Real Estate Website – 5 Things you need to know
As with all business sectors, Real Estate companies have their own very specific requirements. Real Estate websites are the primary source of leads and enquiries for the business, therefore it is critical to get both Usability and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) right, as getting these wrong could be fatal to the business.
We are often asked to review website’s designed for different types of businesses, but often we find the lack of thought given to “Usability” and “SEO” are the primary issues, as most of the effort has gone into aesthetics design.
So what are the key areas of concern with Real Estate websites?
Before we do a deep-dive into this, like all websites, we first need to understand the audience and purpose of the website.
The basic requirements of a Real Estate website is to generate leads, and in order to do that, it must firstly attract traffic (SEO), and secondly it must be easy to navigate around myriads of property types, location, price, etc. (Usability). With that in mind, here are the key issues to consider when designing a Real Estate Website.
1. Database & Search Tool
We should get the boring bit out of the way! This is the make-or-break for any Real Estate website but usually is way down the design priority list as it is not very exciting subject.
Property market is a complex and hence has many variables, this means the database needs to deal with multifaceted requirements of a buyer, and the search tool should make this task easy for visitors. This means database and the search tool need to enable visitors to cut, slice, and dice the database in many different ways. From location, to property type, to features, and price; they are not as simple as they sound. So let’s examine these in more details.
Property Location
Areas and locations are known colloquially as well as their official names, so the database needs to allow any property to belong to more than 1 location. For example in Costa del Sol, there are areas that are commonly referred to as “The Golden Mile” and “The New Golden Mile”, but these do not really exist on any map. There are towns, villages, and areas that belong to these locations, but the database needs to be able to recognise and show the properties, regardless of how the visitor determines the location.
Property Type
At first glance this is a no-brainer as a property type is a simple choice. A property can be an Apartment, Townhouse, Penthouse, or Villa. Right? Wrong! How do you categories a property which is on 2 floors, but it is not on the top floor (so it is not a Penthouse), and it has another dwelling above or below it (so it is not a Townhouse)? Is a bungalow a villa, a house, or a category of it’s own? Once again, your database need to allow a property to be categorised into more than 1 category, so that no matter what your visitor calls it, the correct type of property is displayed.
Property Price
Whilst properties are priced at a specific price (all be it negotiable), your search tool should be able to look for price range as most people have a budget which includes the lower limit and upper limit. So the database should be able to cope with finding properties within the price range of the visitor.
Advance Search
The database and the search tool should enable visitors to narrow down their choices to include specific features such as Pool, Sea View, Garage, etc. Of course depending on the country and area you operate, the features most in demand differs, so don’t expect too many people to look for “Central Heating” if you are operating in a hot country, or “Air Conditioning” in ski mountains! Flexibility and programmability are the key here, so the Real Estate Agent can select the most appropriate features for their target audience or location.
2. Database Import and Export
This is a controversial subject as there are a lot of contradictory elements here to consider, mostly around Ease of Management versus SEO.
In many countries including the USA and Spain (and increasingly in the UK), Real Estate Agents are sharing databases. This means a listing is shared between multiple Agents, even if the vendor has only signed up with one Agent. Agents in turn, share the commission when offering a property that is not listed directly by them.
Sharing databases enables Agents to offer a wider choice of properties to potential buyers, which also means they have a higher chance of closing a deal.
These business drivers has meant there is an increasingly demand from Real Estate companies to link up with external sources of properties, enabling them to download properties as well as push new listings of their own on to the database.
The downside of linking with external databases are loss of control over the content, as well as duplication of content for SEO.
Loss of control of the content means the language used to describe one property can be wildly different to another similar property described by another person. This stands to reason as each person has their own style of writing, vocabulary, and adjectives they use. This means your website could end up without a real corporate style and language.
This also applies to the quality of images, as some Real Estate companies are fastidious about the quality of photos they use, whilst some are little gung-ho and less disciplined. All these will end up in your website, no matter what your company’s standards might be.
Finally, the biggest negative in importing databases is the impact on SEO. The duplication of content can harm the website SERP (Search Engine Results Page) position, and Google can even penalise the website, if great care is not taken in tackling this issue. Whilst some this can be mitigated by setting the database “not to override” changes after the first sync, it is time consuming to manually update all property descriptions, Meta Tags, etc.
3. Presentation
This is not to be confused with the design of the website. Real Estate websites were the early adaptors of Video and Virtual Tours (read our articles on this subject). Whilst we could argue about the effectiveness of these tools, the fact remains the practice is widespread and most Real Estate companies want to keep up with the competition.
This means handling of Video using platforms such as Vimeo or YouTube, is critical. Never use your hosting server for delivering videos as they are resource hungry and slow down your website.
Virtual tours also require handling of widget that allow external sources to drive the tour delivery, so the website needs to securely deliver content from 3rd party platforms.
4. Image Compression
Real Estate websites use a lot of images, with average property having 12 or more. This means image compression is even more important than the normal business websites. Consider the average camera takes high resolution images at 4MB to 8MB each. If you have 12 images on a page, your page payload for images alone will be minimum of 48MB excluding other contents. That is not going to do the website’s SEO any favours as the pageload time will blow the budget, let alone how unimpressed the mobile users will be as your website chews away at their data allowance.
5. CRM and Customer Tracking
Over and above the tracking of traffic such as Google Analytics, most Real Estate companies use some kind of CRM package to track leads, and interaction with buyers and vendors. This means website contact forms need to interact with the CRM system that the Real Estate company is using. Whilst some more commonly used CRMs are easily integrated, some of the more specialist and niche players required specific integration.
Conclusion
The basic rules of website design still applies, so Real Estate websites owners need to think about the content map, visitors journey, ease-of-use, etc.
When choosing a vendor for your Real Estate website, make sure they have experience in this sector as you do not want to pay the price of them learning your trade! We have been designing Real Estate website as far back as 2006, Web Design, SEO, and Marketing consulting. We also offer a fully managed services for your Web Hosting and Online presence. Contact us to discuss your needs and see what we can do for you.