Your website is your digital business card. As an independent agent, real estate partner, or corporation, what you present to your online audience—prospective or not—is paramount.

Many agents and brokers will have already invested in a professional site of some kind. Yet even professional sites have gaps for improvement.

If approached correctly, your website and its design can be the most powerful secret weapon in your arsenal of digital marketing tools. If you’re keen to attract clients from younger generations, it is especially not to be overlooked.

Here are some quick and effective tips you can keep in mind to ensure a high-performance real estate website designed to convert clients into buyers.

1. 1. Implement Virtual Reality or AI Features

Engaging sites are far more likely to retain organic traffic than those that don’t incorporate interactive or intriguing elements. The interactivity of your site won’t only boost visitor retention—it can also improve Google search rankings, captivate prospective clients, and cultivate a specific industry reputation.

Include Artificial Intelligence (AI) features such as a chatbot, a device that provides basic customer service support to first-time or homepage visitors. Chatbots can demonstrate your interest in assisting prospective clients and streamline common customer service questions and concerns.

Virtual reality is our future, and you can harness its potential for engagement today with your real estate web design. Provide 3-D renderings of select properties to give visitors insight into what sites have to offer without setting foot in them. Virtual tours offer valuable glimpses into viable real estate, detailing a home more comprehensively than a still image of a façade or interior.

1. 2. Incorporate a Blog

A powerful channel for visitor engagement is education. Real estate is a complex and sometimes intimidating industry, particularly for young or first-time buyers. Take advantage of this need for information by educating and informing prospective clients about the home purchase process.

Be sure that all of your site’s content is informative in this manner. Include a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page that clearly and effectively addresses common client questions.

Most importantly, incorporate a blog that regularly posts content about relevant real estate topics. Write posts with your ideal customers in mind, whether these are first-time homebuyers, millennials, retirees looking for investment properties, or luxury real estate seekers.

Blogs also give digital marketers content that can be shared on social media platforms and optimized through Search Engine Optimization (SEO), both valuable digital marketing solutions.

1. 3. Ensure Mobile-Friendly Design

Over three-quarters of the American population has a smartphone. A vast percentage of Google searches for real estate properties and companies occur via mobile devices.

Don’t overlook your mobile audience as you compose a high-performance website. Cater to real-estate curious mobile users by ensuring your site is responsively designed. Responsive web design enables digital content to adapt to fit the screen size of whatever device is used to access that content.

You can take additional steps to ensure mobile-friendly design, as responsive design is often only the beginning of smartphone compatibility.

For example, generate content that is easy to read. Break long articles into digestible paragraphs and make use of bullets, large fonts, and headers. Be sure to upload images that are the right file size (JPEG preferred) to minimize loading speeds.

Consult your web design professionals if you work with an agency for your digital marketing needs to maximize the mobile-friendliness of your site.  

1. 4. Stay Concise and Professional

Nobody has time to scroll through long pages of content, particularly content that is poorly written or difficult to read. Take a moment to diagnose the status of your current web copy, cleaning up any pages that aren’t concise or professional.

The content on your website should also be high-value, meaning that it is likely to be exactly what visitors are looking for. High-value content is one of the foremost stipulations Google outlines in its requirements for Google-friendly sites.

If web copy isn’t your strong suit, consider outsourcing copywriting services to ensure that your website content is consistent with Google’s values, relevant to users, and in line with your company’s mission.

1. 5. Be Visually Different

Browsing around the internet’s selection of real estate websites can often feel tedious. It’s easy to choose a design that looks like the rest, particularly when it comes to displaying properties and providing brokerage information to prospective clients.

Do everything you can to make your site stand out from the crowd. Begin by assessing your competitors’ sites. Note what you like about their content—and what you can do better.

One principle to follow when it comes to a high-performance, distinct website is visual difference. I’ve already discussed the value of virtual reality in this post. You may wish to additionally include video content, infographics, and non-traditional property images to be visually different from your competitors in the industry.  

Remember that your site is your agency’s best presentation to the digital world. Craft pages with care, but don’t overlook your own philosophies, principles, and distinct personality. Real estate can have flair—prove it to your visitors with your website alone.