Archive for Content - Sites/Blogs
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Visitor-Loyalty School Gadget
If real estate website visitors love school information - and they usually do - you need an effective and easy way to give it to them.
There are solutions out there that can be integrated into your website for a fee. But, there’s a site that’s new to me that can help you add school information to your website at no charge. At least as of the date of this post.
Check out Education.com
At Education.com you can create school data widgets for your blog or website that looks like the image below.
You can control the title of the widget, the colors and the size. You can show schools by city, zip code or county. It’s really pretty flexible as widgets go.
There’s an option to obtain the code to be placed in your HTML, or a Wordpress widget. When you visit their page, you’ll find that you can click on the school name from the push pin, or the school name in the “School List” tab, to see information about that particular school.
The information includes things like test score results, and teacher/student information such as the ratio of students to teachers, and all the usual type of information someone looking for schools in a new area might want.
I think it’s an excellent way to provide school information in an interactive way that will encourage people to stay on your site. It’s great finding useful (and free) new content!
Insider Insight: Who Cares About Me?
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This guest post was written by Sam Chapman who markets in Austin, TX
Many real estate agent websites have an “About Me” page on them, but does anyone ever read it? Most people go to real estate websites and don’t look at anything initially except the property search page. That is why agent sites need to have a really good property search feature. However, some recent experience taught me something about the About Me page and other pages on my own Austin real estate website.
I have worked with three sets of buyers within the last 6 months and all of them chose me to work with partially based on my About Me page. The story went something like this with all of the couples: First, they were all 40+ years old. These are people who have bought and sold homes before and who understand the value of a REALTOR®.
They all found my website, registered to look at home listings and were on and off the site almost daily for about 2-3 months. When they had narrowed down the area they wanted to look in, they started jumping to other pages on my site such as the ones about schools and recreation.
One of the most interesting things these folks did was start learning about me. One of the ladies told me that she liked the section on my Meet Sam Chapman page entitled “Some Things Most People Don’t Know About Me.”
I added this personal trivia because I didn’t want people just looking at education, affiliations and the like. The first part of the page was a short bio, but the things most people don’t know about me made me more human to these people.
One of the buyers told me that she read that I was an Eagle Scout and that gave her a trust factor. Another family with kids read that I had been a substitute teacher and loved that. Another thought it was very cool that I had jumped out of a hot air balloon from 10,200 feet outside of Fairbanks, Alaska.
When an initial likeability and trust level was reached, the buyers called or emailed me. That started the relationship that they felt they already had even though we had never talked before. From there, two of the couples purchased within 30 days.
My point is simply that although most people will just look at the property search page, others, especially the more mature ones, will want detailed information. Some will even want to know who that agent is. So if you are an agent with a real estate website, get a little background on yourself out there for the people who want to know you.
A Note from Kathleen: Sam’s post reinforces a couple of my philosophies. First, I’ve always said that the goal of a real estate website is to get visitors to adopt it as their real estate research headquarters. That obviously happened with the visitors in Sam’s examples - they started with the home search, then came back for more over time.
I’ve also always encouraged agents to have an effective “about” page on their sites. You’re not there when your visitors start to wonder who you are. You need a marketing message that explains to visitors why they should work with you as opposed to another agent. Sam’s idea of the “things people don’t know about me” could be a great addition to your marketing message to get more personal with those visitors who want to know!
What Would Dazzle Your Real Estate Website Visitors?
What if you could offer them the ability to search for homes from their cell phone? I think that would be pretty impressive.
Check out the service provided by SmarterAgent.com. Visitors to your website can download software to help them search for homes while they’re out and about.
This is a GPS real estate search. Here’s an example of how it could be used. Let’s say that your prospect is taking a drive to neighborhoods where they think they’d like to live. Using Smarter Agent and their cell phones, your prospects can see homes for sale in those neighborhoods, shown in relation to their car’s location. Pretty slick. And, the search carries your branding.
The cost is not unreasonable, either. As of this date: There’s a $50 set up fee. Payments can be made monthly or annually. Agents pay $40-50/month depending on their payment schedule. Brokerages pay based on the number of agents in the brokerage.
If you decide to try it, let us know what you think!
TMI. It’s a term I think I first heard used by Katie Couric back when she was on the Today Show. It stands for Too Much Information.
Can a Website Have Too Much Information?
YES! It certainly can.
How Does a Website End Up with TMI?
It’s a pretty common disease, usually contracted when a conscientious real estate website owner either hasn’t developed an effective site map for their website, or they go overboard trying to make their website information-rich.
Why is TMI a Bad Thing?
TMI is a bad thing because it does not help you meet your real estate marketing goals.
Certainly having an information-rich website is important. It helps establish your authority with search engines, and it makes your website “sticky”, meaning that your visitors will be movtivated to explore your website, return often and tell their friends!
However, you need to keep the objective for your website in mind.
The objective for your website is not to be a “wikipedia” for your target market and real estate in your target market. You are not investing your time and marketing dollars in creating a website so that people interested in your area’s real estate can use it as an encyclopedia.
The objective for your website is to market your real estate consulting services. Period.
What Does TMI Look Like?
Here are some ways to identify TMI and what to do about it:
- Lots of Links - You have a community page on your site with a description of a city in your target market. On that page, you also have links to every possible website referred to in the content. Links to the city’s website, the opera’s website, the school district’s website, websites sponsored by any local attraction mentioned on the page, and the list usually goes on… and on.
- If your visitors are interested in delving into 10 other websites related to your town, they’ll search for those websites. Don’t use links to other sites as an excuse to avoid writing an original page about your town! Include an overview of the community on your page, and if people have questions, encourage them to contact you.
- Multiple links on a community page simply send visitors away from your website and drain the page’s authority with the search engines.
- If you must have a bunch of links on your site, put them all on one page, and hide that page from the search engines.
- Framed Websites - You haven’t added links to your community pages, but you have framed in any website you think might be of interest to your visitors.
- First of all, if you read the terms of service for all those sites you’ve framed into yours, you’ll probably find out that framing the site is in violation of the site’s rules.
- As before, your visitors probably don’t want to spend their time wading through another 10 websites. Give them an overview, and if they want more info, they’ll go after it - or hopefully, call you!
- Lots and lots of detailed information pages - Every time you add a page to your site that is expanding on something mentioned on another page, ask yourself this question: Could I set this information up as a “compelling proposition” rather than just placing on a web page?
- If you have all the inside scoop on local taxes, for example, do you think that might be something a visitor would gladly give up their contact information to get? If so, set it up that way. The best approach would be to send a PDF file to the visitor in an autoresponder. If you don’t have that capability on your site, you should. But, you could try setting up a form where people can request the information, and then you’ll have to send it to them manually.
This post is getting too long, so I’ll stop. The three TMI issues above are related to trying too hard to create an information-rich site. I’ll talk about some issues related to lack of an effective site map another time.
Anybody ever fell into the TMI trap? Or, think it’s impossible for a website to have too much information??
Who Else Wants To Help the Environment?
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I’m talking to more agents who are finding a niche in being “green”. Even if that’s not your specific niche, here’s something to put on your website or blog that will help the environment, and improve the “stickiness” of your website.
THE COMMUTING EXPENSE CALCULATOR
Here’s another opportunity to have your visitors interact with your website, and learn something in the process.
I’m sure we’d all be amazed to learn how much it really costs to commute to work. And as a real estate professional, you’re probably called on occasionally to help clients make a decision as to whether buying a more affordable house farther from their work is a good idea.
With this calculator displayed on your real estate website or blog, you can let your website visitors find out for themselves, and you just may end up using it from time to time, too!
Visit CostofCommuting.com to see a sample of the calculator and to find out how to obtain the code for your site.
