Are you stumped by why some of your listings are getting clicks and others aren’t? When you put effort into visiting a home, taking specifications and photos and agreeing on a listing price, it can be frustrating to not see any fruit from your labours.
In this article, we’ve gathered information from three top portal bosses, who’ll give you the low-down on why you’re not getting any traction.
Photos are the key
After copious amounts of data gathering and analysing, three separate portal bosses have agreed on the same primary cause of low click rates – photos.
It seems overly simple but it’s true. Photos are the single-highest driver for getting traffic to listing pages.
If you’re adding listings to your site with no images, you’re not going to get very far. Think about it – who wants to view a property if they don’t have any idea what it looks like?
When browsing for homes online, prospective buyers like to window shop and flirt a little with the possibilities. Without images, you’re not giving them that chance. That’s what real estate giants Tony Blamey, Chris Meehan and Jason Spencer think, at least.
Homely co-chief Jason Spencer believes photos are a key way for buyers to single your property out.
“Beautiful photos stand out like you might see on an Instagram feed,” he says, “If we see an amazing property with incredible photos, we feature it, they get in our blog or social media and then when they get so many more views, so you’re not doing yourself any favours with poor photography. I don’t understand agents who only use thumbnails.”
Professional photography is key, but choosing the right person for the job is critical, so be sure to read our article How to Choose a Property Photographer Who Attracts Buyers. If the vendors budget does not allow for a professional photographer so you or one of your colleagues is going to do the shoot themselves, make sure they know the 7 Pro Tips To Nailing Your Real Estate Photography.
If your images are still not looking inspiring, try an image enhancement service, such as BoxBrownie, to find out more about this great quality but yet very affordable service, read our post on Boosting Your Property Marketing With BoxBrownie.
Mr Spencer also raised another key mistake that roughly 20% of agents who list on Homely make – adding business watermarks to their listing photos.
“It does them no favours, because it generally looks really poor and you spoil the search experience for the consumer, so we encourage people not to put watermarks,” he said.
So, adding photos is key, but how many photos should agents be adding? Domain Group COO Tony Blamey has the answer, believing the more the better.
“With mobile, we make it really easy to browse photos. As a consumer, I want to see as much of a property as I can,” he said.
Make the most of words
Onthehouse Group Chief Executive Chris Meehan urges agents to make the most of words – not only in the listing but also in the title. He believes that listings gain the most traction online when the words used work well with the photos.
“If I get an email, I want to know very quickly in the headline what the email is going to share with me. I don’t have any opinion on how long it should be, but it needs to be long enough to lead into a story, and the headline needs to match the images and also lead to the content. There needs to be a link between the three.” said Mr Meehan.
He also backs up Mr Spencer’s opinion that images are king and play the most important role in getting engagement on your listings.
“I think that people look at the photos before they read the content. They’ve got to be good, sharp images and if you hook them they may then look at the content, but they will probably judge the listing more on the photos than what you’ve written,” he said.
Give as much as possible
Although agents might think they’re gaining an edge by holding back information from their visitors, they’re actually doing themselves a disservice – that’s what Mr Blamey from Domain believes, at least.
He believes that, in today’s market where information is everywhere and all-available, holding back no longer works.
They’re hungry for information and want to be empowered to make a decision around that information. If they like the property they’ll make contact, so I don’t think withholding information works any more,” he said.
Onthehouse Group chief Mr Meehan agrees, thinking that buyers will in fact punish agents who don’t give them all of the information they want.
Follow these pieces of advice with your listings and you’ll be getting more clicks in no time.