Do your website visitors visit more than one page on your real estate website? Do your website hits from unique visitors turn into contacts? Search engine optimization and professional real estate web design work to get web visitors to your professional website. After that it is your written content that is your primary tool to move a visitor from being just a “hit” to someone who provides you with their contact information. If your websites has these three areas working seamlessly, you are enjoying great sales lead generation.

If your website is receiving hits and enjoying lots of traffic, however you are not seeing too many sales leads, it is time to look at your web content. IMCD Web Design provides professional copywriting, web writing and copy editor services to our real estate web design clients.

IMC watched websites start out on the same level of SEO and graphic design, however some climb up the rankings on Google and Yahoo and others languish low on the search engine rankings. The difference rests in two distinct areas: the web content that the websites started with and, second, the consistency and type of content that was added to the website later.

Professional web copywriters understand the purpose of the text content is two fold: appeal to web visitors and present information to search engine spiders. Web content that holds a visitor’s attention and moves them to action must take into account marketing principles and peoples’ reading behavior. For search engine optimization, using keywords in the right amount, with most effective placement and in such a way that the still content reads naturally for visitors.

Websites that take advantage of professional copywriting services or coaching position themselves to appeal to both their visitors and the indexing spiders. IMCD Web Design provides both professional web content copywriting services as well as web authoring coaching to our web design clients. IMC recognizes that the a key leverage point of the Internet is providing web owners the ability to easily add content to their websites with blogs and article managers. Many of IMC’s successful Realtor clients actively use their real estate blogs and article managers to add up-to-date information on their area’s activities and market news.

If your website is not converting hits to sales leads, it is time to contact our web design team! IMC has the professional web design or real estate website package to move your business into the mainstream of Internet marketing and harvesting your web traffic. Every small business web design is a potential sales lead generation tool in the largest market on the planet. Call us to see how IMC can improve your conversion rate!

In large real estate firms or businesses with marketing departments, being aware of the “silo effect” can help improve your real estate web design. The silo effect is when departments focus only on their goals (the silo) and not how all departments’ goals interact for the overall benefit of the company’s sales and profitability. In web designs there are at least three areas that need to all be addressed: graphic design, web content and search engine optimization.

Webmasters generally track the search engine optimization, while marketing focuses on making sure the graphic design is attention arresting and the web content is persuasive enough to turn visitors into sales leads. The silo effect usually manifests as marketing favoring a fantastic Flash presentation that really keeps a visitors attention and delivers the marketing message. However, when Flash is not used in balance with web content that the search engines can index or with areas for basic search engine optimization, then the super attractive website languishes well off the top search engine ranking pages.

When all areas connected with a website work together to balance the overall marketing effect of the triple titans of web design (SEO, content and graphics), then marketing gets their sales leads, webmasters get more traffic to track and the company enjoys greater profits.

IMCD Web Design’ creative web design team maximizes the effectiveness of our professional real estate web designs search engine optimization, web content (for SEO and marketing) and the graphic design. Our goal is not to provide our small business and real estate clients with a website, but with a powerful lead generation tool that brings home profitable business by consistent high search engine rankings and high conversion rates of web traffic to solid business contacts.

Our Internet marketing strategy is to get our real estate clients to the top of the search rankings in their very competitive markets. for our professional web design clients, our online marketing approach is to get their products or services ranked highly for their keywords, key phrases and long tail keywords. Just as it is hard to call it “sailing” if the boat never raises anchor, IMCD has a hard time calling it “Internet marketing” if a website is not visible for a company’s market keywords.

Contact IMCD’s sales team today to increase the effectiveness of your online marketing campaign with one of our affordable custom professional web designs or real estate websites.

Add testimonials to your Internet marketing campaign to help add “stickiness” to your real estate website. However, all too often, getting testimonials from your real estate clients is an after thought. In this attention deficit age, website visitors usually scan your well-crafted copy seeking the high points. Think of your own website browsing habits – if your curiosity isn’t quickly roused, you probably click to the next website in five seconds. IMCD Web Design has found that well-placed testimonials in our real estate web designs adds a stickiness factor that keeps website visitors on websites longer and converts visitors to sales leads when they fill out your guestbook.

Obtaining testimonials to add and highlight is paramount to making your real estate website more sticky. Testimonials have two things going for them that people love: a human interest story aspect and a third party “certification”, or “social proof” as the psychologists call it, of your real estate prowess. How to get the testimonials?

There are several ways to get testimonials for your website, direct and indirect. The direct way is to ask for a testimonial and include a release statement that can be signed and dated with the request. You can request your client’s feedback by asking for their opinion, which can elicit both positive and negative feedback, but the negative feedback can help you address something in your service of which you were not aware – but that isn’t the subject of this entry.

A second direct way is to write down something your real estate client said to you and ask permission to use that quote on your Realtor website. This helps if the person is busy and doesn’t have time to write something for you. However, if they ask you to write something that they will sign, it is better to get them to say something on the phone that you can write down. People usually can detect “canned laughter” in a testimonial, which does not help build your real estate website’s stickiness.

Also try to get permission for the person’s whole name for believability purposes. If personal security is a concern, at least use the first name and last initial and their town. This can protect their identity and yet present a “face” on the quote.

An indirect way, calling for some tact and diplomacy, is to use a rotating list real estate clients who allow you to use them as references for new clients can contact, preferably by email. When your reference sends a testimonial to your client, they may also cc a copy to you. These testimonials usually work very well for marketing because they address your customers, not you and have more of an impartial ring of authenticity to them.

The science (or art) of using testimonials as part of your real estate web design includes weeding out positive, but uninspiring testimonials. These fall in the “non-specific” or “too short” columns. Our somewhat jaded buying public is unimpressed with “…best ever..” “…wonderful person…” type testimonials or the ones that do not attribute a specific benefit received. “You were the best real estate agent I have worked with…” does not carry the punch that the same testimonial listing why you were the best does.

Take a few more minutes with your real estate clients and get that verbal or written testimonial. Spicing up your real estate website with third party quotes builds your creditworthiness and arrests the eye of your website browser!

Real estate agents who successfully positioned their real estate websites to target foreign buyers did well in states targeted by foreign real estate investors. Though foreign investment in the US real estate  market is off its 2007 level according to a National Association of Realtors survey, foreign home buyers still target second homes in the sunny states of Florida, Texas, Arizona, Nevada and California. Though not one of the sunshine states, New York, ever a favorite national and international real estate market, enjoyed its share of overseas property investors. Possibly due to the increased buying power of the loonie, Canada replaced Mexico for the first time as the number one source of foreign real estate buyers, with twice as many buying in the May 2007 to 2008 window than in the prior period.

Realtors have found the international buyer a profitable niche market to target. Foreign buyers tend to buy more expensive homes, even for their vacation homes, than the local home buyers – usually buying a single family home close to $300,000. Almost 15% of the purchases were for properties over $750,000 – a nice property by any standard. Foreign buyers mostly purchased second homes with the buyers occupying their homes for just under 3 months of the year.

For either investment purposes or ease of completing the sale, forty percent of the buyers paid for their home purchases with cash. Many Realtors reported the tight availability of home loan financing, the 30% downpayment for loans to foreign nationals, and home prices to be an obstacle that halted some of the sales to foreign buyers.

Many real estate websites in the Arizona, Texas and California markets are already bilingual in order to address the needs a Mexican home buyers, which is the third highest population of cross border real estate buyers. Interestingly, most of the foreign sales of homes over $1 million went to buyers from China. Maybe this signals a need for real estate websites targeting the luxury home market to include pages in Chinese as well as English to attract these real estate investors.

The international real estate investor is a financially rewarding niche market to capture due to their tendency to buy property that is 36% more than the average US home buyer. Indeed, 8% of the 4,000 Realtors surveyed derive at least 50% of their home sales transactions from foreign buyers.

Improve your real estate website’s ability to target foreign real estate investors by adding specific pages to your website that educate the foreign buyer. Contact IMCD Web Design if you need to improve your Internet marketing presence with an IMC real estate web design. Your Internet marketing to a niche market is only effective if your potential real estate home buyers can find your website!

Investing in your new real estate website without maximizing its search engine optimization is like buying a new car without any wheels and expecting to get somewhere. In short, search engine optimization (SEO) is the tool that gives your real estate website the traction to get anywhere with your real estate Internet market.

Recently, IMCD Web Design did an semi-scientific serious survey of real estate websites. The survey criteria was simple: visit real estate website designers whose sites are high on the Google search return, review their positive testimonials and then do a Google search in the markets where their happy clients are competing. What we found is that many designers as well as real estate agents apparently do not understand marketing on the Internet, or at least do not factor the financial return on the real estate website investment in their Internet marketing strategy.

A typical real estate website situation is the Realtor would give a testimonial on how great their website looked, how easy it was to work with the website designers and the compliments they  have received from their site. A Google search of their market using the usual search terms like “Sacramento real estate”, “Boise homes for sale” or “Seattle real estate agent” and even longtail keywords like “Los Angeles luxury homes” yielded no visible search ranking of the satisfied clients’ websites on the first five pages, much less the critical first page of results.

A quick look “under the hood” of the real estate agents’ websites found that, however beautiful and captivating the graphics, Flash slide show of area homes and scenery, or ability to find contact information, the websites lacked simple search engine optimization. SEO can get sophisticated and multi-layered depending on the need of your market and the time you wish to devote to capturing your potentially lucrative market. However, most real estate websites reviewed lacked even basic SEO.

Without SEO, the gorgeous websites were most likely found by people who found the web address on print advertising – a business card, post card or newspaper advertisement. Although print is a solid secondary advertising window, with 90% of the market using the Internet and maybe 15% checking newspaper ads in search of a home – print is nowhere as efficient in getting your real estate marketing message visible on the first page of the search results.

Make sure you have professional and experienced help with your website’s SEO to get you the visibility in the Internet market. Proof that you have the wheels on your real estate website vehicle? You receive steady, consistent and solid leads from your Internet marketing and are high up in Google searches for your keywords. If you are in a competitive market like Denver or Los Angeles, your tires may need white walls to gain attention – add a real estate blog or an article manager to make it easy to add content to your website. At IMCD we don’t let our clients only focus on the vehicle (attractive and captivating as our graphic design is) and forget that their website investment needs solid SEO to get traction on the Internet highway.

When selecting your real estate website designer, IMCD Web Design offers the following tips to help increase your real estate website’s visibility in search engine rankings, graphic design and Internet marketing web content.

1. Find a real estate web developer who understands your Internet competition. Small real estate firms have benefited from the Internet’s ability to level the playing field. Front-end investment in  good graphic design, SEO strategy and compelling web content pays off with both ranking high on the search engines and consistent source of lead generation. You want a real estate website designer who knows how to position you, whether your are a two person team or a 20 agent brokerage firm, to capture as much of your real estate Internet market by a very visible presence on search engine results.

2. View your real estate web site through the eyes of your potential real estate clients. Websites with  the eye-catching graphic design, intuitive navigation layout, and interesting web content are key to converting visitors to sales leads. Select a real estate web designer with a track record of performing well in these vital three areas: graphic design, copywriting and search engine optimization.

3. Go over what your real estate website goals are with your real estate website developer. Just as with any real estate business venture, outline the benefits you want from your website. List how you will benchmark the success of your website – daily unique visitors, sales leads from the guestbook, and where you rank for your keywords on Google. Outline the investment in graphic design, SEO and keyword-rich web content writing that is necessary to successfully position your website in the search engines.

4. Appoint someone to be accountable for the creation and continual building of your real estate website. To compete in profitable real estate markets, be ready to add articles or blog entries – your successful competition is most likely already doing this. Don’t get slowed down by insisting on perfection, instead get good and effective web content posted in a timely manner. The Internet market is more forgiving of spelling errors than it is of old content.

5. Use your real estate web site’s traffic statistics to plan future articles and determine what keywords or key phrases draw the most traffic and which need more work.

These are five general tips IMC has found are the beginning building blocks to constructing a successful real estate website strategy. IMC has a long history of creating real estate websites for individual agents as well as multi-talented real estate brokerage firms. Call us if your real estate website is not bringing you warm leads on a regular basis from your market’s Internet savvy home buyers and sellers.