Problems with Real Estate Websites

It is important to focus on your visitors' goals when designing your site. We've listed some very common problems with real estate web sites below.

Flash Intros
While Flash Introductions may have their place on the web, the real estate web site is not one of them. Visitors are only concerned with information that will help them purchase their new home. Flash intros provide little or no value to homebuyers and can be quite an annoyance to users with slower connections.

Imagine having an open house where visitors were forced to sit through a multimedia presentation of your real estate business before they were allowed through the door.

If you want to use Flash to display your company background, make this an optional movie your visitors may view. Do not make it the first thing they see every time they visit your web site.

Studies have consistently shown slower search and read times for text with textured backgrounds. If your site uses a background image, consider if you would use that same background on company stationery. Does it make you look more professional?

Animation and Sound
Adding animation or sound to your site merely for the sake of novelty is a definite mistake. Whenever you want to use sound and animation on your site, consider whether it helps your visitors accomplish their goals. Most uses of sound and animation do not add any value to site visitors and only distract and annoy visitors.

Bandwidth and screen real estate are valuable resources that shouldn't be wasted on inessential novelties.

Not enough or inaccessible local content
As covered in the article Content Your Visitors Want , homebuyers are interested in area information. Your expertise and knowledge of your area is what will set you apart from your competitors. Many sites simply contain a few generic links to city and county government web sites or generic school information sites.

For example, a popular template site contains a School Information link, which looks promising. However, the link actually sends visitors to EschoolProfile.com where they must then supply their personal information and click through a series of forms specifying which state, county, and school districts they would like to receive a report on. The report is then emailed to them rather than displayed immediately on the web browser.

First of all, this is horrible in terms of usability. Not only are the users being forced to submit their personal information to another site, they are also required to reiterate the locations that they presumably already specified by visiting the real estate agent's site.

Secondly, how would a homebuyer know which school district applies to the cities they're interested in. Shouldn't the real estate agent, being the area expert, provide this information directly on their site? Take the extra time in doing this research yourself and include some basic school information on your site. Link to third party sites for in depth information that can't be conveniently included on your site.

While links to other sites are useful, they should be used as secondary sources of reference for homebuyers. Homebuyers should be able to acquire as much valuable information from your site as conveniently as possible

Email Address Not Displayed
As mentioned above, users hate being forced to fill out forms to gather information. Many sites do not list the agent's email address but rather force users to fill out a form to contact the agent. While many users may view this online form as a convenience, some users may prefer to use their own email program to contact the agent directly, so that they will have a record of the email.

In any case, needlessly limiting your visitors' options in contacting you will frustrate them and decrease the number of leads you receive. Always make sure your email address is listed on the contact form so that visitors may email you directly if they choose to.

Broken Links and Pages Under Construction
It should be quite apparent that broken links reduce credibility and frustrate users. However, many sites contain broken links, often to other web sites who've moved their pages. You should check your links to other sites occasionally to make sure they haven't changed.

Another mistake that is far more common than it should be is the use of Under Construction pages. By linking to a page that is under construction and contains no useful content, you are simply wasting your visitors' time. When researching, homebuyers are goal oriented and do not have any loyalty to your site in particular. If you don't have the information they need, they will simply move on to the next site. The promise that something of value might replace the page under construction next time is not enough to bring a user back.

If your site is not ready to be viewed, don't list it with search engines, or otherwise advertise it. If a section of your site is not ready for viewing, then don't waste your visitors' time by linking to it. You will only be damaging your own credibility.

Lack of Listing Photos
Homebuyers consistently report that images are the most important factor when they search for listings. Despite this, an amazing number of listings on agent sites don't include photographs, and those that do usually include only one image of the front view of the house and leave it at that.

Whether this is a limitation of the template site, a habit brought on by traditional marketing, or just an oversight, this will seriously decrease the interest in the property. The great thing about the Internet is that for the most part, space is free. Unlike advertisements elsewhere, you can list as many photos of each property on your site as you like. Why limit yourself to one when homebuyers unanimously vote for more?