's been several years since you've made any updates to your site (or you simply don't have one), it's quite possible your site is outdated and needs some TLC to make it once again a powerful tool for you and your clients. Take a look at our recommendations below and ask yourself whether your site falls into any one (or more) of these categories.

5 Tips to Finding Images for Your Website
Images communicate, draw attention and create interest. Images can keep people on your website if chosen correctly or lead people to leave your website. When choosing images for your website, it is important to choose images that are high quality, relevant, aligned with your brand, aesthetically pleasing and attention grabbing. So where can you get great images? Here are five ways we get images for our own site.

Five Ways to Use SEO to Drive Real Estate Leads
Ninety percent of people start their home search online. Ninety percent! For consumers, the most difficult real estate challenge is finding the right property, followed by finding the right agent to buy or sell a home. As a real estate agent, how do you make sure these consumers find you? One crucial tactic you need is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). While most agents and real estate outlets do have an online presence, most report that keeping up with technology in the digital age is a challenge. Most prospective home buyers these days use search engines, like Google, to find properties or to find an agent to sell their home. You can use SEO to help people find your business and the services you provide. While SEO can be complex, there are some tried and true tactics to help you be found online.

5 Tips for a Website that Showcases Your Brand
In today's real estate market, more and more people are turning to the Internet. In fact, just last year The National Association of REALTORS® reported that online websites were seen as most useful in the home search process at 86 percent. Furthermore, real estate agents' websites were listed as a top marketing method for homes at 50 percent. So just how important is it for a real estate professional to leverage their own website as an information source? Very! According to Top Producer, "no one knows better than you that first impressions matter. Since many prospects will be forming those impressions by checking you out online, your website needs to be sleek, mobile-friendly and above all, accurately showcase your brand and tell your story." If you're ready to win at the digital marketing game, they also offer five tips to keep in mind while creating or updating your website: 1. Make sure it displays flawlessly on any device Last year, 72 percent of buyers used a mobile website or tablet search device in their home search (NAR Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers 2016). Not to mention, mobile and tablet traffic surpassed desktop worldwide at the end of 2016. Users will increasingly browse from their mobile device, so prepare your website to support the multi-device user. 2. Use a stunning, meaningful hero image Your website's visual assets are what will initially capture the attention of your audience and encourage them to continue to browse and hopefully convert.

How to Get Leads from Your Real Estate Website
The numbers are in, and they've proven that real estate websites work well for agents who want to close more sales and make more commissions. In fact, last year over 240 million unique users visited real estate websites (RealTrends). With a search volume like that, savvy real estate professionals are recognizing the importance of a solid web presence. Creating your own real estate website is the first step towards boosting your business, but it doesn't stop there. For your website to be worthwhile, it needs to be generating quality leads for your business. Here are some of the best ways to ensure your real estate website is driving leads: Get real estate leads by being mobile friendly. Studies have shown that 40 percent of the 240 million visitors who visit real estate websites come using a mobile device; that's a huge portion! Perhaps your website is a masterpiece on a destop computer, but have you checked how it looks on a iPhone or tablet? To get more real estate leads, your website should display properly on any device, making you more accessible and removing any roadblocks for your website visitor. A mobile friendly website should be a priority. If your site isn't mobile optimized now, it's time to make a change. Get more leads with quality website content. Not every real estate agent has a knack for writing online copy – and that's ok! Text written for real estate websites needs to be engaging, clear, brief and professional. If writing isn't your strong suit, your website may be turning visitors off as soon as they start to read it. Opt for the help of a professional writer or a website that includes quality, professionally written content to engage your website visitors.

Why Real Estate Websites Don't Generate Leads
Websites are online containers for your branding, lead capture tools and calls to action (CTAs). You could have the greatest looking website in the world with the best CTAs and lead capture tools, but without TRAFFIC, the tools will go unused. Websites, in of themselves, do not generate leads without traffic. Getting traffic to your site today is totally different than it was "back in the day." Four years ago, even, if you were doing SEO correctly, you actually had a chance to appear on page one of the search engines organically, whether from your own efforts or from those of a professional SEO company. Now that Google has removed the "7-pack," most of the page one search results are filled up with Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com, Trulia, Movoto and international brokerages. Organic traffic has been reduced significantly. Then again, Google has been acquiring real estate technology companies, and who knows what is around the corner. Organic search results are dying, so you need to pay for real estate leads or traffic. That gives you two options. You can pay for leads from the Zillows of the world, Facebook ads, seller lead systems, display ads, etc., or hire a company that manages pay-per-click campaigns on your behalf. Back in the day, BoomTown was the leader and now there are any number of companies offering PPC lead generation for Realtors.

Online Leads Don't Suck. Your Conversion Rates Do. (11/9)
Wednesday, November 9, 2016 at 10:00 AM PDT Are you generating enough online leads to make a significant impact on revenue? Are your online leads ready to transact? Do they yield fruit for your agents? If not, let's talk. Let's talk about an easy solution that converts at a higher rate with no additional effort required from your agents or support staff. A solution that delivers the personalized experiences consumers now expect. In this exclusive RE Technology Webinar, we'll walk you through easy ways to identify key types of consumers and deliver personalized communication that gets twice the engagement rates of the industry average. We'll answer your questions on data-driven consumer engagement and demonstrate how other real estate professionals use data to increase online conversions and drive revenue as illustrated in our exclusive white paper. Onboard Informatics is a leader in data-driven engagement with 14 years of experience in real estate data. We have information on all 150 million properties in the country and their surrounding areas. We combine our data and experience to create impactful data-driven solutions. As more consumers gravitate online to find their next home, having these types of turnkey solutions will put you ahead of the competition as you advance with the latest data-driven technology. Join us November 9 as we demonstrate this technology, teach you easy ways you can incorporate these improvements, and answer your questions on improving online lead conversions. Register now!

Have You Bought into this Dangerous Myth about First-Time Homebuyers?
First-time home buyers have historically been a large niche for real estate agents. As each generation enters the workforce, their desire to own a home logically follows after quite soon. This trend has been hotly debated as the rise of the millennial homebuyer has spurred some interesting opinions. Conversations in recent years have resulted in many Realtors believing the millennial generation is the first group to break the status quo of home ownership. Are you one of the real estate professionals who don't feel that first-time homebuyers are a worthwhile source of leads anymore? If so, this new research will surprise you. Let's explore the recent myth of the first-time homebuyer, and how you can profit big time from this important group. The Myth About First Time Homebuyers It seems like you can't pick up a newspaper lately without reading about unpaid interns or unemployed college graduates living in their parents' basement. We hear a lot about the millennial generation's struggle to enter the workforce. As a result, the assumption has been that millennials will put off purchasing a home later than previous generations have. Because of the media coverage on millennials, many real estate professionals believe that there will be a delay for this generation to begin purchasing property. We've been told that the market is simply too expensive for first-time homebuyers. But recent research conducted by Zillow shows us that this assumption is incorrect. I would argue that continuing to believe this myth can be harming your success as a Realtor by missing out on sales and referrals.

What Does Your Real Estate Website Say About You?
Websites are the public faces of real estate professionals. No other single marketing tool comes close to equalling the importance of a website. They deliver the first images and words about an agent or a brokerage that prospective clients and customers see. If a site doesn't connect with consumers in a matter of seconds, that first impression could be a real estate professional's last chance to win a new client. Sites that consistently fail to be compelling can do serious damage to a perfectly competent real estate practice. Yet hundreds of thousands of agents and brokers publish sites that miss the mark by miles. After spending thousands to build and host a site, they spend even more for canned content that can do more harm than good. News you can't use Some use services that carry national or regional economic news feeds that provide "national" or "regional" information on market trends. Other sites use "how to" content written for the broadest possible audience in terms of geography, price tier, age group. The chances are good that much, if not most, canned content misses the mark for three reasons: It's so generic that it doesn't convey that the site's owner has any particular expertise or focus; Competing agents and brokers in the same market may carry the same canned content, which creates confusion and defeats the purpose of the site; and It occupies space on your site that could be put to much better use.

Accelerate Your Income with Simple Conversion Strategies (7/14)
Thursday, July 14, 2016 at 10:00 AM PDT Conversion is the biggest battleground in real estate, and agents are spending big money for coaches who promise to take them to the next level. In this webinar, Virtual Results president Jim Marks will give you those tips for FREE. The key to better conversion? Don't overthink it. Systemize your follow-up so you don't second guess yourself or waste time on unproven tactics. In just one hour, you'll: Get tips on small changes you can (and should) make to your website Learn how to convert from traffic to lead, and lead to client See how to identify the value of a lead now and over the long-term, and follow up accordingly Learn about automated tools you can use to nurture leads naturally Register now!

Best Practices for Your Real Estate Website
92 percent of home buyers start their search for a new home online. Are you giving consumers what they want with your business website? Not only is your website a great platform to display your brand and value, but it can also be a great lead capture tool. Making sure your website is up to today's online standards will ensure you stand out when a consumer lands on your page. There are three best practices we think are most important for an effective real estate website: Show Your Value Consumers come to your website to search for listings and learn about the local market, so show them what you got! Your site should be designed with your potential clients in mind. Think about what information they're looking for and how you can provide it in a user-friendly manner. Testimonials from previous customers are a great way to demonstrate your value and explain (in a more unbiased manner) how you can satisfy a consumer's needs. Local market statistics, neighborhood reports, and community updates help to position you as a local expert. Use a mix of text, photos, and videos to engage consumers visually – content they can easily share is a great way to get your name out to the masses and establish your place as a trusted source of local real estate information.

Anatomy of a Real Estate Landing Page
So you're using digital advertising for real estate. Your ad is helping you stay top of mind with people you are prospecting or the people you already know. But where are you sending those people that click on your ad? You should be sending them to a landing page. "But I have a website," you're saying. Let's take a quick step back and correct a common mistake: a landing page isn't quite the same thing as your web site. What is a landing page for real estate? Once someone clicks on your ad, they need to go to page that delivers on the promise you made in your ad. That delivery is on a landing page, which is a web page that speaks to a specific purpose. It's not a home page. It's not an About page. So what makes a web page a landing page? Landing pages have ONE purpose (home values report or a specific listing) They are easy to read and scan The message is clear — don't tell your entire story Deliver on the promise of a digital ad

How Are You Helping Agents to Monetize Their Contacts?
Whether you are a builder/developer trying to move more product or a broker or marketing company looking to do the same on behalf of a client, bottom line is you are trying to get more consumers to buy new homes. There are many familiar ways to do this: Build a website, pay to drive traffic, and hope that someone sees it; Build an expensive sales center and hope a consumer comes in the front door; Hold open houses for agents and hope that they do something with all those brochures you printed up for them; Create a direct marketing print or digital marketing campaign and hope consumers/agents don't unsubscribe; and, depending on your market, Translate all your materials (print and online) into multiple languages in the hopes of catching the eye of one of those many foreign buyers. Do any or all of these resonate with you? One additional area you might consider is beefing up your effort to incent external agents to market your projects. Why? Because, unlike the other methods described above, real estate agents have a reason to respond to your efforts—they get paid a commission if something happens.

Landing Page Tips to Help You Generate More Leads
Real estate is a tough job, but there are a lot of things to love about it. You're your own boss, you get to meet new people, set your own schedule, and have the satisfaction of helping people through their largest transactions. However, these great perks don't really kick in until you've got some leads. At NAR San Diego, Chris Smith gave a talk about online lead generation and credits landing pages as a major contributor to a successful lead generation strategy. What is a Landing Page? A landing page is a simple, standalone page where you can send people for a singular purpose: capturing leads. The landing pages are connected to ads or promotions that drive users with a specific intent. For example, you may have one landing page to capture sellers who want a CMA and another for people requesting a guide for first time buyers. Why Do I Need Landing Pages? When someone comes to your site from an ad or promotion, they have a specific goal in mind based on the material that led them to click your link. However, when they come to the home page of your website, they receive a very generalized experience. You can use landing pages to address the needs of the specific lead. You can also use landing pages as a way to find out which of your older leads may still be interested in buying or selling. Smith recommends setting up a landing page for old clients with a free offer and see which clients register. Those that do are probably worth reaching out to again.

New .Homes Website Domains Now Available to Real Estate Pros
Is the .com domain name you really want already taken? Never fear, there's a new domain extension in town, and it's full of SEO potential for real estate practitioners. The sunrise registration period opened just last Monday for the new .Homes top-level domain. "Sunrise" registration is a limited window of time that allows trademark holders to purchase .Homes domains that match their marks before registration is opened to the general public. That means if you've trademarked the name of your real estate team or practice--Central Coast Realty™, for example--you can now reserve CentralCoastRealty.Homes so that your company's name isn't taken by somebody else. The Sunrise period runs through May 6. You can learn more here. However, the domain names with the highest SEO potential are up for grabs on May 12, when open registration starts. Because registration will then no longer be restricted to trademark holders, agents and brokers can buy names that reflect their area, like Boston.Homes. The reason a domain like this has so much SEO potential is because it matches the phrases that consumers are likely to search for, e.g. Boston homes or Boston homes for sale. .Homes domain names are only available to professionals who serve the residential real estate industry. This includes agents, brokers, mortgage professionals, appraisers, property managers, builders, home insurers, MLSs, and associations. Dominion Enterprises, the operator of Homes.com, is the exclusive registrar of .Homes domain names. To learn more, visit domains.homes.

5 Helpful Tips for Creating an Effective Website
A website is a valuable key to success as a real estate professional – this is the center of your marketing world and how you make your money. Viewers can visit your website at any time of the day; it is a 24-hour shop that is always generating business. The best way to ensure your website is successful is to hire a website professional who will take the time in creating a current and up to date platform for your business. Below are 5 quick and easy tips for a successful website. 1. Think Simple and Clean First impressions are everything. As viewers come to your website they do not want to be overwhelmed with content, images, and bright splashy colors. This will most definitely turn potential business away as viewers will back out of your site and go to another. Having a simple template with limited coloring and imaging will give off a professional feel; key content and wording is important to display on the homepage as well. By having the main components appear bold and centered on the homepage—like a Home Search, Featured Listings, or Map Search—you'll draw in viewers, as this is why they are coming to your website. Keep your navigation simple and user-friendly – use key words like Buyers, Sellers, and Contact Me for quick and to-the-point access. Think as your client – what is it that you want to see within the first minute of opening your website?

Best Tips for Driving Traffic to Your Real Estate Website
Creating your real estate website is an exciting process. You carefully choose the look and craft the content, and then you send your beautiful new website out into the world wide web. But then what? If you’re not driving traffic to your real estate website, what good is its elegant design and terrific listings? Setting up your website is the first step to building a valuable online presence that creates more leads for you as a REALTOR®. But driving traffic to your website is just as important! Here are the best ways to drive traffic to your real estate website. Make Sure Your Real Estate Website is Mobile Friendly Technology has evolved rapidly in the last few years and the way we use the internet has changed a lot!  Instead of browsing the web from a desktop computer, more people than ever are using mobile devices to access the web. If you force your visitors to pinch and scroll their way around your site, they may give up and go elsewhere. Ensure that your website is comfortable to use on laptops, mobile phones and tablets. Regularly Post to Your Real Estate Blog One of the best ways to show the search engines that your website is active and legitimate is by regularly adding content, and a blog is a powerful way to do that!  Update your blog with relevant real estate articles and include keywords that apply to your business.  Search engines like Google and Bing will smile upon fresh content. Your keywords will help increase your chances of appearing in the search engine results.  To make this process even easier, choose a Realtor website solution that provides you with professionally written blog content on a regular basis.

7 Signs that Your Real Estate Website Needs a Redesign
The beginning of a new year is a great time to audit your online presence. Take a moment to check your marketing materials, social media and search portal profiles to make sure your contact info is correct and all links work. It's also an opportune time to take a critical eye to your website, your most important piece of "online real estate," to be sure it's not stale or outdated--and that it's not driving customers away! Not sure how to tell if your site needs an overhaul? These seven signs are a dead giveaway that your site needs a redesign: 1. Lackluster IDX search options. Does your website's IDX search only offer limited search criteria like price, beds, baths, and square footage? It may be time to upgrade to a more modern solution. Basic search parameters won't cut it for today's consumer. They want a search with detailed local information that's lifestyle oriented--like what schools are nearby, or what restaurants and other amenities are in the neighborhood? There are plenty of IDX options available today that offer consumers the granular search options they're looking for. You can research IDX solutions in our Product Directory. 2. Your layout isn't mobile friendly. Have you heard the term responsive web design? It's a method of designing a website layout so that it detects the device that it's being viewed on and automatically scales to fit that's device's screen. This approach eliminated the old way of having to build two separate versions of a site--one for desktop and one for mobile. With responsive design, one version is all any website needs. Responsive design isn't just to appease mobile users, however. Google is now punishing websites that aren't mobile friendly. If your site is difficult to view on phone and tablets, it's time for an overhaul--before your site totally disappears into the abyss of Google search results.

Real Estate Website Design Isn’t Just Colors and Page Layout
A Google search for "website designer" yields 591 million results. Add the words "real estate" to the front of it ("real estate website design") and the results shrink down to 77 million. That's still a few million too many for meaningful research. You're still likely to get thousands of different company results if you add in your city. There must be some money in this business, as there are a lot of people doing it. Let's assume that you're not happily heading in the wrong direction, thinking that your major design considerations should be: How big can my personal photo be? How well do the site colors go together? Can my top producer badge be on every page? Can I have a lot of Flash or other moving stuff going on? How many popups can I have to make visitors sign in?

An App Isn't Enough to Make Your Business Mobile Friendly
Is your business optimized to serve today's mobile consumer? If you offer buyers and sellers a property search app, but your website is difficult to use on mobile devices, you're missing out on a lot of potential leads. There are several reasons for this. First, consumers are not using property apps exclusively. Many, especially those early in the search process, are still Googling "Mytown homes for sale." If their search brings them to your IDX site, how long will you think they'll stay before moving on to another site that's easier to use on their device? A few seconds, at best. That's if they're able to find your site at all. In April, Google updated their search algorithm to favor sites that are mobile friendly. Termed "Mobilegeddon" by some, the update relegates sites that don't display correctly on mobile devices to the bottom of search results. What Makes a Website Mobile Friendly? So what is it that makes a site work well on mobile. In days past, some websites would actually offer two different versions of their content--one designed for specifically for mobile and a "full" site that works on desktop or laptop computers. Today, "responsive" design has solved the need to build two sites. A website designed responsively can identify the size of the screen it's being viewed on and scale accordingly. This means that all devices and screen sizes--computer, tablet, and phone--can view the same version of a website.

9 Elements of a Great Website Homepage
Your real estate website homepage: it's usually the first thing site visitors see and probably also the first page you created. But when was the last time you took a critical look at it? It's important to review the content on your site from time to time, to make sure it's still doing what you need it to do – capturing leads, of course! Today we're taking a closer look at the humble homepage. Here are nine elements that your homepage should have: 1. Headline Quick: what is this website for? Keep it simple. Your name or real estate agency name will do. 2. Image Don't forget to include a picture of your smiling face somewhere! Include your team or agent headshot so customers know who they will be meeting when they take that next step. Adding a high-resolution image of your selling area or one of your listings is a good idea, too. 3. Value Statement Be sure you tell your visitors about the value your services will bring to them. Use the copy to say how they will benefit from your specialized skills. Say what you do, why it matters and how you will save them time, money or stress (or all of the above).

A "Lead-to-Lifetime" Solution: Popular CRM Now Includes Agent Websites
IXACT Contact launched a new agent website solution last month at a price that will please the budgets of agents everywhere. The websites are included in the subscription fee of the existing CRM solution, adding substantially more value both for current users and for prospects looking for an integrated end-to-end CRM and marketing solution. According to Rich Gaasenbeek, IXACT Contact's VP of Sales and Marketing, the company isn't increasing subscription costs with the introduction of the new websites. Instead, they're positioning themselves as a "world-class CRM, email marketing, and agent website platform" that's available at a wallet-friendly price. Gaasenbeek calls the rebranded IXACT Contact a "new lead-to-lifetime client solution," underlining the tight integration between all of its components. Leads that come in off the website, for example, are automatically imported into the CRM and assigned to a drip marketing campaign that nurtures leads until they're ready to buy or sell a home. "The system ensures leads don't fall through the cracks," says Gaasenbeek. Aside from its robust lead capture and management capabilities, IXACT Contact's agent websites also feature: Responsive, mobile-friendly layouts Two levels of optional IDX integration 16 pages of professionally written website content A wide range of attractive designs and layouts An integrated blog with optional, pre-written content Social media integration Let's take a closer look to learn more.

How to Drive More Traffic to Your Real Estate Website
Converting leads in the online environment is not an easy thing to achieve. It is not just a matter of bringing people to your website and letting things run their course, although that is the place where you must start. Ok, let's assume that you have a decent real estate website as far as functionality and the visual side are concerned. If you are experiencing low traffic to your website, it means that you haven't taken enough time and made a good enough effort to reach people and get them interested in what you have to offer. Today we are going to discuss what are some of the right steps (and some of the wrong ones as well) to pulling in a satisfactory number of people to your real estate website. Identifying the Ideal Traffic When it comes to website traffic, you have to think ahead. Getting the numbers up is no big deal. You can pay for traffic and bring your stats to a satisfactory level. However, if you want to achieve something more than just having numbers for show, you will need to focus on finding the right traffic. Identifying parameters like age group, vocations, geographical area and other relevant factors will help you focus on getting traffic that will have a better chance of converting to paying customers later on.

Six Items Every Real Estate Website Should Have
Creating a real estate website that offers a good customer experience can do a lot of things for your business. It can instill trust in your clients and potential clients by offering a professional look and feel. It can also help convert leads by offering quality and useful information. Whether you're a new agent in the beginning stages of development, or a seasoned agent that has had a website for years, there are several things you should keep in mind when developing your site. In the graphic below, we list six elements that every real estate site should have to offer a great customer experience.

15 Places to Advertise Your Website
Your real estate agent website is one of your most powerful marketing tools. Are you using it to your full advantage? Your website markets you, your services and your listings to prospects around the clock, even when you are busy working, sleeping or on vacation. It is a place clients can go to learn more about the home selling and buying process, and where repeat clients come to find you again after what might be years in their current home. To make sure you are optimally promoting your site, here are 15 free (or inexpensive) and easy places you should be advertising it: 1. Your business cards As an agent, you could meet a potential client anywhere! Be ready with a stack of business cards that include your web address, email and phone number. Find more business card tips here. 2. Your digital business cards Not carrying business cards? No problem. We have your tech savvy business card solution right here. 3. Giveaway pens Make a bunch of pens with your website address on them. Take them (and leave them) everywhere. Give them to everyone you know.

Top 10 Real Estate Landing Page Tips
These tips cover both landing pages you create for all-online exposure, as well as print and other marketing that you want to lead a person to your website. You may be writing a guest blog post or social site post and you want to generate a click to a landing page to generate a lead. Or, you could be mailing a postcard to a neighborhood, and you want to take a listing prospect to a landing page to generate a call-in for an appointment. Tip # 10: Start with a plan, a focused topic, campaign or ad piece with a goal. Determine what you want to accomplish and a tightly focused goal and call-to-action. As an example, you want to post to Facebook, Twitter, or Google+ about the importance of a thorough CMA and how they're done. Or, you're doing a mailer into a neighborhood with that goal. You now have your goal, and you want to stay true to that topic, focus on it, and don't dilute your message with other stuff. In other words, don't also try to talk about how you work with buyers just because you can free up some space or add some words.

How to Generate More Real Estate Leads
Consumers now have many options for exploring real estate listings online. To compete in this market and acquire new leads, it's critical to have an effective lead acquisition and nurturing strategy. In this article, we'll review methods for acquiring new real estate leads to help you grow your business. Some of these methods are simple while others will require more planning and follow-through, but they can all help you acquire more leads. We'll talk about best practices for nurturing your leads in a future article. Website Optimization Does your website need an overhaul? An optimized website will engage buyers and sellers and convert more of your visitors to leads. Website optimizations will generally fall into two categories: aesthetics and content. Website Aesthetics Consumers form an opinion about your website in a fraction of a second. The following key points can make a dramatic improvement in how well your site engages consumers: Professional, uncluttered look and feel Quick loading time Friendly user experience with simple navigation Ask your family, friends and colleagues for their honest assessment and make adjustments if needed. Your business depends on it!

What Online Prospects Want from Real Estate Agents
More and more people are looking for both real estate listings and real estate agents online these days. When prospects come to your website—whether they found you via an Internet search, a well-placed classified ad or a boosted Facebook post—you have less than 3 seconds to make a good first impression. 3 seconds?!? Yep, that's right, and that already-short amount of time decreases every day as attention spans shorten and the digital marketplace speeds up! If you're going to have an impact, you better have what online prospects want, and they better be able to find it... fast! What Online Prospects Want Mobile-Friendliness With more than half of real estate search traffic coming from mobile devices, it just makes sense that your website should work on computers, tablets and smartphones. If someone is searching for agents in your area using their phone, you risk losing their business before you even have a chance to win it if your website won't load or isn't user friendly.

You Can Get Listing Leads from Your Website
There are two major focus points used by real estate professionals in creating their websites. If they're listing properties, they want to feature their listings and use the listing presentation on the site in their personal listing appointment presentations. They show their potential listing client how they can market their home better online than the competition. The other and far more content-focused approach is to provide local real estate information and attract buyers, or just prospects that the real estate agent can place in their CRM system. They market to them in the future, no matter what their current interests or real estate goals. They could be a buyer, seller, investor now or at any time in the future, and we just want them in our system. Both of these approaches work if the site has content that is focused on those goals. What if we want to take a more "seller-prospect" approach? It is a mistake to assume that you'll just get lucky in getting a listing client now and then from your website. You get most of these sellers from other ads, farming mailings into neighborhoods, and referrals. The mistake is in assuming that homeowners who are thinking of selling are not really using the Internet much, as they're not shopping listings like buyers are. Interviewing his listing clients who contacted him from website forms and email, a successful Web marketer found that they had some common things to say about their use of the Internet before they set any listing appointments: They wanted to see listing prices for nearby homes similar to theirs. They wanted to learn about current market conditions and if the time is right to sell. Most important, they wanted to see what local agents were doing to market homes online.

Google’s Mobile Algorithm Set to Change April 21. Is Your Website Ready?
There are some big changes, quite possibly the biggest of all time, coming to Google's mobile search algorithm. It's being called "Mobilegeddon" and is expected to be the dawn of a new era of internet that has never been seen before. If you haven't optimized your website for mobile by the cutoff date of April 21st, you're going to be left in the dust of your competitors that already have. It would be a major understatement to say that consumers rely on mobile devices during their search for a home. In fact, 40% of Homes.com's total traffic now comes from mobile and there has been a 192% increase in mobile property leads since 2014. This means that there's a huge opportunity to grow your business if you are able to provide a mobile platform that your audience can rely on. There are more benefits that come with having a mobile-friendly website than simply creating a better experience for users on their smartphones and tablets. One of the most important advantages is the role that it plays in search engine optimization (SEO), which is the area that this new algorithm is expected to affect the most. The bottom line is this—your website will have a better chance of being discovered in mobile search results if it meets Google's mobile standards. A study conducted by Advanced Web Ranking found that the first five results featured in a Google search accounted for 67% of all clicks and the results ranked from six to 10 accounts for only 3.73%. What this shows is simple. Higher search ranking equals more traffic to your website, thus more opportunities to connect with buyers and sellers.

How to Drive More Organic Traffic to Your Real Estate Website
Fact: No matter how great you think your real estate website is, if you simply sit back and expect it to get tons of organic search traffic and therefore tons of leads, you are going to be greatly, greatly disappointed. If you are in this boat, don't feel bad. Week in and week, out we hear agents tell us how they paid tons of money for a custom website and it just isn't working. While it is theoretically possible that there could be some SEO problems with the site in question, more often than not, that is not the case. The reason these sites "Aren't Working" is because the real estate agent has spent no time planning or deploying a content marketing strategy to build organic search traffic. A solid inbound marketing plan, and a content marketing strategy to go along with it, is critical if you want to succeed in the organic search game. Besides just driving traffic, your inbound marketing plan should be targeted so that you don't get just "any traffic" but the specific traffic you want that is comprised of your ideal clients. Because this is such a frequent misconception about websites, and because content marketing seems to be such a tough thing to get ramped up for many agents, today I thought I would share three tips to consider when planning your content marketing strategy.

Top Home Buyer FAQs
Are you looking for ways to be more helpful to online consumers? These are some of the most frequently asked questions by homebuyers – questions that people in your area are searching right now! Add these FAQs to the buyer resource page on your real estate website to help prospects and leads who are looking to learn more about the home buying process. And don't forget to add your own thoughts when you do. Remember: fresh website content is always good for SEO! What are the advantages of buying a home? Owning a home is a great way to build equity, take control of your living situation, and invest in your family and community. One study found that homeowners also report a higher quality of life. Check out the other findings about the social benefits of homeownership in this infographic. How much home can I afford? A good place to start is to estimate your monthly payments will be around 25% of your gross monthly income. That is a safe number that most lenders feel comfortable with, although your credit rating and other monthly debts will be factored in, too. Try using a mortgage calculator to figure out approximately how much house you can afford in different loan and rate scenarios. Why do I need a buyer's agent? A buyer's agent is committed to working only in the best interests of the buyer – that's you! Your buyer's agent knows the local market and will help you determine whether the homes you are looking at are priced fairly. Your agent will also help you cross all of your t's and dot all of your i's when navigating contracts and paperwork.

Best of 2014: 4 Lead Generation Sources - Which Should You Budget for?
We're continuing an annual tradition of counting down our top 10 articles of the year. The following article was originally published back in January and is #3 in our countdown. See #4 here. In December, we explored how Virtual Office Websites (VOWs) can be used to generate leads. There are many more sources for online leads, though, so we're kicking off the New Year by taking a broader look at our options. After all, now's the time when many agents and brokers turn budget- and process-minded, and examine what is working for their business and their budget. Some sources, like social media and Craigslist, only require an investment of time and motivation. But at the start of a new year, many real estate pros are more concerned about paid sources of lead generation and where--or if--they fit into their annual budget. With that in mind, today we're going to take a look at four different sources of online lead generation. Each will be evaluated according to cost, time and effort, and quantity of leads. Custom or DIY Websites Do-it-yourself websites come in all shapes and sizes. They can be anything from simple Wordpress sites to full-blown custom designed web destinations. Some who take the DIY route plug-in a third-party IDX search like Diverse Solutions to their site, or use only an MLS or association provided search widget. Others provided limited or no search capability. This is not necessarily a bad thing, however. I'm particularly fond of this website for local brokerage the Davies Company. Why? Because it's clean, uncluttered, and makes it easy to find exactly what I need. There's no sense of being overwhelmed by property search options or other features--a feeling many generic template sites often convey.

Everything an Agent Needs to Know About Gaining a Client’s Trust Online
Gaining a client's trust is one of the most important tasks for a real estate agent. You are building a relationship that will ultimately lead them to make one of the biggest decisions of their life! Some of the more conventional methods involve having a meeting, getting to know your client and their family in-person, and talking on the phone. These are great ways to build trust, but what if a client's first impression is online and not face-to-face? According to NAR for 43 percent of homebuyers, the first step in the home-buying process is looking for online properties, and what if your website isn't a great representation of your personality? "Ninety-two percent of buyers use the internet in some way in their home search process." – NAR So here's the hard part, translating your individuality to your website, and becoming approachable online, in addition to in-person. As challenging as this may seem, we have some great ideas to help you get started. 1. Put Your Personality on Your Website When attracting clients online, their first impression of you is the homepage of your website. Let your personality shine through and make it a welcoming experience. Have eye-catching pictures, client reviews, and a layout that's easy to navigate. People also love to interact with a site, so incorporate a 'search for homes' right from the homepage or toolbar on top.

10 Tips for More Effective Calls to Action on Your Real Estate Website
This can be anything from signing up for a newsletter, to registering for the Home Hunter tool, to requesting a showing of a property. Calls to action are important because they help us make it clear to users what the next steps are we want them to take. So how can you make sure you have effective calls to action? 1. Be clear and concise. Assume that your users don't know what you want them do to next on your website. Tell them in as clearly as possible what they should be doing (for example, "Sign Up For Our Newsletter" or "Search For Properties"). 2. Use action words. These are words that prompt the user to do something, such as "Sign Up," "Search," or "Contact Us." 3. Create a sense of urgency. Using words like "now" and "limited time" will provide users with a sense that they may miss out on an opportunity if they don't follow through immediately. 4. Don't overwhelm a user with too many choices. Avoid using more than two calls to action on any given inner page on your website – too many choices will overwhelm your users. Oftentimes, when users are presented with too many calls to action, they'll decide not to choose any of them. If you do have two calls to action, make sure that the more important one is emphasized more (you can do this by choosing a more contrasting colour, or making the call to action larger).

Five Real Estate Website Best Practices
Nearly 90% of home buyers search online during the home buying process. Not only are they using the internet for their next home, but to find a REALTOR® who has experience buying or selling their particular type of home. Many real estate agents understand that having a strong web presence is important, but don't often know where to start. Here are the top 5 elements to consider when building out your real estate website: 1. Consider your brand. A website often serves as a visual representation of your brand, so be mindful of the voice, tone and images you elect. For example, if you specialize in selling modestly priced homes in a modestly priced area, your homepage image should reflect this. In other words, don't show pictures of flashy, urban condos if you're primarily focused on buying and selling in a suburban setting. 2. Make sure it's user-friendly. It's not enough to just have a website—you need to have a website that is informative, easy to navigate and friendly to both buyers and sellers. Consider what function you want your website to serve. What information do you want visitors to absorb when they come to your website and what's the fastest way to get them there? 3. Create clear CTAs and contact opportunities. For many real estate agents, their website serves as a form of lead generation. In this case, it's vital to have clear Calls to Action (CTAs), as well as contact information right on the homepage. Adding a contact form to your site can also help you capture new leads. When that lead form is connected to a real estate CRM such as IXACT Contact, they can automatically be added to a drip marketing campaign that ensures you're connecting with them as swiftly as possible.

Getting Started With Google Analytics – Part Two
In part one of Getting Started with Google Analytics, we talked about what's involved in getting it up and running on your website. Today we will discuss some of the important reports and metrics that it will provide you with. These reports and metrics give you the insight needed to refine or adjust your practices so that your website is meeting your goals and serving its purpose. While Google offers customization options for your dashboard, most will include the following metrics: Sessions, Users, Pageviews, Pages/Session, Avg. Session Duration, Bounce Rate and % New Sessions. When looking at these metrics, you can segment and analyze a certain date range to see if any practices you put in place are correlated to a change in the amount of traffic that has reached your website or a change in how users interact with your website.

Real Estate Websites 101
Your website is your online "real estate" showroom, so it needs to be appealing and functional. Most experts would agree that your website should also have IDX so that you can provide MLS property search for website visitors. Without IDX, you can display only your own listings, which doesn't provide a compelling search experience. The ultimate goal of your website is to gain new business or sell properties, so it will need the ability to capture leads. Your website options span a wide range – from 100% custom design, to template-based do-it-yourself. The key to success is balancing your budget constraints with your goals, and finding a vendor who will fit that niche. To help you learn more about real estate websites, we recommend reading the following articles. They're a good place to get started: Real Estate Website Checklist: Buyer Resources Real Estate Website Checklist: Seller Resources 5 Things That Should Not Be on Your Real Estate Website Visual Hierarchy and Your Website Real Estate Website Sales Conversion Funnel

11 Key Things to Include on a Real Estate Agent Website
  Are you having trouble creating content for your site? Sometimes it's not as hard as you think. Simply take a look around your community and put yourself in the shoes of buyers and sellers: What would they want to know? Listings Every real estate agent must have his or her listings on a website! A great way to stand apart from other agents in your community is to include short snippets about the property, high-resolution photos and videos that showcase the home on an in-depth level. Upcoming Community Events Creating content about local community events shows you are active and care about the town you represent, and home buyers will appreciate the knowledge you are giving them. The culture of a neighborhood can make all the difference! School Districts Schools often play a very important role in the home buying decision. Staying up-to-date with school events, awards, accolades and more gives potential home buyers an inside look into the community.

Online Marketing 101
The phrase "online marketing" is as broad as it gets. It's a term that encompasses a cornucopia of tactics, products, services, and strategies. But don't make the mistake of assuming that this makes it a throw-away category. In fact, the very depth and breadth of online marketing is what makes it so very challenging for agents and for the vendors providing solutions to assist them. In the world of real estate, what does online marketing entail? Common services include: Social media Email marketing Banner advertising Single property and agent websites In truth, if a marketing activity involves the Internet, it can fall under the umbrella of "online marketing." Sound confusing or overwhelming? Here are a few quick reads to help you learn more: Social Networking vs. Marketing 6 Marketing Tools to Build Your Business 4 Lead Generation Sources: Which Should You Budget For?

Four Hard Truths About Real Estate Websites
Whether you're new to running a real estate website, or have had one for many years, you should know the hard truths of owning one. This will help you improve it, and help make it the best it can be. Below are a few truths about your website: 1. What You Put In, You Get Out Everyone knows that the more effort you put into something, the greater the reward. The same goes for your website. If you're not putting in any effort and creating pages, forms, search definitions, enhancing your SEO, etc., you cannot expect to gain any leads from it. If you do not have someone that works on your website for you, make it a priority to spend a few hours each week improving your site's content. 2. Website Changes Are Not Instant There are many factors that take place when determining a website's ranking. Search Engines such as Google needs to be able to find it, read it and then repeat the process with your website being more enhanced each time to start ranking more fairly on search results. SEO enhancements are never something that take effect right away, and can take months if not years to get your site ranking well.

5 Things You Want to Check on Your Website Right Now
Don’t have time for a major update to your website, but haven’t updated anything on it in a while? Here are five things that you should check right now so your users have the most relevant information. 1. Is all of your contact information up to date? Are all phone numbers and office addresses listed on your site correct? Are your social media accounts tied into your website? Do all of your web forms distribute to the proper channels? You don’t want to run into the position where you may be losing a potential lead because they couldn’t get in touch with you! 2. Do all of your custom web pages and custom search definitions use SEO URL Translations? SEO URL translations are extremely beneficial when it comes to search engine rankings. They help the search engine know what each page is about. 3. Do all of the links on your home page and on any custom web pages that you’ve created work? Have you removed or renamed any pages that were linked previously? Have any of the external sites that you may link to moved or gone down? Make sure that your content is still available and suitable for your users.

Visual Hierarchy and Your Website
Your website is a tool to communicate with your users. Sometimes, however, we have so much that we want to communicate that the message gets lost along the way. The best way to make sure we are able to communicate our message clearly is by using visual hierarchy in our website. Visual hierarchy – how you organize and visually prioritize elements on each web page – helps with comprehension and guides users through the story that you want to tell. It shows users what they should look at first, as well as helping them determine if your page has the information they are looking for, and where that information is located. Because of this, when creating or updating your website, visual hierarchy is one of the most important things that you should consider for each page. For myself, I find that an easy way to determine the visual hierarchy of a web page is by going through the following steps: Collect all the content that is going to be on a page (I'm talking everything – all of the text, the images, the calls to action) Decide what is most important and relevant for the site's users, then what is next most important, and next, etc. (i.e., a heading is important because the user needs to know what this page is about) Decide if the users should do something and what that something is (ie – a call to action is important if you want the user to contact you about information on the page)

WordPress Basics for Agents
Industry superstars like Nicole Nicolay have made WordPress a familiar term for most real estate agents. As you probably already know, this is a blogging platform that can also be used to build agent websites. The price tag – a big, fat ZERO – has undeniable appeal for many agents. If you're considering a WordPress site, there are many factors you'll need to investigate. Today, I'm going to look at only two of the most important. Property Search It's easy to argue that an agent website is worth very little without property search. Without the option of property search, what value are you providing to your visitors? Thus, property search should be included on every agent's website. As a result, a variety of technology vendors have created WordPress "plugins" for property search. If you're unfamiliar with the term, "plugins" are tools created by developers to integrate with WordPress and add functionality to WordPress sites. A good example of a WordPress property search plugin comes from WolfNet. Their plugin synchronizes their powerful IDX search with any WordPress website or blog. It's important, when considering a property search plugin, to ensure that it offers the full functionality you've come to expect from IDX search. For instance, WolfNet's plugin still includes the SEO features (such as individual property detail pages and dynamic listing content) and customizable search options that have made their IDX such a popular choice.

8 Things to Think About When Writing For Your Real Estate Website
For all real estate agents, the most important part of their websites is generating leads. With that being said, writing content for your website is also very important for keeping visitors on your website and providing great SEO for your website's ranking. It can be a major determining factor for a visitor choosing to sign with you as their real estate agent. Many websites fail to deliver in this area. Below are some helpful tips when writing website content:  1. Have Up to Date Content With the real estate industry always changing, the last thing you want is a visitor to be reading a page on your website, only to finish reading it and notice that it is five years old. This can frustrate potential clients, as they may feel what they've read may no longer be applicable. 2. Have Relevant and Interesting Content If you are including content about saving energy in the home, make sure you stay true to that topic and don't get sidetracked with irrelevant information. Consistency is key. The more exciting your content is to read, the greater your chance of generating a lead. Remember that you are also trying to market yourself with your content, so the more memorable the content, the bigger your gain. 3. Include Images Make sure that you have images that are relevant, as with your written content, having up to date images will work to your benefit. You also need to be sure they are royalty free, in the public domain, or are pictures you have taken, or that you have permission to use (never assume you have permission to use an image unless you have asked).

After They Arrive, What Gets Their Contact Info?
We're rounding up prospects--or we should probably call them suspects at this point. We've created content on our websites and blogs that appeals to any and all niche markets we're targeting. For those first time homebuyers, we provide a lot of answers to basic questions, and for condominium prospects we address the financial management of condos and the limitations on ownership. If we're after investors, we're presenting a ton of market demographic data, prevailing rent rates, as well as foreclosure and pre-foreclosure specialty search functions. For those vacation home buyers, we're presenting information about the proximity of entertainment and local attractions, as well as lots of video and imagery. If we're targeting retirees, there's a lot of that same info, but also information about local medical care and lifestyle benefits available in the area for seniors. However, just throwing out all of that semi-targeted information is only going to serve their information needs. What's going to serve your lead generation needs? They can love your website, appreciate your IDX search function, and benefit from your targeted information, but they still will probably not tell you who they are. That's what it's all about, you finding out who is in need of your services. So, let's look at some specialty content offerings you can present in exchange for more in-depth content information. IDX – While this isn't targeted at any specific niche, you want an IDX search function that's full-featured, uses maps, and offers specialty info like school information, shopping, and more. However, you also want it to offer the ability to save searches, share results on social sites, and receive alerts, and--of course--the suspect must give you their contact information to register. NOW they're a prospect.