Realtor Web Site - What do you think you're doing?

An agent asked me a question in another one of my posts that warrants a separate post of its own. He is new to web design and a little leary of hiring someone to design his site and even more leary of doing the work himself.

I actually think he is in the same boat as many other real estate agents. Few agents come from a techie background because many techies often work better with computers and not people and many agents usually work really well with people and wish they didn't have to deal with a computer.

If you feel like you must have a web site, determine its purpose first:

• Are you trying to get new clients? This is the most difficult goal to accomplish. You are competing with every other web site regardless if it is designed by a professional or not and regardless of the budget spent in making it popular. You really have to think about conversion rates too because for every lead you generate you are paying for the popularity in one way or another (i.e. time, SEO time, pay-per-click).
• Are you trying to provide a service for existing clients? This is quite simple to accomplish. Develop or hire the development of your feature or information and train your existing client base to use it, "Oh by the way, I have this awesome tool you should use to accomplish just that. This piece of paper (or email) shows you where to log in and what to do."
• Are you just trying to introduce yourself and your services, create an online brochure? The site is easy to build in this case but no one will see it unless you pay to make it popular or drive traffic to the site with print materials and other non-web advertising.
• Are you just following the trend? If you don't have a distinct purpose and a way to track the results you are likely wasting time and/or money. In fact, you could probably spend the same about of time and money on business cards and hand them out to random people and find more business opportunity than most ineffective web sites provide.

For those looking for new clients, the fact is that most real estate web sites get very, very little traffic and most never get a lead. Of those who get leads typically less than 10% convert to anything serious.

Here are some numbers to give you an example: If your site is sharp looking, has convincing content and great tools and you get 30 visitors per day you may get half a lead or contact (1 lead every 2 days). Of those leads you will get less than 1 in 10 to convert into a serious client who results in a transaction. So that is roughly 1 transaction per month. How much is a transaction worth in your market?

Now, what does a person pay for a great web site? You will likely pay $3,000-10,000 for the site design for a good site. You will likely have hosting fees $10-50 per month. You will have SEO fees $300-1000 per month.You have to spend time writing content or pay someone to do it. You have to pay for IDX services or set them up yourself. In my market, I know a realtor who pays $3,500 per quarter to keep the team site in the top 10 in some of the major search engines for top key words. I know another who paid $7,500 for a decent site and $500 ongoing. He hasn't seen a lead in 3 months, yet, because it takes time for SEO to work. Others pay for google or yahoo ads. Every click costs $.03-1.50 or more depending on the demand for ad space in your region for the key words you are targeting.

So, you build a site and pay all this money for web traffic and design and IF your site is great you get 1 converted client every 20-30 or so days. If you knew you would convert 1 close a month you might be able to justify the time, effort, and money. Otherwise, like most sites, you pay the money and in years only get a couple of contacts.

If you plan to design something inexpensive like an online brochure and then tell your clients about it later there can be great rewards in that. First, it is inexpensive. Second, your clients may like reading a little bit about their agent. Third, you can post client experiences there and people like to read about themselves.

The bottom line. If you are planning on a web site for leads and clients plan to jump in all the way. Plan to pay for popularity, spend time writing articles and/or providing tools, and plan to redo it all if you start getting traffic and no conversions. If you are planning on something else just as another way to promote your business with your clients then seek out low cost opportunities and have fun with it. Don't make the mistake of doing a site "just because every other realtor has one." Figure out what it is that you are trying to accomplish and figure out how you are going to measure your results. Then stick to your plan.