What to look for in a website builder for real estate.

What to look for in a website builder for real estate.

What to look for in a website builder for real estate.

Here are some things to look for in a website builder if you’re designing for the real estate industry.

The design of your real estate website and the user experience it provides are just as important as the experience you provide in person to potential buyers.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that having a great website is important for most businesses in a society where more than half of all shopping is done online and where everything from groceries to automobiles can be delivered to your door in a matter of hours. Also, land is no special case.

Redfin reported in 2021 that virtual tours had made it possible for 63% of homebuyers in 32 major markets to make an offer on a property without ever seeing it in person. 95% of homebuyers, according to the National Association of Realtors, conduct online searches at some point during the process of purchasing a home, whether to examine a specific listing or an agent’s “About” page.

What to look for in a website builder for real estate.

Therefore, picking a real estate website builder is a crucial choice. You must select an intuitive designer who will enable you to construct a stunning website that resonates with and aids in the acquisition of new customers. When comparing real estate website builders, we’ll go over the features and functionality to look for in this article.

Templates for real estate websites.

A website builder’s templates and UI kits can teach you a lot about the tool. Real estate-specific templates from a website builder are a good way to get a sense of what’s possible with that designer. If a website builder doesn’t have templates made just for real estate websites or there isn’t much variation in the designs of the different templates, it could mean that it will be hard to make a site that is completely unique.

Capabilities for project management

Check to see that the website builder you select meets your requirements for collaboration and project management. Think about how many people will eventually need access to edit the design.

Do you intend to collaborate with a content team or multiple real estate agents who will require CMS access? How frequently will content or design updates be required, and how simple is it for the designer to hand over control when multiple people are working together simultaneously in your workspace? When selecting a website builder, all of these important considerations should be made.

Integration of Internet Data Exchange (IDX).

You will need to investigate the IDX integration capabilities of your website builder if the real estate website you are creating needs to include MLS property listings. By reading the NAR IDX policy and contacting their local MLS, real estate brokers and agents can determine whether they are eligible to post MLS listings on their website.

IDX listings are a great way for real estate agents to get new business because they give potential homebuyers access to the most recent MLS listings.

Customization.

According to a 2018 digital trends report, 73% of professionals surveyed said their company was “investing in design to differentiate their brand.” “78% of consumers believe that companies focused on custom content are more trustworthy than companies that simply churn out generic content,” according to Crowd spring. As a result, it should come as no surprise that a lot of real estate professionals are trying to find ways to differentiate themselves from the other two-thirds of competing brokers and agents who also have websites.

Consider the options for customizing your real estate website before making a decision. Make sure you or your client can easily generate new listing cards whenever a new property is put on the market, even if you are unable or unwilling to set up IDX listings on your website. Make sure you can embed interactive maps on landing pages or listings. Consider dynamic filtering options if you are designing a website for a large real estate agency or if you anticipate a large number of pages in your design.

Assessing the responsive design customization options offered by your website builder is also very important. Although responsive design is a feature of many website builders, it can be difficult to customize your responsive design for mobile devices and other screen sizes. Choose a design interface that offers a variety of breakpoint options.

Utilization ease

A lot of real estate company websites need to be updated, especially if they have blogs or custom property listing cards. Therefore, selecting a website builder that is user-friendly and optimized for efficiency can ultimately save both you and your client a significant amount of time.

Look for these characteristics:

-Responsive images that are generated automatically: Because homebuyers like to see a variety of photos of property listings, real estate websites typically host a lot of images. You can avoid lengthy page loading times and save time by not having to manually resize each image when you use a website builder that generates responsive images by default.

-Element duplication quickly: Drag-and-drop duplication can make it easier to create new listings and save you time.

-Duplication of the project: Choose a website builder that makes it simple to copy and paste elements between projects if you are creating a website for a large real estate company and will eventually need to create additional agent websites.

-SEO: Search Engine Optimization The best real estate website builders make SEO easier by removing the need for a lot of plugins to do things like add or change schema markup or set up 301 redirects.

-Changing the color everywhere: If you have a client who likes to see multiple options or is going through a rebranding, global swatches are very helpful.

-Workspace for teams: Make sure your website builder has a good team workspace if you plan to work with your client, a content team, other designers, or anyone else on your website.

-Connectivity via social media: Considering that social media posts will be the second-largest driver of leads for agents in 2020, behind only referrals, social media integration can assist real estate professionals in sharing posts and information across multiple platforms with minimal effort.

Using their free plan, many website builders let you try out their designer for free. Therefore, before committing to a paid business plan, you should play around with the user interface and design tools of any builder you are considering but have never used before.

Tools for marketing, lead generation, and lead capture

Your real estate website’s top conversion goal probably is to collect visitor contact information for sales and email campaigns. However, the way your popups and contact forms operate can make or break a website’s user experience (UX). Find a website builder that lets you make user-initiated popup modals and gives you a lot of options for customizing forms, like adding radio buttons or a reCAPTCHA field.

If you already use email marketing tools like Zoho Mail or Mailchimp, you might also want to look into the integration capabilities of your website builder.

inclusiveness and accessibility

While accessibility and inclusivity are important considerations for any website, not all website builders place a high priority on features that contribute to providing a great user experience to as many people as possible. Look for built-in tools that make your website appear to people with visual impairments.

During the design and development phase, you can easily check for things like color contrast because some website builders even provide accessibility metrics within the designer.

Check out the neighborhood.

Before settling on a website builder, one more thing you should look into is the support channels offered by that platform. If you have questions along the way or are just looking for ideas and inspiration, having access to a community of designers and others working on projects that are similar to yours can make all the difference. User forums, on the other hand, can help you quickly find answers or gain knowledge from what other people have created on that website design platform.

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