How important is first impressions for a website?

Your website holds an enormous responsibility to create a good first impression of your business to your potential customers. Visitors to your website will decide whether to stay or leave from the look of it. If your website is outdate, confusing or ugly it can deter a visitor even before they look at your property portfolio...

You may be position one of Google but if your website doesn’t appeal to the user, you might as well be invisible.

Things you should consider with web design for estate agents:

• It’s not about you, it doesn’t matter what you think about your own website. The website is there for your customers, providing something modern and user friendly should be your top priority.
• Have a creative website that not only captures the attention of your visitors but also draws them to your property portfolio.

Planning to consider before actually designing your website:    Â

• Creating a user friendly experience
• Providing easy navigation
• Informative, optimised content
• Displaying a clear, relevant call to action
• Promoting your website – this could be through SEO or Social Media

Things to avoid:

Something will generally give off a bad impressive if used in excess.

• Pop ups
• Background music and sounds
• Slow loading pages – usually due to large image files and flash

These techniques usually irritate users who will lose patience and go elsewhere. Jumping on the latest gimmicks isn’t necessarily the best thing for the user so consider the user’s needs before adding them to your website.

Test your website before making it live

This is a rookie mistake and will make your website look very unprofessional. Always check for spelling mistakes, especially on the homepage as well as broken links and design flaws.

Cross browse checks should be carried out too as not all behave in the same ways, what may look perfect on Google Chrome, may have errors on Internet Explorer.

Remember that the design of your website will be the first and last impression for many of your visitors to your website.

By Luke Stanley
SEO Consultant