Everything Real Estate Agents Need to Know About Creating a Website
Creating a real estate website is a great way to generate leads and advertise your services. However, not everyone knows how to make a real estate website that ranks among the best real estate websites for agents. If you’re wondering how to build a real estate website, you may be feeling overwhelmed by the prospect, but don’t worry! If you're interested in learning how to build a real estate website, this guide has everything you need - we’ll even share how to build a real estate website for free.
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Best Website Builders for Real Estate Agents
The first step in creating a great real estate website that shows off your services is selecting a website builder to host your site. Here are some website builders that can help take a lot of the work out of creating a real estate website by yourself.
WordPress
As the world's most popular website builder, WordPress offers easy-to-customize templates and detailed analytics to help you track your website's visitors and engagement. WordPress offers tools that make it easy to create a real estate website on a budget, as its plans range from $4/month to $45/month, depending on your needs. WordPress can also be used to build a real estate website for free if you opt out of a paid plan.
Squarespace
With chic, modern designs and award-winning 24/7 customer support, Squarespace has established itself as a one-stop shop for all of your website creation needs. Squarespace's plans start at $12/month for basic websites and extend up to $40/month for business sites, which are capable of handling all your e-commerce needs.
Wix
Learning how to build a real estate website is easy with Wix, which offers customizable templates, drag-and-drop formatting, and SEO tools that can help boost traffic to your site. Premium Wix websites, which remove ads and allow you to use your own custom domain name, range from $14/month to $49/month.
Weebly
Weebly is a great cost-effective website-building option for anyone who's interested in learning how to build a real estate website. Its paid plans are budget-friendly, as they range from $6/month to $26/month, and they include perks such as video backgrounds, integrated analytics, and much more.
Duda
Duda features a variety of unique options: not only does it provide tools that allow its users to manage their client base, but it also features marketing tools that can help you improve your web traffic and more. Duda's plans range from $14/month to $44/month, and they also offer custom plans if you have more elaborate or specific needs.
Did You Know?
The average cost of website maintenance for a professional company website can range from $35 to $300 a month. Using one of the above website builders can help cut down on the associated costs of website maintenance.
Selecting a Domain Name for Your Real Estate Website
When creating a real estate website, it's important to select an easy-to-remember domain name. A domain name is the address that people type into their browsers to reach your website; in a way, your site’s domain name is like your digital address. Once you come up with a domain name that you like, you'll need to perform a search to see if it's available. You'll then need to purchase the domain for a specific amount of time, which typically extends up to ten years. The average cost of a domain name can vary widely, with some costing as little as $2.99 per year and others costing around $34.99 or more.
Finally, once you've chosen a domain name, you'll need to secure it by reserving it with a registrar, which will also confirm the top-level domain (TLD) of your domain; this is the ending of your domain name and is typically .com, .net, or .org, although there are many others. However, if you would like to feature a domain that has a TLD of .realtor, you'll need to register it on this specific website. Choosing a strong domain name and registering it early is a great first step when beginning to focus on how to make a real estate website.
Now that you know how to make a real estate website, you’re likely wondering what you should publish on it. We’ve compiled a list of the most helpful features to share as seen on the best real estate websites for agents.
What Should Real Estate Agents Feature on Their Website?
Property Listings
Whether you're hoping to attract potential buyers, sellers, or both, including property listings is a no-brainer. Ensure that you include plenty of high-quality images organized in an aesthetically pleasing (but not overwhelming) way, and consider adding perks such as maps showing the locations of your properties. The more search and filter tools you can add, the better; potential buyers will appreciate being able to narrow down your list of potential properties to find only the ones that suit their specific needs.
Enticing Call To Action Buttons
Don't let your visitors slip through your fingers. Call to action buttons will inspire visitors to your real estate website to take direct action that can translate into future sales. Whether you opt to hide some of your property listings's information and include a button encouraging the visitor to contact you for more details, or you simply feature multiple opportunities for a web visitor to schedule a tour with you or give you a call, including buttons with clear action items on your website is a great way to encourage visitors to stay on your page and engage with you.
Contact Information
If a visitor is interested in touring a property or selling their own with you, your website should make it as easy as possible for them to do so. As you start learning how to make a real estate website, don't forget to create a section of your website that is easy to locate and includes clear instructions on how, when, and where your website visitors can contact you. Some website builders even include pre-made contact forms that your visitors can fill out without having to pick up the phone or log into their email. The easier your website makes it for visitors to contact you with questions, the more likely it is that you'll be able to boost engagement and generate leads.
Registration
Allowing visitors to register on your website is a great way to show them that you're a professional who takes their privacy and security seriously. Many real estate websites allow their visitors to register using their email address or social media accounts, and registered users can view properties to buy, share their information regarding properties they want to sell, and much more. Additionally, having an organized client base in your website can also make it easier for you to track your growth and more easily reach out to buyers and sellers with a variety of marketing tools.
Visuals
Looking for a new home on the Internet is far different than it is in person. It can be difficult to capture the magic of a property in photos, and potential homebuyers may have trouble imagining their lives in a new home just by looking at pictures of a building they've never stepped inside. That's where high-quality visuals come in: The better your photos are and the more photos you have of a given property, the more likely potential homebuyers are to allow themselves to set up a time to view it in person. Anything you can do to capture the essence of your properties on your website is likely to be a major factor in turning website visitors into enthusiastic clients.
Mobile-Friendly Capabilities
These days, mobile-friendly capability is a must when creating a real estate website. With busy clients searching for properties on the go, it's important that your website and its properties look just as great on mobile phones as they do on laptops and desktop computers. After all, it's important to retain visitors who might be scrolling through your website during a subway commute or late at night, just before they fall asleep. By making your website easy to access on mobile devices, you'll not only reach more people, but you'll also retain more of the visitors who come to your site.
Relevant Advertisem*nts
Ads are an optional feature for your website, but they can be a great way to generate additional revenue. Try to keep your ads as relevant and minimal as possible, so visitors aren't inundated with a barrage of ads when they log on to search for properties. However, featuring a few header, footer, or sidebar ads when creating a real estate website can be a good way to increase your revenue — and potentially even direct clients to products or services that may be useful to them.
Blog Posts
In the 21st century, there's nothing that can help improve engagement with your brand more than content. Creating marketable content doesn't need to be a chore; it's actually relatively easy once you understand how to do it. While posting on social media can be a good way to improve engagement, writing blog posts is an even better way to drive traffic to your real estate website and maximize engagement with visitors. Good blog posts should focus on a topic you're interested in teaching others about, and they should also include search engine optimization (SEO) keywords that can drive additional readers to your blog. As long as your blog is well-written, thoughtful, and updated regularly, it can be a great way to attract new visitors, generate leads, and boost your career.
The content provided on this website is deemed accurate at the time of creation.
