5 Prolific CSS Frameworks for Responsive Web Design
Click Here

When designing a real estate web site, our Realtor clients want to provide a valuable resource to their clients and prospective clients.  They want to provide easy search functionality, large formats for photos, and quick access to their featured listings. These are all simple requests and easy to accomplish in a variety of formats.

…but what else should a real estate website have in order to serve a Realtor’s business and their clients?

Here are the most important elements to look for in a new real estate website.

1. Optimized for Photography

All real estate websites should be oriented around real estate photography. Make sure your site supports the use of high quality photos in slide shows and listings to allow for better property viewing.  Today’s buyers search properties extensively online before they pick up the phone to talk to a Realtor so help them out by giving them access to great pictures.

2. Visitor Registration

Once a client or prospect gets to your site you want to encourage them to come back to your website and use your site as their online real estate home base.  All real estate websites should offer the ability for clients or prospects to register for updates on certain properties or alerts for new listings in certain towns.

3. Facebook Tab Integration

Social media is proving to be a wonderful playground for Realtor engagement with prospective clients, clients, and partners.  Providing easy access to your listings via your Facebook real estate business page (yes, this is good to have too!) ensures that you are giving your clients easy access to good information.

4. Community Pages

Sites that provide quick searches for towns and communities make it easier for their visitors to find what they are looking for.  We encourage our Realtors to include community pages for every town in their area, which include all MLS listings and are numbered on a map and featured on the page.

5. Featured Listings Slideshow

This enables Realtors to highlight their own listings on their home page. Customizing a site to reflect your region and your listings will provide your clients with an easy view of what you have available and further markets your existing properties.

6. Search Engine Optimized

Many websites today come with the SEO framework enabled but not completed.  The challenge is that Realtors are busy focusing on their own listings and their own clients and they don’t have time to learn how to optimize a site for SEO.  Make sure that the website you implement is search engine optimized for your towns, your region, and your name.  SEO is one of the most important things that your website MUST have to be found online.

7. Integrated Blog Functionality

Writing a blog on your website is a fantastic way to increase your site’s Search Engine value and make sure your website comes up earlier in Google search results. Maybe you are not ready to commit to writing a blog, but if you’re getting a new website make sure you have a platform that supports blogging so that you have the option to blog in the future.

Source Link: Breezy Hill Marketing