11
Nov
Estate agents considering a new website a new web design must tread
carefully
A new website can be a scary thought.
Estate agents might think, 'What content do I need?', 'What web
design suits my brand?', 'What features am I going to have?', 'How
will the website provide its own leads?' When estate agents chose a
property professional specialist in website design, they can be
safe in the knowledge that Resource Techniques has the experience and knowledge to
safely take estate agents through the process of constructing a
website that they can be proud of.
Throughout the whole process of designing a website, estate
agents need to bear in mind the audience that will be accessing
their estate agent website. These people will have turned to the
internet to casually view any potential properties that they will
be interested in.
For new websites, users will be accessing the estate agent
website by directly typing in the website URL/website address or
they will directly search for the estate agent's name in Google.
These types of customers are extensively aware of the brand and may
see the estate agent as the leading property professional in the
area.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is not instantaneous, even white hat SEO
can take longer as it is considered as the ethical way of moving
estate agent website up Google results page. Once SEO has taken affect and the estate agent
website starts to move up the Google rank for targeted key terms,
estate agents will find that a new type of customer will start
accessing their website. These customers are not brand aware and
have started with a search engine and simply searched for 'property
for sale in [their local area].'
The first thing that needs to be considered in the design stage
is the purpose of the website. The purpose of many, if not all,
excellent estate agent websites is to provide online property
searchers with the resources to fully experience a property without
being there. This can include, embedded Google maps with
enhancements that show local amenities, the latest viewer
technology, printable brochures on a pdf format, virtual tours,
video, Google Street view and many more.
With this in mind, web designers will suggest that the property
search button is the biggest call to action in the design of the
website. This literally means that the property search button is
calling to the user to be clicked. Viewing properties is what the
estate agent and the user both wants. By integrating your property
search button into the website design, estate agents are ensuring
that the website fulfils its purpose.
The next thing to consider is the content of the website.
Studies have shown that internet users do not read web pages, they
scan them. Interesting news articles may be an exception, but there
will still be many people scanning articles just to access the
information that they require. You may be scanning this article
right now!
Estate agents and web designers need to work together to ensure
that the content of their website contains easy to access
information and limited/no waffle. Again with the end user in mind,
estate agents want a website that pushes its users along the
pre-designed website process; establish the estate agent, the area
they are in, move onto an easy-to-use property search and then
clear contact details so that they can arrange a viewing.
From there, estate agents need to make sure that their web
designers make their website compatible for all browsers and
Operating Systems and design languages. Major UK Browsers include;
internet explorer, safari, Google Chrome, Firefox, and AOL. Major
UK Operating systems include; Windows XP, Windows Vista, Apple's
Mac OS X, Windows 7, and a smaller extent, Linux.
Resource Techniques is the ultimate Resource for estate agents
that are looking for web design, SEO, software and general web sites for estate agents. We are contactable
on Facebook, Twitter or via
our telephone number 0208 457 4777.
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