Buying, selling and leasing properties can be very lucrative. If it’s something you are interested in doing then in order to do so you will need to use property sites. Not everybody wants to use another person’s site to market their properties, however. Some people prefer to use their own. Making a realty website isn’t at all easy though; if it was easy then it’s something that everybody would do. As it happens very few people create their own realty sites.
You can of course work with a realty agency instead of creating your own site, however when you do that you’re beholden to their rules and have to pay fees for marketing. Unless you are an experienced web designer it’s highly unlikely you will know anything about creating your own website. In truth, you don’t need to as thanks to the abundance of internet guides and tutorials learning about what it takes for you to make your own site has never been easier. In this post, you are going to learn about how you can do that and what you need to know about web design.
Viewing Expert Sites
One of the most effective ways of building a quality website is viewing other property platforms. Looking at another company’s website will help you to get a clear idea about what to do with your own site. Make sure that you avoid unprofessional, unpopular realty websites; it’s not uncommon in the realty industry for platforms to steal customer data. The Zillow Group are notorious for doing this and as such should be avoided. One look at the modern home search from eXp will give you a clear idea about what a good realty platform looks like. Make sure that you don’t outright copy a platform’s design as this could get you into legal difficulty.
When you steal another website’s design you can get taken to court for breach of copyright. Technically a website’s design is the creator’s intellectual property. By copying it you, therefore, are infringing upon their intellectual property rights. You can take a website’s design and adjust it to make it look unique without getting into trouble, however. You may want to employ an expert and ask them to do this for you so that it’s done subtly and with finesse.
Remember that just because a site looks good does not necessarily mean it’s worth copying. Sometimes websites have fantastic designs visually but in terms of user-friendliness, they are impossible to navigate and use. When you steal an impractical and poorly thought-through design you are shooting yourself in the foot. A good way to determine whether a site is easy to use is to read its reviews. If customers and clients complain about a site’s usability then you should avoid copying it.
Compiling Local Listings
In terms of the kind of information your site is going to contain, you need to make sure that it’s up-to-date and accurate. One of the worst things you can do if you are planning on starting a realty website is not compiling all of the listings in the area your website purports to list properties in. You do not necessarily need to work with realtors to list properties for them. It’s common for fledgling sites to take listings off of other more popular platforms and redirect to them. Doing this helps you to build substance on your website and makes it look more populated than it really is.
If you are going to take listings from a realtor’s own site (rather than another realty platform) then you do need to be careful, however. While most realtors will be happy that you are giving them free advertising some might demand compensation. If you are charging people to use your website then stealing other people’s listings and posting them on your own site means you are profiting off of their listings and not paying them. You should ask for permission first if you are going to take listings from a realtor’s website.
Asking for a realtor’s permission is not especially difficult. All you have to do is reach out to them via their website’s live chat or email feature. If these things are absent and the realty firm is in your area then you could go in and ask for the manager’s permission in person. Make sure you record interactions with realty firms when you are posting listings for them so if they later on claim you did not get their permission you can prove that you did. Proving you got their permission first will prevent any lawsuits from being launched against you.
Working With Estate Agents
If you are planning on launching your own real estate website then one of the first things that you need to do is to reach out to realtors in your area and ask them if they want to partner with you; you don’t have to be an expert in real estate to start a website since you can ask estate agents to post their listings on your website. Before you can begin soliciting partnerships you are going to need to build organic traffic. An easy way of doing this is by posting blogs and articles dedicated to real estate.
Building traffic will boost your site’s domain authority and make it seem more authentic. No self-respecting realtor is going to post listings on your website if it is not popular; why would they? If a real estate website is not popular then it essentially just means that all of a realtor’s listings are going to go ignored. Estate agents are not in the business of wasting their time, posting listings on sites that do not achieve enough traffic to justify their listings being featured on them. The traffic your site gets needs to be organic otherwise it won’t ever achieve true popularity.
A good way to build traffic is to hire an SEO (search engine optimisation) agency to work with you. SEO is a complex area of marketing and it’s likely not something you will be able to do on your own; if you have no experience in marketing then attempting to manage SEO yourself will likely be nothing short of a disaster. When you are looking for an SEO agency to hire make sure that you read reviews. A site’s reviews can tell you a lot about them and help you to decide whether they are worth hiring or not.
Hiring Customer Support
Your company’s customer support department is something you need to invest a lot of time and money into. Unless your customer service desk runs efficiently nobody’s going to want to do business with you or use your site; customer support is something that benefits customers and partners. As your site grows you likely won’t have much to do with your business’s daily communications and operations. In other words, you will appoint people to handle communication with partners for you. If the people you delegate communication and networking to aren’t qualified or experienced in their jobs then it will reflect poorly upon you as an individual.
You don’t necessarily need to hire people internally to run customer support, however. It’s very common for business owners to outsource customer support now. Most outsourcing firms are located in India and South Africa. You won’t have to pay as much to outsource as you would staff and run a full-time service desk. One of the good things about outsourcing is that the agencies you have to choose from will all employ experts with lots of experience in dealing with and answering customer queries. Again, read reviews as they can tell you a lot about an agency.
When you are reading an agency’s reviews you need to do your best to ensure that they are genuine. Sadly it is not uncommon for businesses today to pay for fake reviews. Fake reviews can make a company look a lot better than it actually is. Fortunately, to spot these all you have to do is read them. More often than not they are all written in the same style and are posted one after the other. If a business’s reviews appear to have all been posted on the same day then it is a clear sign they are fake and to that end, should be avoided.
Building Positive Reputation
If you want to start a business then one of your main focuses should be building a positive reputation for it. Your business’s reputation will play a very large role in how successful it becomes. If its reputation is negative then nobody is going to want to do business with you. Your reputation is something that can take years to build but seconds to destroy. As such it is important for you to do everything you can to ensure that all business and customer interactions go swimmingly. The better each sale, transaction and interaction goes, the better your reputation will be.
Remember that most customers do not go to the high street to find out about businesses anymore. Most people use search engines. Because of this you need to make sure that your site’s reviews are positive across the board. However, gaining positive reviews is easier said than done. Earlier reference was made to the fact that you can actually buy reviews. You may want to consider doing this if you are interested in building a positive reputation for your site. Your site’s reputation can be positively impacted by good reviews.
Buying fake reviews isn’t technically an ethical practice, however. If customers find out you have been doing this then there is a chance that they could stop doing business with you. Because of this, you need to make sure that you hire an expert service. Hire one that has a wealth of experience and knows how to write fake reviews. If all of your reviews appear on the same day, or if they seem overly positive then they could deter consumers from wanting to do business with you. Likewise, if reviews are all written in the same style then they are obviously fake.
Employing A Professional
In terms of actual website design one of the best things that you can do for your business is to hire a professional. A professional web designer will be able to make sure that your site looks its best. Unless you have experience creating websites there is no way you will be able to create one yourself. Something to bear in mind is that reality websites are highly complex and contain a lot of widgets and pages. If your site’s features are not expertly implemented and are easy for people to use then nobody is going to stick around on your site. Your site’s navigability and usability will have a huge influence on its success. A professional coder and website designer will be able to make your site for you, regardless of what your requests or requirements are. Always research a programmer before hiring them so that you can make sure they are worth working with.
Avoid Template Services
Finally, avoid using template services. While template services are fine for e-commerce businesses and small online services, they are not good for realty platforms. As mentioned in the previous section realty platforms contain a lot of complex features and settings. There is absolutely no way that you will be able to design a professional and easy-to-use realty platform using a template service. Another thing to consider is that many template services are overused. What this means is that even if you are able to create a realty platform using one, the chances are many other businesses will have websites that have the same design as yours. If other businesses have the same design as yours then it can make you look unprofessional and uninspired. A unique website will make you look professional and attentive to your customer’s needs, on the other hand.
Creating a good real estate website isn’t easy. If you plan on starting one for yourself then you need to do everything you can to make sure your site looks its best. An unprofessional website will struggle to attract clients and partners. The easiest way to ensure your site looks good is to hire a web designer. A web designer will be able to create your site and then maintain it for you as most programmers offer aftercare services.