Are you neglecting your commercial agent’s website?

Over the last few weeks we have spent time talking about how the commercial property sector can use video. How video can deliver SEO value. We’ve talk about which social networking sites are best for Chartered Surveyors. How commercial agents setup a LinkedIn page and even whether you should bother with Facebook.

In some shape or form, all of these topics are designed to ultimately drive traffic to your website. So have we been neglecting the commercial agents website or more importantly have you been neglecting one of your greatest marketing tools?

Your Universe

Your website sits at the very centre of your company’s digital universe. The activity across social media, SEO, apps, eMarketing, video etc. point to your website and if done well deliver more traffic to your website. And if you have a truly integrated approach to your marketing communication, your website could sit at the centre of your entire marketing activity.

So what is happening when the audience that you are trying to engage with, land on your website via any of these channels? Sadly all this hard work could be going to waste if your website does not impress.

Making The Right Impression

It is widely understood that anyone landing on your website for the first time will give you 3 seconds to impress them. During those 3 seconds they make a judgement on your area of expertise, knowledge, market position, personality and what it would be like to work with you. First impressions count, the perception that they form of your business and you will be hugely influenced by how that website ‘visually’ communicates to them.Â

With the web, you are constantly on show to the wider property market, all the time being judged and compared. Existing clients will refer back to your website for assurance through out their relationship with you. Prospective employees will judge you as an employer and a place to work by your website. Competitors and their employees will compare themselves against your website. Most importantly around 80% of your prospective clients will see you first on the web. Whether they contact you or not will often be based on your website and the image that it projects.

Why Should A Client Engage Your Services?

Is it because of your knowledge, your people, the year you where established, your integrity, your professionalism, your size or number of offices? Most Commercial agents will use one or all of these ‘words’ as reasons for a client to engage them…even the bad ones. So who’s telling the truth and whom does the client believe?

In 3 seconds its unlikely that anyone viewing your website would read any of these words anyway. The look, shape, colour, imagery, navigation and speed of your website will convey more to your audience about the type of company you are than any collection of commercial cliché. Even the typography of the words can sometimes say more than the words themselves.

The Power Of Form

The visual elements of your website are those that make the fastest connection with your audience. They are also the most powerful, because they are often subconscious factors that can appeal to the most irrational emotional beliefs.

These visual elements will be based on your brand. The brand that will ‘cloth’ your website so to speak. Now that’s a discussion for another day.

 

Philip Burrows Marketing Consultant