A real estate agency website is one of your most important assets as it serves multiple roles for buyers, sellers and agents. 

An effective website must be both aesthetically pleasing as well as highly functional with features that integrate with other key tools such as CRMs, listing portals and data tracking. 

Here are some must-have features on your agency website.  

Brand Promotion 

Arguably the most important thing you need to be doing is consistently promoting and marketing your brand. There’s no more obvious place to have your brand front and centre than on your website. Furthermore, all your social media and outbound communications should be directing traffic to your website, so it’s important to keep your website functional and looking great. 

Ensure visitors to your website know that they are visiting your site through inclusion of brand name, logos, brand colours and fonts. Your brand needs to be visible on all pages of the website. It’s important to remember that not all website viewers will go directly to your home page, many will find their way via links shared for content or specific site pages.  

When talking about your brand and what it stands for, highlight what you do and how you help people. Why would a vendor choose to work with you? Why would a buyer trust you? Make your achievements visible for all to see. 

Testimonials 

It’s extremely likely, almost certain that a potential vendor will be visiting your website before they sign up to work with you. Therefore your site need to convey how effective you are at your job, a great way to do this is via testimonials. Knowing that you can deliver on your promises is a vital element in real estate and it’s one that can really drive your business. 

From your first day in real estate, and throughout your career, you should always be collecting testimonials, it’s never too soon to start this process. Use those testimonials as content on your site to not only expand your website, but to gain trust from potential clients and stand out from the competition. 

There is no one size fits all when it comes to testimonials, in fact, it’s actually great to have some variance. A great testimonials page varies in both testimonial length and content. For example, short testimonials are great for quickly conveying a point, but the addition of longer testimonials helps convey a story and build trust. Ideally your testimonial content will be reinforcement of your branding, really driving home the messaging of what your company offers. However, if this branding is very specific, potential readers may get tired of reading the same thing over and over, so it’s important that testimonials also include benefits which you may not have advertised elsewhere.  

Clean and Functional Design 

Your agency website needs to do key things first of all, which are predominantly highlighting your listings and providing details about your agency. However, the design of the site must also be easy to navigate and functional. 

As a website creator, you want to ensure that your website is easy to use and intuitive, so that people viewing your site can easily find what they are looking for. It’s important to have a good balance between text, images, and white space, so that the information is readable and enticing. 

We know that real estate is a visual medium, and if your goal is to get someone to imagine they are in their new dream home, high-resolution images are a must. High quality images are also essential because they can assist in building a good reputation of a trustworthy site. If you’re selling luxury properties, then make sure the images and feel of the site convey that. 

Another key element of function design is the ability to search quickly and easily. If a buyer can’t easily navigate towards a listing or search for it, they may feel discouraged and give up, and decide to leave your site. This lack of functionality in a site can be costly for you and a vendor. 

Utilise many different call-to-actions so that the user can easily perform a simple task, such as downloading a suburb guide or getting in contact with an agent. 

Call-to-action buttons and links throughout your website is a great tool to help the user find what they are looking for. These buttons can also act as helpful prompts to encourage the user to navigate to different parts of your site where you may have an offering. 

CRM Access 

You might not see it as you visit an agency website, but your database is actually the most powerful element of the entire agency in many ways. 

Your CRM is your pipeline and it’s vital that you are collecting leads and funnelling them through to your CRM. All the various call-to-actions, need to lead somewhere and have multiple touchpoints to keep any sales process moving forward. 

Similarly, you need to be able to track where leads come from and how they are finding their way to contact forms and into your CRM. 

Things like newsletters and upcoming listings can often start with a user coming through your website and then entering into some form of sales process, which is normally done with the help of your CRM. The easier all these tools integrate in the backend the easier your life will become and that will free you up to focus on higher-value activities. 

Relevant Content and SEO 

Your goal as an agency should be to become a local area expert or a niche-focused agency (such as project marketing). 

One way you can do that is through the use of quality content. Things like local area guides and information on recent sales in the area are important for local vendors. 

The added benefit of having high-quality content is that you will benefit from some degree of search traffic over time. There’s a lot to consider when it comes to SEO, but it all starts with having relevant content that your audience wants to engage with.  

Showing people that you know your area, is far more important than telling them. Quality localised content is also much more likely to be shared across other channels than generic content that is focused on your area or locality.