Real estate websites are now not an option for reaching the largest and growing market of home buyers and sellers. In California, the California Association of Realtors found that in the last year, 60% of the sellers were under 40 years old. Most of these interviewed at five or more real estate agents before listing their homes.

What does this demographic shift mean to your real estate website? The younger the buyer or seller, the more apt they are to have a habit of using the Internet as their primary source of research and communication. Having a real estate website that ranks high on the search engines and has the professional web design to attract and hold a visitor’s attention is becoming the key to the success and profitability of your business.

In the age of electronic relationships, your “About Us” page should no longer be a five minute exercise in providing a timeline of your work, but a carefully crafted component of your real estate website. Selling your services has always been about building relationships. By investing time and effort in your bio, your story can fulfill an invaluable service of building a potential client’s trust in you. From recent research, a well-written bio will also lift your real estate website above how most Realtors are wooing clients online.

In the population under 30, email is almost passe – they use their social networks, like Facebook, to send their electronic messages. As social media gains a greater foothold as a communications hub, real estate websites making use of a real estate blog can utilize the technology to tie into these social networks. Tracking the large investments businesses are making in companies like Facebook, one finds out that their high valuation is due to the fact that they are quickly becoming the information pipelines for the next generations.

IMCD Web Design has expert experience that is a balance of mastering the latest Internet marketing technology and consistently creating real estate websites with proven graphic design principles. Place your future success in the hands of professional real estate website designers. the Internet market is a tumultuous market place, which is good news for real estate agents just launching their won websites and Realtors looking to relaunch their websites to gain better search engine ranking by meeting current search engine optimization, social technology and website architecture standards.

Real estate web design for long term sales planning uses an option that also bolsters a real estate agent’s website’s search engine optimization. While a real estate web design that incorporates featured listings and MLS search tools addresses the immediate homes for sale market, savvy Realtors that make use of blogs and article manager options in their web designs use their marketing an area to improve their website’s real estate market keyword and information content.

The time spent researching and adding web content to article managers or real estate blogs pays off on two fronts. First, the creation of new, expert information for potential and past clients creates traffic to your website. By broadening your scope from individual properties to various neighborhoods and mini-economies in the city, real estate agents create a broad property-selling palette that the current properties for sale serve as the current window dressing.

The second area of benefit is the ability to create articles targeting your major and long-tail keywords. If you review area real estate web designs that have solid placement high in the Google, Yahoo and Bing search engines, many have blog entries or articles on the area’s highlights, not just the available listing of homes for sale. The saying that “content is king” holds true for the real estate Internet market as well as for all other markets.

IMCD Web Design has a long history of creating websites that meet real estate agents’ and brokers’ needs for providing Internet visitors information on listings as well as neighborhood news. Each custom real estate web design, as well as the semi-custom template designs, have the options of adding a blog or article manager into the website.

Driving traffic to your website by commenting on other real estate blogs is a good idea, however, attracting search engines by posting blog entries on your own site is the best way to add value and drive traffic to your real estate website.

Adjusting to today’s shifting markets – different age groups, different buying habits – online marketing is statistically the best way to reach the growing next market of home buyers. Another benefit of using a real estate blog is its capacity to tie into social networks that are quickly becoming the information pipelines for the next generations.

Contact IMCD Web Design to bring your real estate web design up to today’s competitive online marketing standards. We have the web design that works well with whatever level of technical skill you have. Our blog and article manager options are very intuitive and user friendly. Call us today!

More home buyers and sellers are finding homes and agents from real estate websites. The latest figures from the California Association of Realtors (CAR) found 84 percent of buyers did serious shopping on websites, both to find homes and agents.

Looking into the statistics, online marketing of real estate services with a website is building your future client base today. Many Realtors report to the national Realtor survey that most of their clients come from referrals, which may lead people to believe working on referrals is the highest priority. It is a high priority, of course. However, looking at referrals from the consumer side, CAR found that only 18% of traditional buyers used agents from referral and only 2% of Internet-using homebuyers used referrals.

85% of Internet buyers found their agents online, either through a real estate broker website or the agent’s personal online real estate marketing site.

In fact, over 50% reported going online to find a brokerage firm and 67% to find an agent. This works out to somewhere between 67 to 72% of Internet buyers are not just looking for homes online – they are looking for a real estate agent.

Another difference between Internet and traditional buyers: None of the Internet buyers picked their agent from previous transactions versus 27% of traditional buyers. Given the large difference in these two figures, it is more likely that most Internet buyers are first-time home buyers, not that they are in a area or mood that called for a different agent.

This means three things for your real estate website:

1. Get one if you don’t have one or work to get your website up in the search engine rankings if you do have a Realtor website.
2. Your home page and “About Us” page is one of your most important selling tools, and
3. Providing “walk you through the process” real estate information is a valuable online marketing tool for the current online market.

IMCD Web Design has been creating top-selling real estate websites for agents across the US – websites that have a high ROI due to their ability to rank high in the search engines, provide home selling and home buying guides, multiple contact points and the ability to integrate blogs, article managers, list managers and IDX listings into the site. Contact us to make sure you are reaching the real estate market where it is looking – online!

Survey your real estate website to make sure your web content is reinforcing your sales skills in the key areas of: prospecting, lead follow-up, presentations, and closing.

Prospecting
Sales lead generation is the primary role of a real estate website – whether to gain new listings or clients looking for homes to buy for primary residence or investment purposes. Does your homepage content convey the benefits of using your real estate agent services? Do you have contact forms that ask enough questions to pre-qualify your lead, but not so intrusive that they turn visitors away?

Lead follow-up
A problem many agents and brokers have with their online prospecting is failing to institute a follow-up program, either by phone or just auto responder emails. If you have created a special email address to collect your online leads, make sure it is checked often, just as in all marketing lead gathering campaigns, speed of response boosts your image to the buyer.

Presentations
Does your real estate website allow you to easily post videos or slide shows of your property? IMCD Web Design (IMCD) offers custom and template real estate web designs that include blogs for ease of posting videos of your feature listing properties. IMC also offers a listings manager online software program that has a user-friendly front-end that allows agents to post and edit their property slide shows! Virtual tours allow a 24/7 online marketing presentation of properties in their staged condition.

Closing
A real estate library or home buyer and seller guides allows your clients and real estate website visitors to educate themselves on the areas of buying or selling a house. By having this guides on your Realtor website, you can include links to specific reports or articles in reply emails to your clients. This both drives traffic to your site and leverages your online reports built on agents’ real estate experience and insight.

If your real estate online marketing are not meeting all your objectives in these four key areas, it may be time to talk over upgrading your online presence with an IMCD real estate website. IMCD’s semi-custom websites put the agent in the driver’s seat, controlling the frequency and quality of their ongoing web content building strategy with intuitive and integrated blog. The search engine optimization built into every custom and semi-custom real estate web design increase your prospecting leads through better search engine ranking. Contact us today to see how your sales skills can be better conveyed in the active world of online real estate marketing.