When website designers Vandelay Design put up their 27 of the best real estate websites list last week, we had to take a look at who made the cut. One website that stood out was jimolenbush.com - perhaps better known as Cantera Real Estate – which represents a boutique real estate company based in Austin, Texas.

Just as we saw with nestrealtygroup.com, this website immediately puts the emphasis on place with an enticing photo and details on Austin’s communities. At the same time, home hunters keen to get straight to the listings are catered for with a “quick search” box in prime position on the homepage.

The way jimolenbush.com presents its listings might well be the website’s best feature. Along with the quick search, home hunters can find listings by zip code, MLS number, and Google Maps. A menu down the left-hand side of the website also divides listings into three categories: luxury homes, downtown condos, and new home builds. With so many bases covered, jimolenbush.com is bound to please a large percentage of its user base.

Along with listings, jimolenbush.com provides a information on local schools, and its blog is regularly updated by each member of the agency’s team. The blog follows a formula we’ve been advocating for a while now – a mix of market information, listing highlights, and community news.

Finally, jimolenbush.com isn’t shy with its calls to action. The office phone numbers are listed twice on the homepage, and again on the contact page, which also presents a lead capture form. Just to be sure, these numbers are repeated at the top of each listing page. This might sound like overkill, but better that than miss out on a lead.

Here at Property Ad Guru, we have plenty of advice on how to make your website the best it can possibly be. There’s a lot you can do on your own, but for UK agents still looking for an out-of-the-box solution, UltraIT could be worth checking out.

UltraIT is a European company that has just set up shop in the UK. They offer website packages for agents working in both sales and rentals, along with an SEO service. While their service isn’t free – package prices start from £1395 – UltraIT promises extras such as its “Application Match” feature, which automatically matches listings to customer requirements, make it worth the investment.

Meanwhile, Australian property data supplier PriceFinder is about to launch “Share” – a service that allows agents to give their clients access to information from PriceFinder’s database for free.

PriceFinder says the information available through Share includes property price history, estimated sales price, a map searching tool, property photos, and the potential yield of a property within the current market or any time in recent history.

At this stage, Share is only available to PriceFinder’s “pro” subscribers, who pay AUD$255 per month.

Your website’s looking great, so why isn’t it generating any leads? Perhaps it’s your “call to action” – the section of your website that prompts browsers to subscribe, follow, or contact you. Let’s take a look at some examples to find out what the options are.

Recently we checked out nestrealtygroup.com, the winner of Inman’s Innovator Award for 2009. They’ve taken a subtle approach to their calls to action, placing the suggestions to “get email alerts” and “contact us” in tiny print in the top right of the website. Scroll down to the bottom of the homepage and you’ll find a miniature RSS feed subscription button, along with small versions of the Twitter, Vimeo, and YouTube icons under the words “find us on”.

Over in Australia, we can see two very different examples. cbrealestate.com.au hasn’t decided to engage with its customers via social media just yet, but they do know plenty of people want to contact them by phone. So their number is displayed in large print in that all-important top right corner.

Meanwhile, firstnational.com.au seem very comfortable with social media, presenting home hunters with large links to its Facebook and Twitter accounts halfway down its homepage.

In the UK, we have London agents Foxtons. Like cbrealestate.com.au, their homepage reserves the top right corner for large text with their phone number. Beyond that, Foxtons has not just one, but four calls to action for their home valuation service.

What these examples show is that there’s certainly more than one way to prompt website visitors to act. Now that you’re thinking about what constitutes an effective call to action, and what changes – if any – you need to make back at your website, consider these points:

Highlight it: Make sure users don’t have to go hunting if they want to sign up for alerts or find your contact details. As a general rule, the top right corner is where people go looking when they want to get in touch.

Simplify it: Keep the word count down and the message clear. Confusing a potential customer is an extremely effective way to make sure they don’t do business with you.

Monitor it: Any change you make should prompt you to track whether it’s turning visitors off or bringing in more leads. This doesn’t have to be a tiresome process – a simple count before the change, and a check a month or so later, should tell you whether you’re on the right track.

If you’re still stuck for ideas on how to make the most of your calls to action, spend a few minutes revisiting websites you subscribed to. What did they do right to capture your email address?

In a recent blog post, Inman News marketing manager Katie Lance pointed to nestrealtygroup.com as one of her favourite websites. Always on the lookout for good examples, we decided to look into what’s working for nestrealtygroup.com, with the aim of giving you some inspiration.

What’s immediately obvious when you open nestrealty.com is its emphasis on place rather than real estate agents. After a few seconds scrolling over the “Charlottesville area guides” links, users already have a sense of what the city is like.

Out-of-town house hunters can then follow the “life in Charlottesville” link to find out more about what the city has to offer. With a simple mix of photos, video, and well-written copy, nestrealtygroup.com does a great job of communicating Charlottesville and positioning themselves as the local experts.

The website’s blog only adds to the sense that Nest Realty know their area, promising information on “all of the great things Charlottesville, Albemarle County, and Central Virginia have to offer.” It seems they’ve also taken a leaf from clarkcountryrealestateguide.com with their own “365 things to do” series. These posts are interspersed with market information, reinforcing the brokerage’s authority on the area.

Of course, the website also offers a listing search that invites users to “search for your nest”. House hunters who know what they want can search either by criteria or via the map, while those looking for more inspiration can scroll down to find out more about popular neighbourhoods, where they also see featured listings. Nothing too fancy here, and nothing that will overwhelm users.

There are two more things this website does well throughout: colour scheme and fonts. These might sound like afterthoughts, but it’s clear a lot of effort has gone into choosing the muted tones and classical typeface nestrealty.com uses. The result is a relaxing user experience.

Remember, you don’t have to have a huge budget, or be the winner of Inman’s most innovative brokerage award, to put these principles into practice on your own website. The nestrealtygroup.com formula boils down to:

- An emphasis on place,
- Proof they know their area,
- Simplicity in design and search.

Of course, we’re keen to hear your take on nestrealtygroup.com, along with any other agent websites you think are working well. Let us know your thoughts in our comments.

Today we’re going back to basics with a look at the essential elements for all good agency websites. Everyone knows you need a website for your agency, but it’s no longer good enough to have just any old website. It needs to be fabulous with the latest gizmos and tricks. Or does it? Here’s our list of the most important things to include in – and leave out of – your agency website.

Must Haves:

Good domain name. The name of the website should accurately reflect your business name so it will be more easily found by those using search engines. It is also simply good practice to have the domain mirror your business name – an obscure domain name just raises questions.

Email addresses. Your email addresses should be reflective of your website’s domain name, eg: www.abc.com as the domain name and mary@abc.com as the email address. These email addresses should be used on the website as contact details.

SEO ready. The website should be built with SEO in mind. That is, meta data, keywords, heading tags and content should all be optimised so that the site can be easily indexed by search engines and therefore found by users. For more information on SEO, see our guest series here.

Content management system. Your site should be easily editable via some sort of back-end system that only certain users can access. Your designer should provide a way to update and add content on certain parts of your website so that you can alter things as your business changes.

Clear contact information. A user should not have to go searching for ways to contact your business. After all, the idea is that you entice people to contact you! Make sure you have email addresses and phone numbers clearly visible on multiple pages of the site and that someone actually monitors these contact requests.

Clear navigation. Don’t force people to guess where information is found on your site. Make it easy for them with clearly and sensibly labelled sections. Have the most important information and functions (ie. the search functionality) available up front so users are not having to navigate through multiple pages to get to it.

Search functionality. This should be available from the home page as well as in a For Sale or For Lease section. Most users going to an agency website are there to look at the listings. Make it easy for them.

Additional relevant content. It is a good idea to included relevant local content on your site for buyers, sellers, renters, landlords and those interested in the property market. Things such as buying guides, government grants, legal and financial information as well as local services are all positive inclusions. This sort of content is good for SEO purposes and also helps engage and re-engage users with your website. To be able to provide more than just listings is a great service for those interested in property, particularly if it is local news or market commentary that changes regularly.

Good photos. Your listings should all contain multiple high-quality images. The web is a visual medium and browsers like nothing more than to look at lots of pictures of their new potential home. Other images on the site should likewise be of high quality and well positioned to capture attention and be relevant to surrounding content.

Portal feeds. The website’s content management system should allow for multiple uploads to other sites, namely portal websites that your agency advertises on. You don’t want to have to load up listings on to your own website and then do it again for the portals.

Maps. Mapping tools have become faster and more intelligent in recent times and provide a great service to those searching for property. In an industry where it’s all about location, having a map to plot properties on, and even one that includes local services and relative distances, is an integral part of modern property searching.

Sold properties. A list of recently sold properties with sale prices and asking prices is a great tool for both buyers and sellers considering using your agency. Results speak volumes and if you are proud of your efforts you have nothing to lose by publishing these results.

Don’t Need:

Picture of the principal/owner on the home page. This was once the mainstay of all agency websites, but is now considered a real no-no. It is unnecessary and can be seen as narcissistic! The About Us section is the perfect place to include photos and bios of the staff that make the agency so great.

Reams of information about the business. Whilst some information about the business is essential for selling the services and benefits, you don’t need to go overboard here. Most users know what an estate agency offers. Some select testimonials and a succinct list of services offered will suffice. The best way to differentiate yourself from your competitors is to offer market intelligence or commentary and provide regular updates to your readers in a news-style section.

May Want:

You may want to include some other widgets on your site such as currency converters, language converters, short-term rental calendars, and hotlist management tools.

It’s now official: website speed matters, particularly if you’re concerned with where you rank in Google’s search results.

In a blog post last Friday, Google Fellow Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts, Principal Engineer of Google’s Search Quality Team, explained that website speed is now included in Google’s search ranking algorithms.

“Speeding up websites is important — not just to site owners, but to all Internet users,” the post explains. “Faster sites create happy users and we’ve seen in our internal studies that when a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there.”

This research, which looked at how users responded to delays on Google itself, shows just how easily potential customers can be thrown off by a slow website. Google explains:

“All other things being equal, more usage, as measured by number of searches, reflects more satisfied users. Our experiments demonstrate that slowing down the search results page by 100 to 400 milliseconds has a measurable impact on the number of searches per user of -0.2% to -0.6% (averaged over four or six weeks depending on the experiment). That’s 0.2% to 0.6% fewer searches for changes under half a second!”

So even if you’re not particularly worried about where you rank in Google search results, this new emphasis on speed might prompt you to double check how your website is performing. But how do you go about doing this?

Anticipating this question, Google have come up with suggestions of free tools you can use to evaluate and improve your website’s speed, including their own Page Speed, YSlow from Yahoo!, and WebPagetest.

Most web users would agree that website speed is important, but if you’re worried that this new addition to Google’s algorithms is going to relegate your website to page 10, don’t be. Google’s blog post emphasises that less than 1 percent of search queries are affected by the site speed signal, and that it only applies for visitors searching in English on google.com at the moment. “If you haven’t seen much change to your site rankings, then this site speed change possibly did not impact your site,” Google says.

If you’re a regular visitorto propertyadguru.com, chances are you understand the importance of a well designed website in enticing potential clients. You’re probably also aware of the many options available, from customised WordPress themes to single property website tools.

Now, a new UK-based website creation service has been launched with real estate agents specifically in mind. The name says it all: propertywebsitedesigners.com.

The company hopes to provide agents with a “powerful” template website system to help them sell property locally and internationally. The package, which starts at £199 with a monthly fee of £19.99, includes the ability to update all copy on the website, a search system, country, region and city control, currency conversion, email, hosting, and statistics. Agents also have the option to feed their properties to over 30 property portals around the world.

propertywebsitedesigners.com says what makes their service special is the fact that they do not expect agents to become “web experts”, but aim to provide a professional, fully managed web presence that empowers agents to update their web content and manage their property listings easily.

Next time you’re shopping around for a website design team, don’t forget to have a read through our advice on what to look for in a good web designer, along with our Top 10 Tips for Your Agency Website.

Australian real estate agents wishing they had widgets like those available in the US and UK are in luck: pricefinder.com.au has just released a range of its own.

According to pricefinder.com.au chief operating officer Kent Lardner, the widgets were inspired by offerings from zillow.com and trulia.com in the US.

The “SalesMatch” widget allows users to find and map matching comparable sales for any property. “RentMatch” does the same for rentals, while the “Stats” widget allows agents to embed suburb, postcode, and local government area sales statistics and charts into their website.

The main difference between these offerings and those available to US agents is that they aren’t free. The widgets are available at no extra cost to those on pricefinder.com.au’s “pro” and “solo” memberships, which start at AUD$95 per month. Banners and logos are also available.

A professional, customised website for your agency is an essential component of your online marketing strategy. In fact, it’s now just plain good business practice. As a result, there are hundreds companies out there all vying for your business.

So how do you know who to engage to get the right look and ensure your site delivers real results? Here are some strategies on sorting the good from the ordinary.

To ensure you get actual results from your agency website – not just a pretty page that no one visits but you – you need an experienced, qualified and credible web designer who will work with you to properly represent your brand and market your services effectively. There can be vast differences between companies, so you need to do your research when selecting a designer.

Building a website need not be hugely expensive. The vast number of designers in operation now ensures prices are kept in check. However, a professionally designed and built website does take planning, effort and time to produce, so in most cases you will get what you pay for.

Be wary of those who promise a “quick turn-around” or “off-the-shelf” sites, as you will no doubt simply be getting a site that already exists with a basic re-skinning in your corporate colours. Whilst this approach may suit a start-up or very small operator, in this day and age it is rarely enough to really be a useful starting place for your online marketing strategy.

On the flipside, you don’t need to invest your life-savings to get a really attractive and successful company website. The market is competitive and the tools for web design are so accessible now that you should be cautious of those who say they have to start completely from scratch and therefore charge the earth.

Your best bet is to write a simple brief (what you think you want on your website) and get three quotes from different designers. You’ll soon see whether one or the other is way off the mark.

As well as price, you will want to compare the output of your potential designer. Start by reviewing the portfolios of leading design companies in your area. What is the calibre of their clients? Have they done much work for others in your industry?

You should also compare their level of experience by the size of their portfolio. Do they have a long and strong history and experience in the property field or would you be their first client? Are you impressed by the work they have done for some of your competitors? Do you like their style and originality or do their sites all look similar? Are you confident you would be getting a unique and customised design?

And finally, consider the additional services and offerings of the design company. Are they willing to sit down with you and really work through what it is you want from your website, or are they looking to you to simply give them all the answers? Do they offer a content management system where you are able to edit and add content to your own site once it’s built, or are you going to have to pay each time you want to make a change?

More questions to ask: Are you clear on their approach to charging for changes throughout the design and build process? Do they offer a way to measure the effectiveness of your website through an analytics package? Are you able to upload your listings to other websites (portals for example)? And, are they decent and approachable people that speak in a way you can understand?

A website can tremendously improve – or harm – your agency’s image. Having a site professionally designed to incorporate an attractive and informative interface, with a useful exchange of content and encouragement of user interest and conversion, is paramount.

Your website is the cornerstone of your online marketing strategy. It is your online shopfront and, in many cases, is now the only interaction a buyer has with your business. Staying ahead of your competition online is a cost-effective but ongoing pursuit, so make sure you choose a credible designer who is going to still be in business next year and the year after and forge a successful relationship with them.

UK property portal findaproperty.com, which has just come out with an iPhone application, has also released a widget showing UK average house prices that can be added to any website.

The widget displays asking price data for both flats and houses in any UK town or county for either sales or rentals. findaproperty.com explains that it shows asking price changes for the last 90 days in both graph and tabular formats.

The widget takes a daily snapshot of the prices at which properties are advertised on the website for the last 90 days and then plots them on the graph. The widget’s graph features clickable data points, so the user can find out precisely how much the average asking price of a flat or house in that area was on a specific date. Asking price data is drawn from findaproperty.com’s database of over 600,000 properties.

Meanwhile, findaproperty.com parent company The Digital Property Group (TDPG) is touting the success of both findaproperty.com and primelocation.com over the past few weeks, claiming an increase in traffic has boosted the number of enquiries for its agents.

According to a company statement, on 18 January findaproperty.com recorded just short of 215,000 unique visitors, which is 11,400 individual visitors greater than the previous record set in August 2009. The next day, primelocation.com attracted just over 168,000 unique visitors, which is its recorded highest number.

TDPG says that in both cases this boost in visitors translated into enquiries for its agents, with lead totals for primelocation.com and findaproperty.com between 1 and 19 January increasing by 21 percent and 59 percent respectively compared with the same period in 2009.

The company also states that for the first 19 days in January its websites delivered a lead to an agent every 2.2 seconds, compared with a lead landing every 3.1 seconds in 2009.

TDPG sales director John Notley said these were “outstanding” numbers, even taking seasonality into account.

With TDPG’s parent company recently bringing globrix.com into the fold, 2010 looks set to be an interesting year as this portal network, along with zoopla.co.uk’s, tries to close in on that other UK property portal, rightmove.co.uk.