BRER Real Estate Marketing Blog

This guest post was written by Sam Chapman who
markets Austin Real Estate and publishes the Austin Real Estate Blog. 

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I was looking through my website stats today and noticed something that I had not seen before.  It was the graph of visitor loyalty. 

Website Stats:  Visitor Loyalty

This basically measures how often people come back to my website.  The majority of visitors use the site once and don’t come back.  Many of these visitors probably find the site in  a search for some long tail terms, those searches not related to real estate.

Finding a website about Austin real estate rather than Hamilton Pool photos, for example, a visitor would probably look at the page I have for that subject, leave and not return.

People who visit the site 2-4 times, and that is a fair number of visitors, may find the site when searching a subject that returns a blog post and they may revisit my blog a couple of times.  Of course, these visitors could be looking for real estate in Austin and for whatever reason not come back. 

These might be people considering a move, real estate agents in other areas just checking Austin out, real estate agents who are studying my site to get ideas for their sites (yes, they really do this) or people just studying different markets for whatever reason.

The Thing That Caught My Eye

The thing that caught my eye was the number of visitors who spent time on my site 15 to 50 times.  When I compared this year to months prior to May, 2007, I noticed a big difference in the frequency  of people spending time on my site 15 to 50 times.

Then it hit me.  May of 2007 is when I switched from the Austin Board of REALTORS® IDX search to the WolfNet IDX search.  The ABoR feature isn’t a great search feature (no offense intended).  WolfNet is more feature rich and is more user friendly. 

The WolfNet search also allows visitors to save searches to come back to later and also to save listings as favorites.  These features provide a stickiness factor that wasn’t on my site before.

The number of people visiting my website more than 15 times after implementing an improved IDX search was up over 5 times compared to before.  That is a huge number.  The number of leads I have gotten since implementing a better IDX feature and the quality of these leads is also up.

Moral of the Story?

If you are a REALTOR®, you absolutely must have a website.  If you are a REALTOR® with a real estate website, you absolutely must have a great IDX search.
 

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If you’d like to see your guest post (and links to your site) on this blog, contact me today!

A question came up the other day, while I was talking to a client, about what should be on the home page of a real estate website.  Here are some things I’ve found to be important.

1.  Attracting Attention - You only have a few seconds to attract someone’s attention to encourage them to stay on your site.

Things that can help:

•  A clear indication of what the site is all about.  The first thing your visitor wants to know is whether they’ve landed on a site that meets their needs.  So, if you’re consulting on Atlanta Real Estate, that should be one of the first things your visitors see. 
• A professional design.  Make sure your design speaks to your customer base.  One agent I talked to recently asked about flashing FREE buttons on a site he’d seen.  We talked about the customer base the agent wanted to attract, and decided that his customer base probably wouldn’t be impressed by flashing FREE buttons.  Put yourself in your prospects shoes and design for them.
• Graphic “buttons” that direct visitors to the key pages of your site.  Key pages are things like an MLS search, community information, market information and any other compelling offers you’ve added to the site that will make it darn near impossible for people not to sign up to get it.  Graphic buttons make staying on your site easy.  Visitors don’t have to read anything, just click and go
• Clear and easy navigation.  My preference is to have one location/menu where a visitor can get to any page on the site.

Things that can hurt:

• Too many choices.  I know you have a lot of information you want to provide.  But, offering too many choices can be a problem.  If a site is too busy, it’s much more difficult for people to figure out what to do next.
• Too few choices.  Your visitors are looking for information.  And, if you think about it a bit, you’ll identify what they want.  Think of the questions clients ask you about your area, regulations, taxes, home prices, etc.

2.  Introducing the visitor to the tools and information on the site.  Think about what you do when you first land on a new website.  You have to orient yourself to how the site is laid out, how you move through the site, and how you can get to the information that is most important to you.

Things that can help:

• The graphic buttons you put at the top of your site help.
• Speaking directly to the various types of visitors who might land on your site helps.  In a perfect world, every visitor would find one of the buttons to meet their needs.  But, there are undoubtedly other pages on the site that may be of assistance, too.  Text links to other pages on the site could be organized by who would find them interesting.  For example, if your niche is geographic, you might have information for buyers, sellers, investors or people relocating.

Things that can hurt:

• Devoting your home page to a marketing message.  When Internet surfers first reach your site, they don’t care about you.  They’re probably not interested in choosing a professional at that point, they’re doing research.  If you can get them to adopt your site as their real estate research headquarters, they very well may become interested in you.  Put a brief marketing message on the home page with a link to your “about” page that contains a full marketing message describing your unique selling proposition.

If you have a real estate marketing or real estate website question, put it in an email!
If I answer it here on the blog, you’ll get a nice incoming link to your website - using good anchor text, too!

Since this is a short week, I decided to skip Whimsical Wednesday.  Especially since nothing amusing has happened to me since last week.  Well, my cat has learned how to open cupboard doors.  So, I did have the experience of calling him the other day when I thought for sure he was in the kitchen, only to have him make a grand entrance by bursting through one of the cupboard doors.  But, I imagine you may be tired of silly cat stories.

I did get a question from Sam Chapman who markets Austin Real Estate, so I thought I’d talk about that instead.

Sam’s question was: What colors are best for a real estate website?

My answer to that question is that I don’t think the color itself is as important as making sure that all the colors coordinate.  I’ve seen successful websites that are yellow, blue, green, taupe - really, a wide variety of colors.

I think the thing that makes a real estate web design look really pulled-together is when you use colors that really work well together.  Figuring out how to do that isn’t really a science - it’s more an art, along with a good knowledge of how to identify HEX colors that are complimentary.

One of your goals should be to have the link colors stand out significantly.  The link colors should contrast well with the background, and with the other letter colors.  When people scan a website, you want the links to pop out at them. 

I’m always amused by those folks who think it’s dignified to have links that aren’t underlined and look like just the other text.  You can tell they’re links when you cursor over them and they change color, perhaps.  But, most people won’t take the time to test out all your copy to figure out which words are actually links.

Sometimes even small changes make a big difference.  I don’t know if you can tell the difference because these samples are so small, but take a look at these two - the Before and After:

In the flesh, the After looks much more professionally done, even though it’s just a standard header from Point2 Agent.

For more information, there are three posts on this blog that you might find useful:

• How to Color Your Website
• What Color is Your Website?
• Colors Can Drive You Crazy

Thanks, Sam!

If you have a real estate marketing or real estate website question, contact me.
If I answer it here on the blog, you’ll get a nice incoming link to your website - using good anchor text, too!

Have you noticed a change in how the Google search box works?  If not, you may soon.  Google has introduced Google Suggest.  I would imagine it has reached all the servers, but it may still be making the rounds.

Google Suggest is something that was created to assist Internet searchers.  As you start to type in a search phrase, Google guesses at what you are looking for and displays a dropdown box with possible alternatives.  Google says that providing “more refined” searches initially will make searching more convenient.

I’m horrified.

I am even more horrified to learn that Yahoo does the same thing.  I don’t often use Yahoo, so I had no idea.

Is This Bad News for Webmasters?

Ah, yes.  The great thing about being ranked in the search engines has always been that a site gets ranked for many search phrases related to the main keyword phrases that were being targeted.  And, I’ll wager that will still happen.

The question is, Will anyone ever type in long-tail phrases if they are presented with the most popular phrases when they first start to type a search??

I  doubt it.  As human beings, we are very prone to take the path of least resistance.  At least Google isn’t as bad as Yahoo.

Here’s How it Works
Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you might remember that I’ve talked about Southern bugs once before.  And, I imagine this time I’ll start getting hits from the search engines when people look up cockroach or water bug.  But, that’s OK.

For any of you who got here using that kind of a search, I apologize.  This is just a Whimsical Wednesday post, not an information site about insects.

There are pesky cockroaches lurking about outside here all year around, I imagine.  But, there are times when they seem more determined to join us in the house than others.  I’m not really sure what triggers it, since I’m not really a cockroach expert, but the first sign is that you’ll see a couple belly-up in the garage.  That’s the clue that the roaches are on the move indoors.

So, the other night, I was sitting quietly in the living room when in FLEW a cockroach, closely followed by my cat.   Of course, we all know the little devils can fly, but generally by the time they get in the house, they’re too groggy from the bug spray to work up much energy for it.

The only thing I can assume is that Joey found the bug shortly after it slithered through whatever crack it found to get in the house, and the bug was still pretty perky.

An insect that size in flight is an awesome sight.  Especially when it ends up landing on your living room furniture.  So, this was no time for fooling around.  I raced for the vacuum cleaner while Joey tried to find a way to leap high enough to grab the intruder.

Joey has not quite come to terms with the vacuum cleaner.  I think it’s a bit loud and obnoxious for his taste.  So, when I came tearing up, plugged in the machine and turned it on, Joey decided to retreat to a safe distance.  I sucked the cockroach up in the long extension to the vacuum, let it run long enough to convince myself that the roach had not survived, then turned the vacuum off and collapsed on the couch to try to return my breathing to a normal  pattern.

Joey is evidently not completely conversant in how vacuum cleaners deal with cockroaches.  He first went back to the last place he’d seen the bug and did a bit of reconnoitering, but was rather puzzled by the fact that the bug was nowhere to be seen.

Then, he approached the vacuum cleaner and sniffed it over thoroughly, looked from the vacuum to the last known location of the bug and back, and walked away shaking his head.

At times like that, I wish I could have the same level of enthusiasm for playing with cockroaches as cats do. . .  but it’ll never happen.

Do you have a real estate marketing tip?  Contact me about writing a guest post for this blog.  Appropriate links to your website will be included.  Impress your peers with your knowledge - you never know when a referral opportunity will arise!

Do you have a real estate marketing question?  If you send me a thoughtful question, I’ll write a blog post to respond.  Appropriate links to your website will be included.  Impress your peers with your search for knowledge - you never know when a referral opportunity will arise!

Evidently not, according to a Consumer Reports survey quoted on Inman News.

If you’re a discount broker or working in that type of a brokerage, from what I’ve seen, you’ve taken a step toward a Real Estate Consulting model.  The objective is to provide a lower fee, but most of those brokerages I’ve seen have a “project description” that identifies what services will and will not be provided.

Full-Service Agents Just Seem to Provide Full-Service

I think it becomes a problem when full-service agents reduce their fee because the seller negotiated.  Full-service agents often don’t have a list of services - they just do what’s necessary.  And, according to the Consumer Reports survey, they perform the same services, regardless of the fee.

For example, the survey discovered that 46% of sellers attempted to negotiate a lower commission, and of those, about 71% were successful!

OK, so an agent decided to reduce their fee.  But, did they reduce their service level?  Evidently not.  The overall conclusion Inman News came to from reviewing the survey was that the amount of the fee didn’t affect the quality of the service.

Don’t you think that’s a bit crazy?

Real Estate Consulting Rocks!

The typical arguments I’ve seen about not reducing fees use examples like lawyers.  If a lawyer makes $350 an hour, do you think they’re going to lower that fee because you ask?  I can understand that it might be a bad example to use.  REALTORS® might not really identify with being on a par with lawyers.  But, what about consultants?

The consulting industry has been writing project descriptions forever.  A consultant’s knee-jerk reaction to a discussion of reducing fees is to find a way to meet the client’s objective while eliminating some of the steps in the process.  It would never enter a consultant’s head to reduce the fee and provide the same level of service.

I think the issue gets back to how you value your skills.  I know there are a lot of ditzy real estate agents in the world; I know that there are a lot of agents who just work part-time; there are agents who got their license because they were bored and wanted to get the commission when they sold their house.

But, there are also very talented, personable, knowledgeable, seasoned professional REALTORS® who really care about their clients, who work very hard, and who have saved more than one client’s behind on a deal.  Why would that person want to lower their fees?

Start by Documenting The Effort Expended

Maybe a place to start is by figuring out how many hours you spend on various transactions.  Do you have that information?  Not just a guess, but an actual accumulation of hours spent?  If so, bravo! 

If not, start jotting down the hours you spend in all the various aspects of helping a client buy or sell a home.  Once you start getting a feel for the effort involved, you’ll be able to appreciate the effort and expertise you bring to the table.

That might just start you on your way to moving toward a real estate consulting business model…

Thanks to Bill Gassett, who consults on Hopkinton MA real estate, I found some good ideas for increasing your exposure in your local market and getting quality incoming links to your blog.

Check out the site www.YourStreet.com.  Once you join, you will be able to:  “post articles, voice your opinion, join a discussion forum, and display your user profile” according to the website.

Bill has found the site helpful because he can send his blog posts to YourStreet and they are posted on the the site’s community page for his market area.   I’m not sure how much juice the incoming links have because there are so many pages on the site, but I think it’s a great opportunity to check out.

YourStreet will also syndicate your blog if they think the content is appropriate.  That will eliminate the need to manually add the post to the site.  Just use one of the feedback forms to request syndiating your blog.

The other site Bill mentioned is www.Topix.com.  Bill says that articles are cached pretty quickly on this site by Google, and Yahoo is showing some of Bill’s articles on Topix as incoming links.

Make the most of your blogging effort - get the word out electronically!

I hope you’ve never been a defendant or plaintiff in a courtroom because that would mean that there was some trouble in your life.  But, if you have had that experience, you may know how stupidity in the court happens.

I’ve been on one jury - no stupidity, just a civil suit that only took a day.  And, the verdict was very obvious to all.  The scary thing was a couple of the jurors were older women, and they evidently sit on juries as a hobbie.  They wanted everyone’s name because they kept a scrapbook on all their juries.  Hmmm….

I saw this in a magazine (from JCR, the magazine of the National Court Reporters Association) the other day and it reminded me of courtroom silliness:

Lawyer:  Do you know when that meeting occurred?
Witness:  The March 9 meeting?
Lawyer:  Yes
Witness:  March 9

I think things like that happen when the attorney isn’t very prepared for a particular witness.  I think it’s the same reason that people say “Ummm” before answering a question, because they’re giving themselves time to think. 

And, evidently while they’re thinking of the next juicy question to ask, their ability to recognize what they’re currently saying is significantly reduced.

I was a witness in a trial once.  It was a ridiculous civil suit that should never have gotten into a courtroom.  But, it did, and after being warned by the defendant’s attorney that it would happen, I was served a subpoena - more than once, actually, because the trial date got moved around.

Unless you try to hide from process servers, you’ll find them rather nice and actually apologetic.  Explaining that I was expecting the subpoena didn’t seem to make them feel any better.

Here was my stupid question.  The attorney seemed to be very busy looking at some papers he was holding.  I had just explained that I heard a fight, went outside to see what was happening, then went back inside to call the police.  And, the lawyer asked:

“And, how long were you there?”

And, I said, “Ummm, well, I guess until I left”.

Then, the attorney asked, “Oh, so you didn’t go back outside?”  Which I think would have been the appropriate question in the first place.

Don’t you?

If you’ve been in real estate for a while, you’re undoubtedly aware of the problems there can be when you’re trying to manage a contact database.

Depending on your technology setup, you could have contact information spread out over numerous databases:

1. The database for your website