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The Middle School Dance and Good Website Design
Excerpt from the book: Google for Realtors, Important Concepts
for Real Estate Websites
Terry Burger, Founder and CEO of The Search Factory -
February 3, 2009
I remember the middle school dances of my youth. They were
awesome. The boys standing on one side of the gym, the girls
the other. Over the course of 2 hours some of the boys would
dance, while most would stand against the wall attempting to
look cool with their mullet haircuts and oversized combs
sticking out of their back pocket. Gotta love the early '80s!
The minority of boys had it figured out though. If they danced
with the girls on the fast songs, they were likely to get a
slow dance, which was the reason middle school existed in the
first place in my book. A slow dance with a girl at 13 was
awesome, and it made going to school totally worth it!
Much like our middle school story, the Web Dance rewards the
risk takers.
When someone wants to purchase a home, office building, or
piece of land, they usually do the “web dance”, which looks
like this:
1) Prospect gets an idea in their head
2) They investigate their idea online through an interactive
search of the internet
3) They
find a website they like that’s easy to use
4) Over
time, they continue to come back to that
website
5) Finally,
as they become more comfortable, they register to receive some
information
6) You call
them from their inquiry
7) You
proceed to offer them world class service and develop an
"Online Customer Relationship"
8) They
trust you to serve them when they are ready to buy or sell
because you’ve been nurturing this
relationship
9) You help
them get what they need, and they help you get
paid
10) You
turn this client into a referring client down the road by
taking care of them after the sale and they refer you more and
more business
The Web Dance is a 10 step
movement. The greatest thing about the Web Dance is that you
don’t have to dance with them until they are ready. It’s like
getting to the slow dance without having to put up with the
fast dances. Steps 1-5 are done automatically so that the good
stuff, the slow dance, can take place from 6-10.
In order to dance however, you
have to advertise yourself as available through the search
engines. We’ll spend several chapters unpacking this concept in
more detail. But unless you have a deep understanding of how
important it is to choose and setup a lead generating website,
you’ll waste thousands of dollars on search engine
marketing.
Defining a
website:
Defining a
website becomes a priority in business. One day while working
on a seminar, a vision came to me. It is what I believe to be
the simplest, yet most definitive website definition in
existence. Are you ready?
The purpose of a profit driven website is to
either sell a product/service or capture a
lead.
Simple isn’t it? If you have a
website and it can’t sell or capture a lead, then it’s
worthless. If your website can’t be found, then it’s worthless.
If you can’t convert a certain percentage of leads into sales,
then the site again is worthless. Everything hinges on lead
generation. Brian Buffini says it best: “you’re not in the real
estate business, you’re in the lead generation
business.”
So many agents call our office
for help, and the call goes like this: "I have this website
that I paid lots of money for, and it’s not generating leads."
I ask them if they’ve ever advertised and they said yes, on
business cards and print ads.
Websites are tricky animals and
you need to know the rules of the road. The Web Dance can turn
disastrous if not implemented properly. To enjoy the dance, you
need to understand 3 basic tenants of online
marketing.
1) In order to generate a profit,
the website MUST be able to generate a lead
2) In order to generate a lead,
the website MUST be found
3) In order to turn a lead into a
sale, the lead MUST be incubated successfully
To be successful in online
marketing, every one of these three mantras must be in place
and maximized in sequence with each other. To fail in any one
of these 3 areas means disaster and wasted advertising dollars.
Most web design companies want to sell websites, so they
package a website full of bells and whistles that agents are
drawn to, so they purchase without thinking like the
consumer that will use the site. Did the agent investigate to
make sure the site could generate leads? Probably not, and
basic tenant #1 is ignored.
Search engines and search engine
marketers want to advertise your website. Whether it captures
leads or not makes no difference to them. Their job, so they
say, is to put you on the search engines and most firms feed
you to the search engine wolves and let you fend for yourself.
If it’s not working, it must be the website, but most companies
offer no suggestions to help.
If the stars are in alignment and
1 and 2 are in place, and leads are flowing, we still can have
issues. If you as an agent are not able to create an automated
system that is valuable and nurtures leads until they are
ready, then failure once again occurs and we chalk the internet
leads up to being “no good.” I would challenge you and say that
you’re “no good” in working with this type of lead.
I know that’s harsh, but you have
to understand the internet lead is a different animal. Internet
consumers are very savvy and they are in control. They know
what they want, they buy higher priced homes, and they expect
results from the real estate professional they choose to work
with. They are impressed by perseverance and follow up, and
will reward the small few who dare to make the
effort.
Like people, every website is
different. Today, real estate companies and those designers
that produce websites for our industry are concerned about
producing what we as consumers want, something that looks nice.
The problem with this mindset is that the prettiest website
doesn’t necessarily generate leads. We’re not in a beauty
contest; we’re in a business contest. Fortunately, some major
players like RE/MAX and Keller Williams are designing well
constructed and attractive lead generating sites for their
agents.
This is the next great real
estate battle that will occur. RE/MAX, Keller Williams,
Coldwell Banker, Weichert, GMAC, Prudential, and others all
understand that the fight for market share has moved online.
Most people, when asked, would give up television before they
would give the internet. If companies can create a website for
their agents that can generate more leads than their
competitors, then they win the real estate market share game.
If the companies can effectively train and implement systems to
close a higher percentage of those leads than the competition,
then they win the battle. More leads, more sales. More sales,
more market share. They are driven to produce leads, and you
should be also. As you work with your existing website
or on creating something new, here are some mandatory
guidelines you should follow when selecting and designing
your real estate website.
THE WEBSITE MUST BE EASY
TO NAVIGATE:
Online
consumers are rapid. In fact, it only takes an average searcher
3.5 seconds to decide which web page to view from the search
engine results query. Once they land on your website, you want
to keep them there forever, but they do move around your site
quickly at first. They are trying you out. It’s much like
making a snap decision on someone you might want to
date. You knew almost immediately if there was some sort
of attraction. Your home page should be easy to navigate,
use inviting colors, be free of clutter and include only the
most important information. In essence, your home page needs to
be able to find a date!
Clutter is an organizational
disease and we hate it in our homes, our cars, and our desks at
work. Our society spends millions of dollars on magazines like
Real Simple to organize clutter. You know what we have at home?
Real Simple magazines cluttering up my coffee table.
Sheesh!
Think about your own online
search behaviors for a moment. When you go to a website, you
want to find what you’re looking for quickly and efficiently.
Bogging your site down with too much navigational
clutter will cause your precious visitors to reject the
dance. A web user rejecting the web dance in Google speak is
called a bounce rate. More on that in later
chapters.
YOUR WEBSITE MUST HAVE AN IDX/MLS
SOLUTION
When a
prospect begins the dance, they want to do one thing. Do you
know what that one thing is? If not, then lets look at your
life again. When you’re thinking about purchasing a new car,
what do you do? Well, you may lug your spouse & kids
to the dealership at midnight to look around and compare
vehicles. But why not go when the dealership is open?
Right. Me too! I don’t want to be bothered by a
salesperson…YET. It’s not that I won’t eventually need his/her
help, but right now, just let me browse.
One of the biggest mistakes I see
agents make is self-promoting on the internet. I don’t want to
hurt your feelings here, but to be a successful online agent;
you need to hear the truth. The reality is that prospects don’t
want to see you, hear you, or listen to you….YET. They want to
search and browse homes. In order to do this, you need a good
IDX solution. The IDX is the backbone of your website and the
most important component to generating online
leads.
Susie Smith
goes to your site and likes it-the dance begins. She bookmarks
the site and visits often to do some preliminary house hunting
since her husband's job is being transferred to your town.
The IDX/MLS provider you’re using is a good one, and Susie can
save her searches to her heart’s content. Your system saves her
time and will e-mail her the newest listings on the market. In
the meantime, as soon as Susie hits SAVE SEARCH and enters her
information, your e-mail will be notified of the dance that’s
beginning and you at that time can contact Susie to touch base
to see how you can serve her needs at this time. You find out
her information and help her with the local area, you may send
her a relocation package, and then you incubate that lead
automatically while checking in every once in awhile until
she’s ready.
If your IDX/MLS solution doesn’t
allow saved search, then what good is it? Sure, Susie might
call in one day to talk to you. But by that time, perhaps her
husband has visited his new office and found a referral agent
from his new boss. It’s crucial that your website have a saved
search feature. If it doesn’t, I advise you press hard for this
option or fire your website company. If you filter everything
through our website definition above, lead generation is the
most important element and should never be
compromised.
You may be thinking “well isn’t
this my job? To set her up on the MLS myself. Why should she
have to use a website to save her searches?” The answer again
is simple, because this is WHAT SHE WANTS! It’s not about you
YET remember? It may not be about you for several days, weeks,
or months. You need to be OK with that and trust the system
you’re providing the public will payoff in registered buyers,
sellers, and investors. It works, we’ve generated just under
$1,000,000 in commissions in five years. It works.
Making your site easy to navigate
and having a fully functional IDX solution are 2 mandates for
your website prior to beginning a search engine marketing
campaign. We’ve covered the 2 most important ways to get people
to stay on your site in order to capture a lead.
There are other ways to generate
secondary sources of leads on your website as well. The one
that I use and recommend to our clients is some sort of
inexpensive giveaway. This giveaway could be a free magazine
available from your local visitors bureau, a relocation
package, or something else of value you think people might
appreciate. We have a client that specializes in lake property,
so they send a free magazine based on the lake that they sell.
In the buying season, they report 3-4 leads per day from this
one system.
When people fill out a form to
receive information, they are voluntarily giving you
information that is more accurate than say a forced
registration page. People hate to register, they like to join.
They hate to sign-up, they like to receive. Using welcoming
words in your website help customers feel at ease. Words that
used car salesmen would use should be discouraged, such as “hot
new listings”, “red hot properties”. These words don’t appeal
to the higher income purchase.
The 2nd and 3rd principals of
online marketing and incubating leads will be covered in great
detail in subsequent chapters but for now, let’s talk about the
Top 10 Website Mistakes Every Agent Makes.
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property of The Search Factory, LLC and may not
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back to this page and proper credit given to
the author. ©2009, The Search Factory LLC
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