Estate Agent web design - website design norms

Website design, like other industries have common industry standards. Although it is possible to 'buck against the trend' these trends are designed to increase the web's visual impact and usability. In this article on web design, Resource Techniques will be covering the general web design standards for every Estate Agent website.

Optimum load speed
There have been quite a few predictions on the web saying that the speed of websites in 2010 will be an important factor. This speed will be designed into every Estate Agent website so that not only people can load websites faster but it will improve your SEO. Slowly becoming an industry standard, the web designers at Resource Techniques, are keeping a close eye on website speed debate.

Neat and Easy Navigation
Navigation is one of the biggest industry norms in Estate Agent web site design and some designers still get it wrong. Neat and easy navigation will let anyone effortlessly use a website without any hassle and clever placement of 'Calls to Action' will drag the user deeper into the website and onto an Estate Agent's properties.

Clean Layout Design
Your house or office isn't messy when customers come to visit, so why should your website? A clean layout means that a user's eyes won't be 'tripping' over anything to get to where they want to be - viewing properties.

Prominent property search button
97% of users that visit your Estate Agent website go straight to property search. Without a prominent property search button, Estate Agents and web designers are only catering for 3% of the property searchers.

Program using pure CSS
The software or 'coding' for web design has moved on from using a design techniques called 'tables' to using a modern design coding called CSS or Cascading Style Sheets. Not only does CSS look a lot better but search engines find it easier to read.

Design for all screen resolutions
Screen resolution applies to the number of pixels shown on your computer screen, the higher the number of pixels, the better the image quality shown on the screen. There are many different screen resolutions and web designers have to make sure that Estate Agent websites are compatible.

Cross browser compatibility
Just the same as screen resolutions, there are 5 main browsers that are generally used. Again Estate Agent website has to be compatible with each of these.

Clear contact details
Each property should have clear contact details at hand. Without designing clear contact details, users have to venture further into the website and then may lose the property that they are interested in.

High quality images
The web designers at Resource Techniques include the latest technological viewer in each Estate Agent website. This allows Estate Agents to include high resolution images in each of their properties.

Troy Stanley comments on web design for Estate Agents, 'These are just a selection of industry standards that go into modern Estate Agent websites. If your website doesn't have the full list, maybe it is time to talk to a web designer that specialises in Estate Agent website designs.'