I/E Speaks

The Internet is called the information highway and in order to travel it effectively, you will need to gather some information yourself. The best place to start is at the website that you already have in place. Look at your website from the standpoint of your prospective clients.
    
Another important piece of information is finding out what your competitors are doing. Go onto the web and type in various keywords and phrases that prospective clients may use to find real estate in your area and see whose site pops up. We will delve further into competitor snooping techniques in later blog posts.

Gathering information is only one piece of the puzzle. Your site needs to give information to the viewers and it needs to be the information that they are looking for, not just useless fluff.

There are many ways to make your site more informative and do so in such a way that will cast you as an expert in your field. Two such ways are by posting articles and blogs.

These informative tools contribute to your site and finding sources to post about will be important to your online success. You will need to surf the Internet for e-publications that discuss real estate trends.

This will give you a constant source of fresh topics for both your articles and your blogs. Having a site with fresh and informative information is not only important in establishing a quality site, but it’s important from a search engine perspective.

posted by Kim Hadley

Real estate profits are based upon the commissions obtained through the sales of property. Your question now is how you can use your website to help you garner more sales. Increasing sales by use of your website will consist of converting viewers into clients.

Figure out what your percentage of offline prospects, (walk-ins, or those responding to mailers and other offline advertisements), that are converted into clients.  Use this as a baseline for what you hope to expect from your online conversions. Naturally, the two will go hand and hand and the combination will increase conversions in both areas but for now use this percentage as a starting point to focus on. 

If possible, post a phone number on the site that is different than the one that is used in the office, so that you will be better able to track and differentiate your online conversions vs. your offline ones. 

If you have already had a website in place and it has been already been effective in conversions, figure out what that percentage is and determine how much you want to increase it.  You should also examine each section of the site and try to determine which section is most responsible for the site’s success and why that is. Be realistic when setting your goals.

Start small and work your way up. A very important step when detailing your goals is to recognize how much business you can effectively handle. You may be inclined to just shoot for the moon and employ all of the SEO techniques and bring in as many customers that you can.  Real estate is a service oriented business so ask yourself how many people can you service while maintaining your professionalism and providing quality customer service. This is especially true if you are a one man shop or an agent building your own page. 

Reputation is a big part of your business and you’re only as good as your last deal. The last thing you want is to have too many clients to handle effectively which will negatively impact your reputation.  That means all of the work you put into your site was for nothing because instead of being looked at as an expert in your field, you will become known as the agent who can’t get the job done instead of the one who can. 

You need to have a plan to handle the excess and you may want to consider partnering up with another agent and building a joint site or having a trusted associate that you can direct excess clients to. If you take this path, then make sure you have an agreed commission split worked out and do so in writing.  Another reason to start the ball rolling slowly is time management. Consider the life of a real estate agent.

You work irregular hours based upon your client’s availability, spend time seeking listings that will hopefully match what they are looking for and spend time carting the clients too and from those listings.  Having a sudden influx of new clients can severely impact your usual schedule which is erratic at best. You will need to be able to ease into your sudden increase in potential clients so that you can take the time to convert them into actual ones.

posted by Kim Hadley