COMMENT
The web is your ‘f lagship branch’ says, web expert Brian Judd.
T
here’s no doubt about it; in today’s competitive market an estate agent needs to be more than just a company that takes property onto
the market to sell or rent them. They need to get involved in the local
area, be the voice of the local property market and educate people on the areas they cover. They need a website that is easy to navigate, engaging, informative and giving plenty of ‘current’ news and advice to their audience. Potential customers need to be captured way before they are in a position or even thinking about using the services of an estate agent, so the agent must use his or her extensive professional and local knowledge to find them and engage with them early on.
REALISE THE POTENTIAL
Most agents have some form of a website but may not realise the potential it has. It should after all be viewed as one of their biggest assets and their largest branch. None of their other branches gets thousands of visitors walking through its doors – but their website gets thousands of pairs of eyes looking at its content. Search engines like the mighty Google also rely on this valuable and relevant content and hugely values and promotes a website that feeds it fresh, relevant information and shares the content with others through social media. The need to have the ability to
constantly change and evolve a website is now a must with the ever increasing use of the internet; the ability to react instantly to news and local trends and highlighting opportunities related is extremely rewarding. The flexibility to easily edit a site internally without having the time and costs of an external web designer is a major advantage over the competition. Also the ability to monitor and track the used
22 AUGUST 2012 PROPERTYdrum
‘The agent must use his local knowledge to engage with potential clients early on.’
content and respond accordingly by re-structuring the website is of great benefit in making sure that the most lucrative content is viewed.
CASH CONSIDERATIONS
Although an agent doesn’t ‘physically’ sell anything from their website like a clothing store with a payment checkout, it is actually possible to give each viewing and valuation lead a monetary figure and track every lead generated, even the telephone calls. This can then be automatically calculated and the agent can see approximately how much their website is potentially earning them on a daily basis. Most would be surprised to see the figures – one of our client’s websites actually proved to pay for itself in three weeks! It is a fairly painless process to set this in motion and have an email automatically sent each day showing the previous days’ results. With so many people viewing the website it must prove its’ worth, justify a spend on developing it further and any related spend on advertising it. Once this is all set up and an agency can actually ‘see’ how valuable their website is to them, a totally new level of priority and importance is placed on it!
BELLS AND WHISTLES
Lots of fancy bells and whistles aren’t the be all and end all – nice to have but not
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essential. Some ‘informative’ information about a property is perfect but not too much to make the viewer believe they know the property and dismiss it without viewing it in person or even asking the agent questions about it. The whole point of a good website for
an estate agency is to act just like a good negotiator giving great, knowledgeable advice whilst representing the image of the company. This is where great design with clear and concise navigation, along with fast loading speed is imperative. Intuitive searches to get properties in front of eyes and ease of contact, ease of contact and... ease of contact. This ‘all’ has to be funnelled by the design. With the ever increasing use of Smart
phones and tablet PCs, the ability to be displayed across different devices and browser is imperative so HTML5 coding and cloud hosting should be used! The systems used by mobile and tablet devices are constantly being improved and viewing a regular website on them is now extremely easy. Users of these devices quickly learn to know how to navigate them as they are designed to be used ‘instinctively’. If a site is hosted in a ‘cloud’ environment then much of the processing is removed from the device and taken from the hosting server itself. 3G is adequate to view a properly constructed website but with the era of 4G looming, speed just won’t be a problem – there really is no real need for a mobile version with only a fraction of the available information – one version for all.
Brian Judd is Managing Director at web technology company, theme-is.
www.theme-is.co.uk Tel: 0845 564 6656.
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