Roanoke Virginia Real Estate Website Ideas
I recently designed and built a website for the real estate company, Mountain View Real Estate led by Tim and Brad Greenway. I thought it would be helpful to use this site as a case study and an example for other real estate companies in the Roanoke Valley, or really anywhere in America.
If you are a real estate agent and have been thinking about creating your own website for your company, I hope this post can help with some ideas for web pages and how they can be useful for client acquisition and listings.
As with any online digital media topics, please feel free to put some time on my schedule for a call if you have any questions at all and I would be happy to chat about how to best position your company or brand online.
The Basics
You’ll find that with Mountain View Real Estate, we went for a very simple approach. Tim and Brad were looking for a home-base that they could point clients to in order to help them better get to know the team and the company as well as start looking for their next home right from the Mountain View website.
I’ve always enjoyed the idea of taking company stories and simplifying them in order to better translate to the quick-paced nature of the internet. So, I’ve been really happy with the Mountain View website build and how it turned out.
Websites can come in all shapes and sizes but there do seem to be a pretty basic set of pages that most will adhere to.
The Home Page
The Home Page is the first impression of your website. It’s what passersby first see when they land upon your site. For that reason, it’s important to keep your home page text and images very straightforward and obvious to the person who lands on your page.
You want to allow them to know as quickly as possible who you are and what your company does.
With Mountain View Real Estate’s website, the Home Page also doubles as the Team Page.
I thought that a Team Page would be best to put at the forefront of the website as the relational nature of working with a realtor a lot of times requires plenty of face-to-face interaction.
For this reason, I think that the ability for a potential client to familiarize themselves with you or your team before meeting you in person can help with the process.
The About Page
As your home page usually acts as a very simple and quick description of who your company is and what you do/offer, most people will naturally move to find out more specific information on your story or about your process.
The About Page allows you to give a more lengthy and detailed description of you or your company.
This page can contain the history of your company, some photos or videos about your company, and occasionally can provide further info on your process, or business methods (If you are planning to skip “Services” or “Process” pages).
The Contact Page
You always want to have a page that allows a potential client or customer to reach out to you directly.
Contact Pages are simple and straightforward and include addresses, phone numbers, emails, social media links, contact forms, and any other means of communication that the client or customer can easily access to quickly get in touch with you.
This page should be inviting and simple so that there are little to no roadblocks in the way of the client and the information they are seeking to obtain.
Real Estate Specific Web Page Ideas
Property Search Page
Something that is obviously specific to real estate websites is a property search page. Using the IDX software to import the MLS (industry jargon) into your website allows for a quick and easy way for clients who land on your website to start searching your listings right there on your site.
Implementing this took some research on my part because I wasn’t too familiar with the real estate industry and their digital tools prior to building this website. But I now feel confident in implementing this widget into any site.
With a little research, it should be easy enough for you as well, and it just makes it easy on your clients to find that perfect home without ever having to leave your site!
Blog Page
I will always recommend that a company start a blog. Real estate or not, a blog is the best and most organic way to create solid SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for a website. Search Engine Optimization, for those who are unaware, is the ability for a search engine (such as Google or Yahoo) to push your website to the top of a search.
For example, if someone were to type in “Roanoke Real Estate Listings” into Google, you would want your website to be the first to pop up.
Starting a blog allows you to continuously write entries that contain the keywords for your industry and location. It also creates further credibility on your knowledge and expertise.
Furthermore, it supplies your customers or clients with added help and knowledge and in this digital era, free information is the best thing you can supply to make your brand or company stick out among the crowd.
Conclusion
There are plenty of other personalization ideas for your real estate company that could help you create a memorable brand and gain more invested clients.
However, I hope this basic overview will help you to get past that “I don’t even know where to start” point that so many face when wanting to create a website.
As I always say, it’s 2018 and you should have a website. Furthermore, as always, I’m always here to help. Whether you have questions or you get stumped in creating your website, feel free to reach out via email (found below) or grab some time on my calendar for a call.
I would also love to learn your story, and build your website for you. If you’ve been meaning to create a site or simply to refresh the one you already have, don’t hesitate to reach out. Creating websites is what I love and I would be more than happy to help.
Thanks for reading, see you next week!
