real-estate-website-top-tweaks-small-changes-can-bring-about-big-resultsMost people buying homes in Britain today are young and under 40. This means that they are handy with their smartphones and their laptops, and will turn to them in every spare moment to research their home purchase plans. They’ll look for pretty photos of homes, the best home features, home loans, information on saving for a down payment, information on how to find a good real estate agent and how much they are likely to ask for their services, tips on how not to get ripped off during the deal and so on.

Certainly, they will look at physical ads or at storefronts. There is so much information that they need before buying their house, though, that physical materials simply won’t be practical. They will need the search and reach of the Internet.

The question is, do you have the website to satisfy the insatiable thirst for information that home buyers walk around with? If they find your website, will they find a good bit of the information that they need? And even if you do have all of it, do you have what it takes to keep visitors with the short attention spans on your website? It is these qualities that make all the difference.

Blog Like Your Life Depends On It

Nearly every real estate website runs a halfhearted blog with a few generic posts on. Since it takes time and money to keep a blog updated with articles, they tend to remain poorly maintained. According to home survey major HDG.co.uk, though, it’s important to remember why you even want a website, though — it’s to attract the thousands of people out there who are thirsty for information that they can use as they look for a home to buy. When you have great information, you attract these people with money and concrete plans to buy. It’s important to invest in that content.

Right now, it’s a smart move because there is very little real content available for the UK audience. A homebuyer who looks online for information on how to save up for a down payment, for instance, gets a bunch of pages from the UK government’s Help to Buy website, and little from serious magazines or real estate agents. If there’s any information to be had, it’s from US real estate agents. If you invest in UK-specific real estate content on a regular basis, it’ll be a cakewalk to the top of Google.

Keep That Attention Span in Mind

Now that everyone looks at Internet through a 5-inch window in the palm of their hand, you want to make information easily accessible over that platform. It means taking the discomforts of mobile phone usage into account. It’s hard to read on a little screen, and even harder to find new content. Not only do you need a wonderfully mobile-optimized website, you need to put in plenty of visual content that’s easy to view — videos and photos.

Since image- and video-rich pages take longer to load than text-based pages, they can turn people off. It’s important to invest in file-size optimization, and high-quality hosting.

Use Your Content to Generate Leads

One of the simplest ways to get business mileage out of your content is to turn every page into a landing page. What this means is, you need every page to ask visitors if they would like to sign up before they look at the content. If your content is compelling enough, you’ll have no trouble finding willing sign-ups. Once you have leads, you’ll want to call them before the end of the day. Most leads are lost to delay.

Show Social Proof

Investing in a social media presence is invaluable. People tend to trust a proper timeline of good, believable conversations, comments and testimonials from past clients. The longer the timeline, the more trustworthy you obviously are.

Invest in Professional Design

It only takes a quick look at the websites of the real estate majors to know that there is a certain level of professional design that’s the bottom line today. It won’t do to look less well put together. It may take a generous upfront investment and constant tweaking to retain professional polish, but it’s the only way to go.

Author

Laura Davidson has worked in the home staging business for several years now, and enjoys being able to help people make small changes that reap big rewards when selling their house.