Web sites have become the heart and soul of many top agents' marketing efforts, that piece of their business around which all else revolves.

Why, then, do so many sales associates make no or little money from their sites? I already knew why from my studies of top agents, but I recently had this knowledge reinforced from another perspective, that of a consumer.

My experience as a consumer has been so frustrating that I'm ready to propose (tongue-in-cheek….I think!) that we take away the sites from agents who aren't using them correctly and free up the good domain names they hold so that they can be passed out to the agents who know how to use the Web correctly! In this way, the consumer would be better served, and those agents who deserve to would make even more money.

Besides, it would offer the additional benefit of keeping the agents with bad Web sites from wasting more of their time and money!

First, some background as to how I came to this consumer's perspective.

I'm moving from the Washington, D.C., area to a more rural environment, somewhere within an hour of an airport, with either mountains (and trout fishing) or on a lake (and bass fishing) and no really severe winters. I began looking at homes in three main areas of the country. What I found as I looked at the agent sites from a consumer's perspective reinforces my belief that 80% of the agent sites out there don't work.

Here are the reasons:

1. Most agents try to do it on the cheap, and on the cheap doesn't work! This does not mean you have to spend a fortune on a Web site. You can get very good template sites for around $300 - $400 (sites such as Advanced Access and Homes.com) that come with a host of great information for the consumer and to which you can easily add your own material (articles, area information, links, listings, photos, virtual tours, etc.) without having to be a “techie” and without having to know HTML.

   Or, you can get a terrific custom-designed site for between $2,000 and $3,500. (If you pay much more than this for a custom site, it had better wake you up in the morning, put the coffee on and make the bed after you leave….you've been taken to the cleaners!) Most agent sites I saw, however, seem to be owned by agents unaware of these two options or else they were just unwilling to spend even the minimal amount needed for a good template site. Their sites were cheap, cheap, cheap, and they showed it. They want to have a site, they want to get inquiries, but they want to pay nothing for it. The old adage, “You Get What You Pay For,” is as true with Web sites as it is for anything else. You invest nothing, you get nothing. The sites I saw contained nothing to really make the site visitor sit up and say, “This looks like an agent who knows what he/she is doing - a professional. I think I'll contact him or her.”

2. Too many sites I looked at had significant portions "under construction." If it isn't ready, why do they put it up? They're not doing anyone any favors, especially themselves, since consumers coming across these "under construction" elements click the "Back" arrow and go to another site. Don't the agents realize that there are many sites out there and that theirs has to measure up to, and hopefully beat, the competition? “Under Construction” pages give the consumer one overriding message: this agent is lazy and “not ready for prime time.” Click. They're gone to another site.

3. As a consumer, I found the way the listings are arranged on many, many sites caused me a lot of confusion and frustration. So many sites have their listings arranged without respect to the type of property or price range and, worse, without thumbnail photos of the property. No thumbnails forces me (and any site visitor) to click on every little numbered property in my price range, or, worse for the agent, to leave that site and visit another that is more user-friendly. Why don't they arrange their listings by property type and by price range? Why don't they include thumbnails? Why don't they make it easy for the consumer instead of difficult? Who knows? I do know, however, that they're losing business….like mine.

   Of particular note in the "Let's Make It Hard On The Site Visitor If He/She Wants To See Listings" category, in my humble opinion, are site designers that use a system along the lines of "HomesDatabase," used by our local MRIS, among others. I'd love to meet the genius (or was it a committee?) that designed this system and ask just one question: "Did you ever take a minute to think like a consumer before you designed this search system?" I'd love to ask this because any buyer who doesn't know the area and wants to see some listings (like me) has to:

   • First search by town names. This means that I have know the area first before I can even view listings under their system! Since I am from out of town and am unfamiliar with the area, I am out of luck. I had to choose cities without knowing just where they are located in a general area. Either that or get out my trusty atlas and look 'em all up. Not exactly “user friendly,” is it?

   • Next search by zip code. By zip code for goodness sake! Let me repeat: before I could see homes, I had to enter a zip code! Am I missing something, or is it a given that someone unfamiliar in an area doesn't know zip codes from Adam? I don't even know zip codes around my own town! As Charlie Brown says, "Good grief!" As Allen says, "I'm leaving this site and finding another one that shows me what I want to know and makes it easy for me!"

4. Again as a consumer, I really got frustrated when it came to photos of listings. Whereas they should have “drawn me into” the property, they were too often a real drawback. First, most sites, even the cheap ones, have provisions for photos, yet many listings don't have them. Why? I'm sure that occasionally there's a valid reason for not having a picture, but the main reason I can see is just plain laziness: too lazy to go out and take a photo, too lazy to get and learn to use a digital camera, who knows? Again, this sends a message to the site visitor: “This is a lazy, unprofessional agent, one that I won't waste time contacting.”

   When I did encounter photos (on the majority of sites), most had only one photo, usually one taken from too far away because the agent hasn't learned how to get close to the home and take a panoramic “stitched” photo….and no virtual tours for the listings! Why don't these agents just spend their money (lots of it!) advertising their listings in a real estate magazine, since they seem to view a Web site as a one-dimensional advertisement where the more they include, the more they pay? Don't they get it? Don't they realize that you don't pay by the column inch for a Web site, that if they have the right kind of site they can add as many photos and virtual tours as they wish at no cost? I guess they don't, since they choose not to include multiple photos and virtual tours that show views of the home, the land, the interior, etc., and that really capture the site visitor. What a waste.

5. Speaking of virtual tours, isn't it time for more agents to get the message that shopping for a less expensive virtual tour company may cost them a lot less than using IPIX? Figure it out: including as many as thirty or forty photos of a listing and its surroundings on as many sites as you own as opposed to only four photos (for $100) is going to do three things: create more interest on the part of the viewer, save the agent a lot of money, and make the agent a lot more money. This is a no-brainer when it comes to choosing between the two alternatives, it would seem.

6. There's often too much extraneous “stuff” on a site. By “extraneous,” I mean banner ads promoting other services or products. They don't belong on a site, unless they are your “business partners,” companies tightly allied with you in your local market that dovetail with your overall vision of your business. If present, they should be presented tastefully, in keeping with a professional appearance for your site. Most sites I looked at stray far from this premise.

   Realtor.com deserves special mention here, which goes back to Reason #1. I would say that most agents have only one site, and that it's a Realtor.com site. This is due to the fact that they are promoted heavily so that all agents know about them….and the basic sites are cheap. (As an aside, if you are going to “upgrade” Realtor.com so that it becomes effective, you might as well go out and hire your own custom designer.) Most get just the basic site, and then they wonder why they don't get any business from it. The reason? In addition to poor treatment of listings and a number of ways the consumer can find other agents from Realtor.com, there is a lot of “stuff” that does nothing to convince the consumer that the agent is a real businessperson, “stuff” that detracts from what the agent's primary message should be, i.e., “I'm a professional. You can feel confident in contacting me, a solid businessperson, to help you with your needs.”

   I looked up listings for Maggie Valley, NC, for example. On the initial page containing the thumbnails and on the individual listing pages, I could have clicked on ads for: do-it-yourself moving, contractors, a free copy of my credit report, homeowner's insurance, buying a new car (that will help them qualify for a loan when they buy from the agent, right?), auto insurance, “Short On Cash?”, “Need A New Job?,” dinnerware, bed and bath ideas, refinancing to reduce my debts (anyone clicking on that link's an A Prospect, right?), furniture rental, lowering my car payment, low long distance rates, home equity loans (that'll get 'em into a new home!), a free sample of cat food.…..I finally gave up listing them all. Such links are fine for the site owner, Homestore.com: they generate revenue, and that is what Homestore.com is all about. Unfortunately, it often comes at the expense of the agents who have these links on their listings. Rather than have links that enhance their image and the main purpose of their having a site in the first place, they have pages filled with garbage.

7. A majority of sites have a serious lack of area information. Write this down: today's consumer does not have to buy a home in a vacuum, nor do they want to! Area information gives consumers what they want and need to know, and it is a big factor in their decision as to which agent they decide to contact, one that they feel meets their needs. Too many sites have a splashy main page focusing entirely on the agent but containing precious little or nothing on the area itself: transportation, fishing and other recreation, culture, area tours, school information (test scores, special programs, sports, activities, etc.), area activities, “homey” stuff, etc. You've heard it all before: these are the features that cause a visitor to "stick" to a site. Why do agents have a site if they are not going to have area information including visual tours of the area, which really acclimate the site visitor? What a waste of the power of a Web site!

8. Broken links abound on too many sites. iLead really led the way in this department as I conducted my search. Do they change links every week? Do agents with iLead sites ever check their sites and correct the broken link? You wouldn't believe how many broken links I encountered, both with iLead and other sites. Broken links cause a frustrated site visitor; frustrated site visitors leave the site.

The eight reasons outlined above caused me, a consumer looking for a new home, a lot of frustration. Worse from an agent's standpoint, they caused me to abandon any thought of working with the agents who owned most sites I viewed. Still worse, I'm sure these agents lose a majority of the consumers who visit their sites, just as they lost me.

An agent can easily correct these flaws by first taking a look at his or her site like a consumer would, a critical look. If they see a problem with their site, they can fix it by either getting a good template site, investing in a good custom site designer, or by adding to the site they already have, using what we already know works.