Cut To The Chase Web Design
August 30, 2010
A successful real estate web design addresses two competing desires: the web visitor’s intent to quickly view property or homes for sale and the real estate agent’s desire to capture web visitor contact information. If superb search engine optimization and marketing steps have brought web visitors to your real estate website, too many navigation steps (or mouse clicks) can undermine your marketing.
In a good real estate web design, two mouse clicks to the information is generally the limit before visitors bounce off to another website or web search. IMCD Web Design, with the experience of creating web sites for real estate agents that consistently bring in sales leads, has found the balance between customer satisfaction and the agent’s high return on web design investment.
In online real estate marketing, clients often spend 75% of their time searching for property and real estate agents – so in a typical home buying cycle, six weeks are spent looking online and then two weeks with an agent with the clients highly refined search parameters. This means that the client may be using the real estate agent’s website for searches for five or six weeks before they contact the agent to go visit properties.
Successful contact gathering methods center on providing market updates and ongoing information, such as through a real estate blog, rather than forcing users to sign in before accessing properties. Part of this market adjustment is driven by an agent’s competition with real estate websites that are simply property review portals that do not offer real estate agent services, but exist only to collect online advertising revenue. They use property listings simply to drive traffic, not as their primary business purpose.
IMCD Web Design offers real estate website design packages that position Realtors to be very competitive in their local markets against national chain websites and home listing directories that offer no services. Our market-tested web designs have a “triple crown” track record of high search engine ranking, graphic design that attracts and keeps visitors attention and web content that leads to successful harvests of visitor contacts.
If your real estate agency is looking for that competitive edge in your market, contact IMCD Web Design for that professional real estate website that will put you on the Internet map and generate a consistent stream of sales leads for your business.
Semi-Custom IMCD Web Designs – Hybrids Ease Website Creation Process
May 31, 2010
For business owners looking for their first or a new professional web design, semi-custom template sites are an effective and cost-effective bridge step to a totally custom web design. In any web design and website development process, four key steps take place: keyword/market research, web design creation, web content development and website launch. Starting with a semi-custom web design makes it possible to cost effectively move through these steps to launch a professional site in a short period of time.
How does a hybrid web design, utilizing the elements of graphic design found on custom sites and the ready web content of a template website, best meet a company’s online marketing needs in a very competitive online environment?
1. By investing in a semi-custom web design template, you benefit from adapting a ready, professionally designed layout with your personal logos, photos and graphic images. Your brand is supported and promoted, not overshadowed, by the web design’s graphic layout.
2. With a navigation and web content areas outlined, you aren’t forced to reinvent the wheel deciding what content is necessary to sell the sizzle. IMCD Web Design has years of experience working with business owners on the best way to market their company’s products and services. The essential pages of a business web design are included in the template. These two areas greatly reduce the cost and time needed to take your web design from inception to completion.
3. With the savings in resources gained by customizing a professional web design, business owners gain by a greater focus on the search engine optimization (SEO) and keyword research. Template designs that offer SEO as an option do a disservice to their customers. Since not all web designers understand the power of a solid SEO strategy, it is short-sighted to assume business owners maxed out tending to their business’ needs will learn, much less master, the level of SEO knowledge necessary for their website to be competitive in the search engine results.
4. Finally, by utilizing a web design company’s hosting option, the burden of being your own webmaster is shifted to the pros who know how to secure your site from hackers and defeat websites that would steal your bandwidth (and drive up your hosting costs) by accessing your images for their websites.
IMCD Web Designs semi-custom website design option allows business owners to improve their online sale lead generation or product sales effectiveness without going through the school of hard knocks. Contact our sales department to safely move your online marketing into an effective professional web design.
Is Your Real Estate Website Confusing The Search Engines?
February 15, 2010
Real estate websites that follow a key search engine optimization principle on content creation rank higher in search results because they do not confuse the search engines. How can you confuse a search engine when they have banks of computers running time-tested algorithms written by authentic geeks? Unfortunately it is rather simple. Information overload.
For all the computing power behind a search engine’s indexing of your real estate website, the algorithm boils down to answering a simple question, “What one idea is this web page about?”
The key search engine optimization principle on content creation is “write one page per keyword”. Translating this SEO principle to real estate websites means making sure you have pages for the “your market real estate home buyers”, first-time home buyers, home sellers, investors and any other niche market you want to target with your keywords and advertising.
Experienced real estate agents gain that sense of when they are starting to give too much information on a property to a client – the glazed eyes, the monosyllabic answers. Unfortunately, in creating your web page content you do not get that kind of feedback from the search engines. So, follow the rule, introduce one keyword concept and stick to that. If your start to broaden your scope to include other keyword concepts, remind yourself that this content either needs its own page or maybe use the information in your real estate blog or article manager.
On a marketing note, when home buyers search your site, they will be drawn to any information that they find is of signal benefit to their efforts to buy a home. Having information on your home buyer’s web page of how you make sure you get top dollar for a home sale does not instill confidence in your home buyer clientele.
IMCD Web Design has over a decade of experience creating many semi-custom and custom real estate websites and we have found that the Realtors that make the most use of their online real estate marketing opportunity – adding the most keyword-specific web pages – get the best results both in the search engine ranking and in sales lead generation.
Contact your IMCD real estate website sales team to get an honest assessment of your real estate website and what your online real estate marketing campaign needs to generate sales leads and a healthy return on your online marketing. Our web page options are keyword specific opportunities to feed SEO optimized content to the search engines.
Real Estate Blogging Versus Supercharged Blogging
February 1, 2010
There is having your own real estate blog to add content to your website, then there is supercharging your blog for maximum search engine optimization and security. Why have a real estate blog integrated into your IMCD Web Design (IMCD) website if you have other “free” options available? Simple, IMCD not only integrates your blog into your real estate web design, it supercharges your blog with proven plug-ins necessary for to field the most effective real blog.
Realtors that have an experienced real estate web design company, IMCD in particular, set up their blog realize several benefits. The first one, of course, is that by integrating the blog into your website you get all the SEO benefits of easily adding keyword-rich content and driving to your personal agent website. However, a supercharged real estate blog has more than just the integration benefits.
IMCD’s standard blog option includes all our supercharging steps to make your blog an effective and powerful online real estate marketing tool – not just drawing more traffic, but generating more sales leads.
A standard blog is set up for adding content and saving your posts under nondescript titles. IMCD’s supercharged real estate blog package includes the latest search engine optimization tweaks, the ability to add video and multiple images to your posts. As real estate agents know, when it comes to getting home buyers interested in a property – a picture is worth a thousand words and a professionally photographed house is worth a few thousand dollars more in the listing price.
The only missing ingredient from your IMCD real estate blog is your creative writing. Even with writing, IMCD prepares your blog to overcome any writer’s block. When your blog goes live, you already have enough categories set up to keep your creative juices pumping out the relevant real estate market information. Usually, agents find that the categories give them an outline that helps the creation of several blog entries at one writing session.
Whether you are a pro at creating blog entries or a novice, your real estate business will benefit from an IMCD real estate web design with the supercharged blog option. Contact our real estate web design team today to get your online marketing in the fast lane to higher return on investment.
Four Major Pitfalls of Real Estate Template Websites
January 13, 2010
Real estate template websites can be a great investment and fast-track way to establish an Internet presence, especially for real estate agents launching their personal agent website. IMCD is a real estate web design company that brings the best of two worlds – attention-arresting custom designs and cost-effective template websites – together in semi-custom real estate template websites.
When building an online marketing presence, better to start with a proven system of getting your name out in a professional manner as well as with a website that has the search engine optimization (SEO) built into its structure and layout. Over the years, IMC has had many agents turn to us to build their online marketing after having earlier attempts misfire, usually due to their first attempts getting caught in these pitfalls:
- No proofreading. Bad grammar and misspelled words convey a less than professional image. With IMCD real estate template websites, professionals handle copywriting and final edits for you.
- Tomorrow never comes. The template fill pages with “under construction” or “your information goes here” text seldom get revisited. Due to time or manpower constraints, many websites are one-shot deals, so the pages left undone will probably still be without content and remain a keyword opportunity missed 18 months down the road.
- Static brochure instead of lively news site. Real estate websites treated the same as a sales brochure become dated too quickly. Just as markets change, information you provide your clients must stay up-to-date. Mixing the graphical design expertise of IMC with the ease-of-use of a blog integrated into your real estate website allows maximum control over updating your website. If your real estate blog is linked to your template websites and hosted for free by a blog company, you lose many of the SEO benefits of having your real estate blog integrated and hosted with your website.
- Homegrown graphics. Real estate websites built with professional graphic design expertise boost your professional image. When potential clients see amateur images selling your services, they figure their home will suffer the same photographic indignities – not the way to sell the sizzle!
If you need a real estate template website with tremendous return on investment potential, contact the web design pros at IMCD. We will get your real estate website template built with your information and our SEO, graphic design and marketing layout expertise.
What Is Your Real Estate Website’s Marketing Pitch?
January 10, 2010
Does your real estate website‘s marketing pitch need a tune-up? In a competitive economy such as real estate sales, your marketing pitch is the item that helps you stand out. In the online market place, you need two marketing pitches – one to the customer and one to the search engines.
To market to the home buyers and sellers, your real estate website‘s marketing pitch should explore all the ingenious ways that you solve their problems.
Marketing Principle #1 is “Love your customer”.
Your web visitors read your web page content to see if you are putting their real estate needs first. If you give your customer what they want, then real estate referrals and warm sales lead generation benefits flow from the advantageous relationship.
To “market” to the search engines, the discipline is to keep your marketing pitch divided up so a different web page addresses one of your markets. Do not rely on your home page to pitch to sellers – who want the best price, buyers – who want the lowest price for the nicest home, and investors – who are looking at the real estate sale from a whole different perspective.
Keep your marketing pitch on the home page to those benefits everyone in the real estate market wants: top notch communications, comprehensive knowledge of the residential and/or commercial market – whatever your market niche is, and guidance all the way through the closing process.
Part of your search engine strategy is following Marketing Principle #2:
Know your competition. Check your competitions’ websites to see if there is keywords or markets you have overlooked or could market to better. Late entry to market can be a benefit to a real estate agent’s website, since the market positioning and keyword usage can take into account all the successful strategies at play in the online real estate marketplace.
Place your real estate website order with IMCD Web Design and take that beneficial step towards establishing your powerful online real estate marketing presence. Our web designers work with you to create the best keyword strategy and content presentation to get your website ranking on the search engines and generating home buyer and seller leads.