Any site is thousands of times better than no site. Agents who choose to start with a template site and then build on it later are to be commended for getting started.

Nonetheless, template sites, perhaps the number one choice of most Realtors®, are everywhere. For a Realtor® who never plans focusing much attention on Internet marketing, they seem a valid, inexpensive choice. Template sites cost as little as $400 up to many thousands. If you get one, your goal is to radically modify its layout, button choices, background colors and text so that it looks far different than those of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of agents in your area who chose almost identical ones.

Some larger template sites enable so much modification that you can hardly tell them from custom sites. That’s great, since your best marketing strategy is to look and be different and better than competitors so that consumers find you more memorable.

If you plan to market seriously on the web, perhaps with the goal of becoming one of the most dominant Realtors® in your area, you may want a custom-designed web site so that you can modify it at will with no limitations. For custom sites, you do the same planning as for template sites. But now your options abound.

With a custom-designed web site, you can choose virtually any of your sub-points to become actual links or develop into pages in your site. On internal pages, you can even expand your outline’s sub-sub-points into original content that you write with your word processor. Or, scour the web for outside links to add so visitors can find the same data. You can also choose a combination of content—things that you write, plus outside links to more information. Most agents take this latter approach and finalize pages through a web designer.

Each comprehensive Realtor® web site ideally services visitors with certain basic content items (links and original, agent-written data). These items often include community-related information such as text about or links to school info, government, civic, social, shopping, local attractions, lodging, dining, utilities, home-related vendors, storage firms, weather, maps, and more.

Basic realty-related content can include mortgage info plus various loan calculators, seller and buyer tips/procedures, local loan rates, newsletter, online real estate news services, bio info, awards, e-mail links and special request forms (going to you), MLS search link and much more. A terrific all-inclusive realty-related site is Fannie Mae’s at: http://www.homepath.com/sitemap.html.

Where do you find links for your site? You go on the web and find them. Or, you hire a web-skilled assistant to handle such needs. You don't have to do all this unfamiliar stuff yourself.

Community information is the most important content your site can have. People choose a community first and then choose a home. If your site has superior community information, visitors will be more likely to bookmark it and return, perhaps to select you as their Realtor®.

Your site is like a local mall for visitors. One of the advantages of the Internet is that it allows an individual Realtor®) to compete with the large real estate firms, and in many cases you will have better exposure than they do they because you can firmly establish your expertise in your particular region by showing more of it.

A top site should:

• Easy e-mail access (to you)
• Show expertise through site content, not just bio info
• On-site access to MLS searching (with your MLS's approval)
• Comprehensive and current content
• Photos besides “mug shots” that show you’re human
• Offer something unique to your area that gets someone to bookmark your site
• Give something for free, hold contests
• Create excitement; ask visitors to sign up for drawings, reports, etc.
• Know about your visitors’ habits in your site by using “web site analyzers” (See more at http://www.webtrends.com).

From a design standpoint, your site should meet the following criteria:

• Must load quickly, within 15 seconds
• The front page must be inviting/informative and include company name, logo statement of services covered, market area covered, full contact information
• Control over sound must be given with no sound default, front-page design must be good in layout, graphics, color combinations, non-conflicting background, only one animation per page and that should attract attention to something important, text-only pages are boring; use some graphics—small and fast loading
• Resume info should be present only as backup; not the main point. The site should sell service first and then bio data should back it up.
• Include something unique and valuable
• The site’s purpose is to encourage visitors to either leave contact information or to initiate a contact.
• Finally, a great site needs maximum search engine “findability.” To get it, insist that your designer create truly excellent META tags. (Don’t ask! – basically, they are invisible codes on a web page that many search engines read to help rank the relevance of a web site to certain key words a person is searching for. For a basic tutorial, visit searchenginewatch.com. To see META tags [or lack, thereof] on any web page, click on “view” on your browser, then select “source.”)

Is your Domain Name available?

Published: April 18, 2000

Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.

Bill Koelzer is a Web marketing consultant to web-proficient agents nationwide. He is co-author, with Barbara Cox, Ph.D., of the Prentice-Hall books, Internet Marketing in Real Estate and Internet Marketing. Bill is also webmaster of Orange County Real Estate, among the most-awarded known Realtor® sites. Visit his website, Koelzer.com or e-mail him at .