Estate Agent's 5 fundamental questions when building a website

A strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. Without strategy, estate agents only have blind tactics that will lead them down the dark alley of failure. Do you want your website to fail its basic goals or do you want it to succeed and become the envy of the competition?

A strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. Without strategy, estate agents only have blind tactics that will lead them down the dark alley of failure. Do you want your website to fail its basic goals or do you want it to succeed and become the envy of the competition?

1) Why is the website being built?

This question is designed to make estate agents contemplate the reasons why they have a website in the first place. Answering: just because everyone else has one cannot be an acceptable answer. Think clearly on the reasons how it will benefit your agency directly and indirectly.

2) Who is the website being built for?

A common misconception is that the website is being built for the estate agent. This is excusable because on a lateral sense the website has been commissioned by the director/partner but the website is not for solely the director/partner. The people using the website on a daily basis are not employees or directors, but property searchers.

3) What will property searchers be looking for?

Firstly the WOW factor - something that will not only encourage the user to enter the website but also give a slight hint of the quality of properties within the websites. Next users want to be clearly see either a large property search button or a featured property to click on. Both shows that users are looking for property, putting a hurdle up here will only frustrate users.

Once users have defined exactly the range of properties that they are looking for, users are then looking to build a picture of what the property is like in the mind. Features such as high resolution pictures, a clear text description, Google Maps, Google Street view, Floorplans, EPCs, virtual tours and online property particulars all add different dimensions to the overall mental picture.

Lastly users want to see clear contact details. Many estate agent website designs fail this need to have clear contact details on each individual property.

4) Where will my users come from?

• Loyal customer base
• Print media
• Social Networks
• Search Engines
• Directly typing in the web address
• Email campaign/Property brochures

5) How will I know the website is working?

The best way to identify that your website is a successful one is to quantify it. Google analytics lets estate agents analyse exactly how well their website is performing. Areas such as how many people have visited the estate agent website, where they've entered, exited, how long they stayed on the website, which area they entered the website and much more.

Troy Stanley, CTO of Resource Techniques comments, 'Do not forget that your customers will actually comment positively on your website! A shocking revelation but a beautifully designed website with a WOW factor and a rich user experience will attract more comments than a UFO sighting.'