The real estate industry is incredibly competitive, and that means that not only do you have to be great at the actual real estate aspect of your job, you also have to maintain a web presence that showcases your particular company’s features better than someone else’s company features theirs. It’s quite the riddle, and deserves a good amount of thought and effort to put your commercial pieces in play properly.
So assuming that you already have the real estate skills in order, how do you translate that to the web design world in a way that most effectively communicates the essence of your company? The five following tips will help you with your thought process, including using grids effectively, using responsive design, using photo carousels, have live chat capability, and including reviews when possible on your site.
Use the Grid Wisely
With something like real estate presentation online, the right format and scale of images, graphics, and text is an immediate make-or-break detail. One popular and effective way to show off your properties is by using an eye-catching grid format for real estate. Similar-sized photos with bright colors, easily readable text and enough white space in between is absolutely the best way to showcase multiple properties in the smallest amount of space possible. Vital information and professionally designed typography are an absolute must, so you can either mimic the formats that you find on great sites, or design your own from scratch to match your company’s style.
Understand Responsive Design
And because people aren’t always going to be searching for homes or property from their desktop computers, using responsive design is almost becoming a universal requirement for web designers these days. That means that someone will see your perfect grid setup via their desktop, and then an easily scrollable version of that same thing on their mobile phone. There are plenty of responsive-design templates out there for you to begin with, and they’ll help your effort tremendously.
Think Carousels for Seasonal Photo Changes
Sometimes the best way to fit more information about houses is to use a carousel photo format. That way people can look at the same area of the screen, and at a predetermined rate (or when they hit the ‘next’ button) another photo will be in that same area. Especially if all the pictures are of the same property, this is a great way for people to look more deeply into a single opportunity, and become invested in the idea of visiting, renting, or purchasing.
Live Chat Functions Are Great Client Initiation Opportunities
And many people go to real estate websites with the specific intent of finding answers to their questions. You can either have an FAQ section set up, or if you set up a live chat function on the website in question, there’s someone a button click away to talk to in real-time.
Include Reviews When Possible
One of the biggest reasons that people will choose one real-estate company (or real-estate website) over another is how well the sense of connection and trust is developed, and creating a featured place for client reviews on a webpage is a great way to make this happen as well.