The world has shrunk a great deal in the past 12-15 years.

As I sit here working in Dallas, Texas here’s what I see and hear…

- I’m on the phone with clients and associates in Dallas, TX, Corpus Christi, TX, Oklahoma City, OK, New York, NY and Washington, DC
- I’m talking via instant message to co-workers in Dallas, and friends and clients in Fort Worth, TX, Australia and San Francisco, CA
- I’m watching a live concert of my favorite band, The Who, from Bristol, England on TheWhoLive.tv
- I’m receiving jpg photos from the Bristol, England concert and reading live updates via a blog in London, England
- I Skype a client who is working in Germany
- And, as always, I’m monitoring news from around the world using RSS feeds that stream onto my desktop

News, weather, entertainment and communication is but a click away.

What a small, small place the world has become.

steve

The keys to a successful Web site
If you’re thinking of your clients,
you’re on the right track.

by Steve Lee

No matter how good you are, if your focus is wrong, your results will be off.

Good REALTORS® think client first. They ask, “What does the client need?” and “How can I make this easier for my clients?” Simple questions that make a world of difference.

Want to build a great Web site? Think client first and client only.

Understanding your visitors is key

If you’ve had any success in this business, then you already know a great deal about your clients. But you probably don’t know much about their Internet habits. So, it’s time to get acquainted.

Conduct some simple, informal research. Pick out about a dozen of your best clients, take them to coffee, and ask them these questions:

1. How many hours a week are you online looking at Web sites or checking e-mail? The more time spent online—even as few as five to six hours—tells you they have a degree of comfort and dependence on the Internet.
2. How many times a day do you check e-mail? If they check their e-mail only one time a day, then that person is not an active e-mail user. Three to five times per day is more typical. This is critical if you want to push information on properties or opportunities to them via e-mail.
3. What is your favorite Web site and why? This is the most important question. Look closely at each Web site your clients name. Judge these sites on speed, graphic appeal, and overall ease of use. Determine if they are simple or have lots of useful features. Once you have looked at all the sites your clients like, you will have a good sense of what’s most important to them.

Steve Lee is one of many exciting speakers who will present education sessions in Arlington at the Texas REALTORS® Convention and Trade Expo. For more information, visit TexasRealtors.com.

Find the right balance

Great Web sites exhibit great balance. Here are some of the main issues you must consider:

Speed

Pages should ideally download in 10 or fewer seconds—not on that howling-fast T1 network you have at the office, but on that slower DSL line you have at home. If you design a graphically rich Web site with pages that take a minute to download, you have failed miserably. You may win awards, but you won’t sell properties.
Break the rules and build slower pages if you must. But if you make people wait, they will go elsewhere—in about 10 seconds.

Ease of use

What’s easy to use for you and me may be a real puzzle for
everyone else.

To simplify, reduce the number of things happening on the page. Aside from the main navigational buttons, include only a handful of other links on each page.

Guide the users to what you want them to see and do by making those links bigger, bolder, easier to see, and quicker to find. Avoid the spreadsheet effect, where you have rows and columns of text or graphic links, each the same size and weight. Help the users; don’t just throw everything up there and make them decide what’s important.

Decision time

Here are just a few of the hundreds of decisions you will have to make as you build your Web site:

Big graphics … or fast pages

Pictures of agents … or pictures of homes

Lots of links to everything … or just a few links to
what’s important

A slow, tedious list of properties … or a powerful, fast property search system

The richness of photos on a black background … or the ability to print Web pages

Lots and lots of words … or lots and lots of properties

A Web site that makes it hard for the client to
take action … or one where taking action is easy, fast,
and painless

Searching, finding

Most Web site users—about 85%—visit your site for one thing only: to find a property. Picking an agent, selecting a mortgage company, and all the other typical real estate services come in a far-distant second. The client is looking for a home. Stay focused on their needs, not yours.

Your search function should be right up front on the main page, and it should be easy to understand and fast. Even if you have just a few hundred properties online, your search function should be robust and offer more than the typical address, city, and ZIP search.

Add the capability to search for homes with pools or those in gated communities or those in a particular school district, those close to a golf course, and on and on. You know your clients. You know what they like. Now take that knowledge and employ it to make your Web site better.

Some users—typically those who are a bit older—“find” information instead of search for it. This means they like to hunt and click through pages rather than trust a search function to help them find the perfect home. Give these folks a clear path through your data using both geography links (address, city, ZIP) and attribute links (pool, school district, proximity to amenities).

A last thought on searching: Keep the search box up on every page except the final property detail page. Give your clients the opportunity to search for more properties and make it as easy as possible.

Is it fit to print?

One of the most serious mistakes real estate Web developers make is overlooking the importance of printing pages from your Web site.

Sure, all the photos look great on that black background; those cute little rotating graphic icons are wonderful; and look at all the movement you get with Flash animations and links. Problem is, these things look great on the screen but won’t print well.

If the client can’t print it, they can’t keep it, find you, or easily remember what property they found. To avoid this huge error, keep pages on a white background and reduce or completely eliminate all those dazzling graphics and Flash animations. Your clients will thank you.

Found it. Now what?

Once your client finds that perfect home in your property database, give them lots of options to take immediate action. With a click, they should be able to e-mail the property page to a friend, print the property detail page, save the page as a PDF file to their computer, get a map to help them find this property, and finally, contact an agent.

Don’t lose them now. Making it easier for them to take action will mean more prospects and more contacts.

What to avoid

What you don’t include on your Web site is as important as what you do. Keep these tips in mind:

* Don’t junk up the main page. Keep it short
and sweet.
* Don’t push stuff—like your services—that are of no interest to the consumer. Put that list over in the corner somewhere; they will find it if they need it.
* Don’t concede to company politics and put everybody’s division, department, and pet project on the main page of your Web site. It’s ugly and confuses the user.
* Don’t hide your search function. Put it right up front on virtually every page. Remember, search is what most of your Web site visitors want.
* Don’t confuse your clients with things that they don’t understand, like asking how many days old they want their search to be, or using industry jargon instead of plain English.

Throw in a few extras

Assuming you have followed these tips so far, you have a cleanly designed Web site that looks good, downloads quickly, prints nicely, is easy to follow, and has a great search engine. Now, let’s add some bells and whistles.

Clients love calculators. All kinds of calculators. Mortgage calculators, mileage calculators, tax calculators, anything that will help them decide what they can afford and help them determine other costs (taxes, travel to and from work).

Internal photographs of the home or visual walkthroughs are very appealing and greatly help the prospect imagine what it might be like to live in the home.

Clients want to be alerted if a new property becomes available that matches the search criteria they used to find their favorite homes. Make this function simple—just have the client perform a search and then save it with their e-mail address. Then each night, have your database run all these searches and send links to the clients if new properties are found. It’s like making hundreds of sales calls each morning before you wake up.

The more knowledge you exhibit about the communities, schools, and activities in the neighborhoods in your area, the more confident the client will be that you know the area well. Good agents even answer questions that the client doesn’t know to ask. A good Web site should do the same.

In search of the perfect Web site?

I’m not fond of real estate Web sites that push agents’ pictures, bios, and services instead of concentrating on delivering property information quickly and easily. If you do a good job finding or selling a property, the other services will sell themselves. Besides, without a client and contract, most of the other services aren’t even needed.

Buying or selling a home today is daunting to the average consumer. Most just want someone they can trust to handle things, and their first impression today comes when they visit your Web site. Look at the main page of your Web site and ask if this is the lasting impression you want clients to have about you.

Is there such a thing as a perfect real estate Web site? Honestly, no. But clients expect you to work hard every day and strive for perfection in helping them achieve their goals. If you focus on their needs, your Web site will provide consumers valuable information in a way they want to receive it, and deliver results to you along the way.

Steve Lee is president and CEO of QuickSilver Interactive Group Inc. (QSIGroup.com) in Dallas. QuickSilver has helped clients like Ebby Halliday, REALTORS®, Blockbuster, RadioShack, and Whataburger with a wide range of Internet services, including Web development, hosting and site maintenance, e-commerce, information system development, e-mail marketing, e-newsletter and newsroom services, blogs, podcasts, and marketing and interactive consulting.

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