A total of 75% of people form their opinion of a website based on aesthetics. If you think you’re different because you’re just a real estate website, think again. You can’t afford to cut corners with your web design.
If you want to create the best real estate web design firm for your clients, you can use a few tips to get the job done. Below are seven website design tips that will help you when designing a website.
1. Use Great Videos & Pictures
Most homeowners won’t have the time to go and visit every home available. They have a limited amount of time to search for homes, so they have to make their choices wisely.
That’s why highy-quality real estate videos and great images are critical for a real estate website. High-quality videos/pictures will give potential homeowners a better idea about what they can expect when going on home tours.
Don’t just take a few photos with your smartphone, either. Invest in high-quality videos to really make the homes you list shine. When your visitors see the quality on your website, they’ll be more likely to give you a call to take a home tour.
2. Stay Responsive
There are many people out there that don’t use desktop computers to browse the internet anymore. It’s simpler to handle everything from their smartphones.
Unfortunately, this is a problem if you design your real estate website for larger screens. People with smaller devices won’t be able to navigate your site easily.
That’s where a responsive design helps. A responsive design changes the website design based on the screen size it detects from your visitors. It can change everything from the font size to the positioning of website elements.
Going this route means that it doesn’t matter what size device your visitors have. Everyone can easily read and navigate your site.
3. Speed Optimization
Just like you need to cater your design to mobile users when designing your website, the same thing applies to your page speed. Mobile users aren’t always going to have a fast internet connection when browsing the internet. If your site is slow, they’re going to head to another website to look for homes.
Unfortunately, your real estate website is going to be image-heavy if you do things right. People want to see high-quality pictures of homes before they buy, so you can’t get around using many images.
However, there is a lot you can do to minimize the impact of those home pictures. Look into speed optimization techniques and apply them to your image loading. If possible, try to get your page load times under three seconds.
4. Set Up Lead Captures
The people that visit your website won’t always immediately reach out to speak with you when they’re done. They’re shopping around, so they might not want to talk with a person immediately.
However, that doesn’t mean you can’t capture their information. An opt-in form allows you to set up a form on your website to grab someone’s name and email address.
You can incentivize this by offering a freebie or something else valuable in exchange for the email. Once you have that email, it gets put into an email marketing list. You can reach out to everyone on this list at once whenever you want to send valuable information or promotional material.
5. Include Filtering
While some people in the housing market might not have a great idea about their home criteria, that won’t be the case for most people. They know how big of a house they want, where they want to live, and how much they want to pay.
If you don’t provide filtering in your home listings, your visitors will have a challenging time finding what they need. Think about the following criteria when providing filtering options:
- Home price
- Location
- Nearby landmarks
- School district
- Home size
- Number of bedrooms
- Number of bathrooms
You can add many other options to your filtering criteria, so experiment to see which ones work best for your website. You can also look out for other established sites to see what filtering options they offer their visitors.
You can also go a step further and include search features. Some people know exactly what they want. Something like Showcase IDX is a great way to help people find what they want quickly.
6. Design for SEO
Website design isn’t only about creating a visually appealing website. If you want to get free website traffic from Google, you’ll also need to make your site with SEO in mind.
Google sends bots to your website to figure out what your content is about. If you don’t do a good job helping Google understand your site, you’ll hurt your chances of ranking high on search engines.
Make sure you study the best SEO design practices to know what to include on your site. If you focus on local keywords, you’ll be able to get free visitors that are primed to use your services.
7. Keep Your Design Simple
Simplicity is one of the essential parts of a website design. People go to sites for a specific purpose. If your site is overly complex, it will only confuse people and cause them to leave.
Only add information onto a page that needs to be there. There should be one point for each page. Anything else is a distraction and stops people from finding what they need.
It’s also critical not to make things complex with too many design elements. A simple, elegant website will always win out with regular people over an intricate design.
Design Your Site Right to Build the Best Real Estate Website
New homebuyers have many options these days, so you can’t afford to have a lackluster website to promote your brand. Use the website design tips above to design the best real estate website for your clients. The better experience you provide to people, the more likely they are to work with you and refer their friends and family.
Once you get your real estate website online, you can focus on driving potential clients to view your listings. Check out the blog to learn a few marketing tips that will help.
