10 reasons why your Estate Agent website is rubbish

 

Independent Estate Agents are not known for their websites, but this doesn’t have to be true for your website. It is possible to easily blow all local competition out of the water – all it takes is a little research and insight.

To help along your journey, the team here at Resource Techniques have listed our top 10 reasons why your Estate Agent website is rubbish, giving insight into what you should not accept from your next web designer.

• Flash intros

We have talked about flash websites in many articles, including this Estate Agent flash website article and by now Estate Agents must know that flash does have its uses, but flash intros and websites entirely made of flash is a big no-no.

Whereas the Estate Agent websites that are entirely made of flash are a rare occurrence, flash intros crop up in our web reviews more often than a printer jam.

Flash intros may seem a little ‘flash’ at the time, but when you boil it down the flash intro adds nothing of value to your website. What the majority people that access your website will want to see is either how your properties are presented (vendors) or what properties are in your portfolio (buyer). Adding a flash intro will not only annoy the impatient visitor but the majority of visitors will just click the Skip button.

• Crowded

Too many Estate Agent websites try to stuff everything and anything onto the homepage. So much so, that in the end nothing on the homepage really stands out and the user doesn’t know where to click.

A mountain of links, content, pictures, widgets etc. may seem attractive, but if your homepage doesn’t accomplish its intended purpose then your website is as useful as a chocolate teapot, which brings us to our next point…

• Property search button

This is THE most important aspect to your website. Without a prominent property search button, your poor users will be lost nomads jumping from page to page until they finally find what they are looking for – or become frustrated and use your competitor’s site instead.

Property search buttons can come in a variety of shapes and sizes and can be positioned in various places on the website, but each one calls out the user saying “Click me, click me”. This is what web designers call a ‘Call to Action’.

• Music

Music is possibly the biggest faux pas that any Estate Agent can choose for their website. Luckily the web review team has only come across this once but this does not mean we should ignore it – Estate Agents, avoid this one at all costs!

• Tables

On the other hand, Estate Agent websites that are entirely made out of tables appear in front of the web review team more often than Windows update.
A trained eye can easy spot websites completely made out of tables. Without going into detail, those websites look out of date and in the worst cases, as if they’re made in the 1990s.

• Popups

Out of all the options that are available for an Estate Agent website, why do Estate Agents allow their property features such as interactive mapping and images to be placed into popups? Why not just keep all your media and content in one window where users can naturally move about freely?

• Small images

Some Estate Agents don’t take property images seriously. As mentioned above, the majority of people accessing your website will go straight to property search and will looking at properties that are relevant to them. If your images give no impression of the property in question you have greatly reduced your chances of the buyer picking up the phone and arranging a viewing.

• Featureless

There are so many possible features (E.G enhanced mapping, Google Street View, etc.) that Estate Agents can put on their website that your own website can now compete with those property portals, and yet there are so many Estate Agent websites out there that are as featureless as a vanilla ice-cream.

James Coyne eMarketing and Social Media Consultant