things-to-avoid-for-your-real-estate-website

Things To Avoid  For Your Real Estate Website

Building a new real estate website from scratch can be a daunting and massive process. 

From planning, design, layout, content, up until the site launch, there’s bound to be instances where ideas and opinions would clash, especially when it comes to style and visual elements.

However, the key to avoiding these is to invest time in understanding what’s new and trending to ensure that your marketing goals are achieved. 

For sure, among the things that you should avoid having on your real estate website are outdated features and old-school functionalities that could hurt instead of benefit your real estate business.

Here are some of the prevalent yet oft-ignored things modern real estate websites should avoid.

Sliders and image carousels

 While it is a good way to present a carousel of images such as property listings and multiple services at the same time, studies have shown that without proper planning of what you target to get out of it can do more harm than good.

The study found several compelling reasons to support that argument.

Only a measly 1% of online users click on carousel or slider links, which means that rarely anyone literally interacts with it. Of that 1%, 84% click the first slide and the rest is totally ignored.

It is understandable to avoid this simply because people do not go beyond the first slide or take favourable action on the links.

Instead, you can choose to find one high-quality image to display and use it on your home page to generate that much-needed impact.

Sliders and carousels are not mobile-friendly. With people spending more of their time online using mobile devices, it is unfortunate that most sliders don’t generally work on mobile websites. 

If your carousel or sliders were configured for desktop because it looks cool, then it does not stand a chance to work efficiently on mobile and cause you to lose people and leads to your website.

What’s more, with the recent Google algorithm update where mobile compatibility has been known to be a ranking factor, you can expect your search engine rankings to drop.

It slows down your site’s load speed. Sliders and carousels have been found to significantly drop load speeds due to its demand for computer memory, thus increase your site’s bounce due to a slow-loading site.

Not only that, but speed has also become a ranking factor for Google since 2010 and adversely affect your search rankings. 

Neglecting landlords and vendors over renters and buyers

Real estate websites commonly display a visible search bar either on top or centre of the landing page asking to buy, sell, or rent, which clearly focuses on buyers and renters.

However, you could be missing out on giving attention to vendors or landlords who make up a significant percentage of the real estate market. 

There’s no problem with using calls to action (CTA) but missing out on vendors and landlords in your website can slow down not only your online performance but your business targets as well.

Consider them a part of your primary audience by reconfiguring your page layout, add relative CTA’s, and navigation links that would allow landlords and vendors to interact with your website especially on pages that are relevant to their needs.

If you find a CTA design not suitable for your homepage, you could also choose to incorporate a brand tagline or positioning statement on the landing or home page.

Not Secure links

This is a critical aspect of a website that applies to all, so check your website right away and see if it is configured with a secure link, also known as SSL or Secure Sockets Layer.

Your website developer must ensure that your website has an SSL certificate installed on your website to protect your potential clients and readers that they can browse through your website safely and securely without their data getting breached or compromised.

The easiest way of checking it is when you see HTTPS on your URL when you access it through the address bar.

Also, Google’s algorithms have been updated since 2014 to include SSL as a ranking factor to give more secure websites an edge in the rankings over those that do not have it.

Abuse of stock photos and videos

 Using too many stock videos and photos on your real estate website can be very counterproductive. Not only do you risk affecting your search rankings due to the number of copied images and get lost in the flood of results using the same images, but you also end up losing a lot of opportunities to get more leads looking for unique qualities and accurate representation of your property listings.

When it comes to real estate, potential clients are more inclined to find images that have the most relevance and accuracy to images and videos related to your property listings.

Not only do you get to establish credibility and trustworthiness, but you also provide your market with the most convenient channel to browse and review your property listings.

In a nutshell, today’s websites need to address the current needs of the target market so that your business could stay relevant and answer the call of the times. Unless your website heeds the demand of the market such as mobile compatibility and load speed, you could see your numbers decline.

 

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