Who would ever imagine that a design choice for your real estate website can be harmful to your business?
Unfortunately, it can.
The real estate industry is very unique especially from a design perspective because not only do you present your brand to your audience, but you also showcase the properties of your clients.
Whether it’s designing your brand, website, content, or business logo you are often faced with a lot of challenges just to make it right, especially when there are a lot of competitors out there.
Let’s face it, the market today is faced with a lot of options and only those that look amazing and offer functionality can compete and get the results they need.
This is why it becomes incumbent upon you to ensure that your brand and marketing are hitting the right notes and going through the correct path to ensure your growth in your real estate business.
The value of effective design
There’s no doubt design is one of the most subjective elements in business, which can be difficult to pin down since everyone has their own opinions about what colours, styles, or visuals are best.
However, most make the common mistake of limiting design only on personal taste and aesthetics, which is common among those who think that the design should look like “this” instead of focusing on what businesses aim to achieve.
Without a planned strategy, design can be likened to soldiers sent to battle without any weapon. Yes, they are still soldiers, but without the tools to fight the war expect to lose the battle.
Making it fit
Make no mistake, it is always possible to develop a design basing on a strategy. However, it is impossible to create a strategy around a design.
Unfortunately, the latter is what has been commonly observed in a lot of businesses that end up rebuilding their websites after a couple of years, campaign for a rebranding, or as simple as designing a new logo.
This is often the result of the lack of planning before developing their design, especially when people start to gather heads to identify the cause for the lack of online performance or very low sales numbers. Ideas fly around such as poor website design or logo that does not seem to attract people to the marketplace.
Surprisingly, it’s almost always nowhere near those observations as studies have shown that such issues are usually caused by the absence of a good design strategy and consistency in implementing, monitoring, and assessing their digital marketing designs and goals.
To copy or not to copy
In a highly competitive environment such as real estate, there’s always the risk of successful brand style guides or template-ready websites being copied by others or used across numerous brands, getting inspiration from its online success.
However, it could run counter to your own business goals and objectives, which could convey the wrong message to your audience or clients.
Many, if not most, of the copied real estate brands, are those that adopt a strategy first process and is one of the major reasons why they end up not resorting to a brand or image redesign no matter how long they have been making waves in the industry.
They know how to reinforce their strengths because it works for them and work on their deltas to turn things around and convert them into a strong area for them.
Devising strategies in design
Before even considering rebuilding or rebrand a website, logo, or brand, it’s important to consider three basic ideas that are crucial to planning your next move.
Determine the reason
Why have a new website? Why are you doing it? Why update or change the design of the website? Is your current website still functional?
Ask yourself these questions to help you think about what you need and whether it is worth pursuing o or doing.
Pick one or two KPI’s
Focus on performance indicators that you want to achieve through your design. Sales? Leads? Website traffic? SEO? CTR? Etc.
Having metrics in mind and measuring it will help you find out what areas you need to focus on and what design elements you need to make it work.
Be realistic
Are you willing to invest so much in rebuilding or rebranding your website? How soon do you hope to achieve your goals? Are those plans and goals achievable and realizable?
It is important to consider these points to help you decide if you are willing to move on for this major change because at one point, the ball may have dropped somewhere and it could likely be a design-related choice that compromised or worked against your marketing strategy.
It could be something as small as properly placing your CTA, placement or quality of images, content layout, access to links on key areas of your website, etc.
Always remember that whatever you choose to do, whether it’s a total rebranding, developing a new style guide, or agency logo, always remember to measure your design strengths and other performance indicators to help you plan your strategies first before deciding on your design elements.