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A recent spate of online articles, from so-called “experts” claim that real estate professionals should ditch the “middle-man” and forego IDX capability on their websites. Their reasons are varied. One says that the IDX provider robs the agents’ websites of SEO value. Another says that consumers don’t use agent sites to find listings but instead depend on the big real estate portals. Any agent who pays attention to the stats in his or her website’s backend knows otherwise.
Real estate agents offer tremendous value to their clients and potential clients by offering them a way to not only search local listings but by the assurance that these listings are up-to-date and accurate – a far cry from what the big sites offer.
So, leave the IDX in place and read on for tips on how to get more leads out of your IDX website.
Where are you?
Advice about how to get more leads from a website is useless if people can’t find your site. Content, consistently posted, is the roadmap that will lead them to your site and the best place to create this content is on your blog. You do have a blog, don’t you? Not only will this strategy help you rank in search engines but it’s a fabulous way to demonstrate your expertise and local knowledge.
Then, keep them coming back by pushing new content out and teasing it in your email blasts and via social media.
User registration
Nicely asking your website’s users for their contact information will get you nowhere, fast. The highest converting websites have a registration popup form that must be completed if the user wants to continue looking at listings. Sure, some will move on to another site, but many will register. In fact, millennials, the generation that represents the real estate market of the future, are infamous for registering at websites.
They demand, however, that the experience be simple. Asking visitors to provide an extensive list of information will lead to fewer conversions, according to Neil Patel. In fact, Patel claims that you need only three fields—first name, last name and contact information (preferably email address – it’s less intimidating than asking for a phone number) to increase conversions up to 25 percent.
To ensure that your registration form is easy to use and that your calls to action are clear when viewed on a mobile device, register as a user and check for yourself. You’ll want to be sure that the experience is easy and that the frequency and content of the auto-generated emails meets with your approval.
Client testimonials
Ninety-two percent of consumers read online reviews, according to a brightlocal.com survey. Of these respondents, 40 percent claim that they formed an opinion of a business or service after reading from one to three reviews and that a review must be current – within one month of the current date – to be relevant to them.
The key takeaway from the study, however, is that nearly 90 percent of respondents claim to trust the online reviews as much as they do personal recommendations.
So, while you can tout your neighborhood expertise, marketing prowess, long-term tenure in the industry or otherwise toot your own horn all over your website, the bottom line is that “People love other people’s opinions,” Adam Fridman, CEO of meetadvisors claims on Inc.com. “Even if the other people are strangers they’ve never met, they will take their advice over anything they read from a company’s website,” he concludes.
Building trust is one of the primary purposes of your IDX website, and client feedback is your number one tool. Learn more about how to use client testimonials on your IDX website, here.
Community information
No giant real estate portal can provide the hyper-local information that the boots-on-the-ground agent can. Real estate is, after all, local. When considering community information, or any content for that matter, aim for quality rather than quantity. Big, meaty posts with in-depth neighborhood descriptions will help you beat the portals at their own game by getting your site ranked for something they can’t possibly compete on.
But don’t stop with a mere community description. Posts about the area’s amenities, businesses and schools are just as valuable to your users. And, if you push them out via social media, they create value for your brand as well.
Your IDX website can be your most powerful lead generation tool if you allow it to do the heavy lifting for you.
This post was written by Shannon O’Brien
The post Get more (and better) leads out of your IDX website appeared first on Diverse Solutions.
