Realtors and other real estate professionals are a specific group that can hugely benefit from steady search engine traffic. This is usually due to high “consumer intent”; most people searching for services are ready to buy or act right then and there. Also, real estate services generally come with a high price tag with Realtor commissions being very sizable. In some cases, just one closed sale could pay for an entire year’s worth of SEO and PPC management for a Realtor.
The problem with most Austin and Central Texas Realtor sites, well most ALL real estate web sites, is that they have no clear purpose or call to action. The majority of these sites take you to a homepage with information about Austin neighborhoods and a brief overview of the real estate company or Realtor mixed into the content somewhere. They totally lack a “Why You Should Call Me Now and Not Someone Else!” statement and purpose. Or even worse, there are 20 gadgets, buttons and “search a home” boxes all over there site.
Consider this, most people looking for a Realtor’s services will likely find the local MLS long before they find your site. So if they want to search for a listing, they could do that elsewhere. Your site should concentrate on convincing your visitors that YOU are the person they should contact to list or help them find a home. And the design of your site should bring this statement front and center.
Take for example the site HoustonAppraisalCompany.com. Their previous design was full of useful information and had a decent call to action, but it was hidden away by all the “noise” that the rest of the site was creating. By simplifying their site and restructuring the layout they were able to improve conversions by 15% and decrease bounce rates by 20%. (Bounce Rates are when someone leaves your sites without visiting more than one page.) They placed their “Unique Selling Proposition” front and center and included a brief video reinforcing the statement and introducing the company to visitors. Now that is good web design for a real estate company.
If you can capture your visitors’ attention quickly and impress or intrigue them they will spend more time on your site, viewing the rest of your pages and soaking in what your site has to offer. This is true for any market, but especially so for real estate where potential “browsers” could quickly become leads.
