The website: Where it all began in the real estate agent’s relationship with the internet. The website is also the internet’s most overworked product. No matter what new tools the internet discovers for prospecting buyers and sellers, no matter how many search engines fill our space or how many bells and whistles are dreamed up, no matter if virtual enhancements work or don’t work…all roads lead back to the website.
Oftentimes, the fate of a website is left to its originator. By over-promising the effects of the product on its new owner’s business, the website developer has virtually doomed its product to failure. As if its lifeline isn’t already insecure. Despite what you’re told, your website won’t grow legs and walk around the internet with a fishing pole in its clutch, catching you buyers, while you sleep and do nothing, unless you give it the tools to do so. I’ve heard clients in years past who owned basic web solutions (a URL, a nice home page and a couple of links) and complained that they hadn’t sold a single house since purchasing the website. “The damn thing doesn’t work,” they’d say. “I want my money back.” Well, Mr. Realtor, it just doesn’t work that way. You still have to get up each day and do your thing as a real estate agent. If success was as easy as putting a website on the internet, why wouldn’t everybody do it? Oh yeh, everybody did do it. Back in the late nineties, when the internet was schmoozing up to real estate, the heyday of the modern website developer was spawned and, unfortunately, the era of over-assumption began…RealtorNet Love/Hate was here! And, some would argue, has never left.
Websites have long been the victims of expectations that have exceeded reality, despite having accomplished exactly what they were originally meant to be:
1. Vertical Interest Destination Points
2. Online Offices for Entrepreneurs
3. Reference Guides with Pertinent Content
4. Interactive Consumer Communication Center
The website experience became more intimate and collaborative with the introduction of new tools that allowed websites to receive the benefits of varied technologies that unto themselves created data systems and methods of exposure through seamless distribution that evolved with the needs of consumers and the ability of an industry to provide for those needs. Subsequently, with an increase in the perceived value of these “Accessories” came a decrease in the perceived value of the website. But, in fact, the website has become synonymous with the products that serve it, and today they are one…
The real estate agent does not evaluate a website for its parts; it evaluates it for its performance as a single cell. As such, the value of the website has truly increased, and will continue to do so if its value is not overlooked in comparison to bolt-on products that enrich it.
In simple terms, a real estate salesperson should look at a website as they would an office. Except, this is a virtual office. The most important consideration to leasing office space is, and always will be, location, location, location. The goal of an office is to have a storefront and make it inviting for people, customers, to come in. The products offered by the technology sector (paid search, IDX, design coaching) are similar to outdoor signage, a good paint job and adequate parking. These are the
Ingredients necessary to maintain an efficient, professionally-administered office…one that your customers will appreciate.
If it starts with location, location, location, then it is very important where you get your website, who is hosting it and and how is their customer support. Does the developer have credibility in the real estate space, resources to pursue better branding and website tools? Most importantly, does the website developer you’ve chosen share the vision of your trade? The last piece to this puzzle is your own loyalty. Loyalty to one website, thus one website developer, will allow you the freedom to focus all of your energies on making things right between you and your website. The quotient you are eliminating is the suspicion that there is a better product around every corner, when, in fact, the right basic website choice will give you the opportunity to evolve to Best of Breed” on your own and without constantly jumping off your horse in the middle of a stream.
You will be investing your own resources in this product evolution program, but with the right developer, you will be investing theirs as well.
The reinforcing elements for maintaining a long and valued relationship between websites and their owners are customer support from the architect of your office and the ability of the website to function efficiently with new data-gathering enhancements of the coming age. The scope of bringing these elements together is far reaching and will give value to a product that is highly under-rated in today’s marketplace.
Don’t look at a website as a fixer upper, where you will invest your time, energies and resources only to move on to another property. Look at it as a place where you intend to live out your business life and raise a family in the interim. Oh, by the way, a long relationship with your website is also akin to a 401K plan for retirement: What you put into it you will eventually get out, in multiples.
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