What your commercial real estate website needs to be effective
In the current information age, where the internet is the leading platform for both brick and mortar and online businesses, having a website is mandatory. Unfortunately, some businesses do not invest sufficient resources and time to make a proper commercial real estate website built for conversions.
If you are skeptical about the impact of a website on your real estate’s bottom line, here are a few pointers to wake you up from your costly unbelief.
- 60% of tenants and investors in commercial real estate start their search for property online, with over half of them using mobile devices to conduct the searches.
- Studies indicate that excellent design leads to a higher willingness (between 18% and 41% more willingness) of potential customers to pay due to the positive perception created by the website’s design.
As more millennials constitute the bigger share of real estate clients, they become your target audience, and you have to find them where they are.
Investing in a quality commercial real estate website design offers you the following advantages;
- It helps you make a lasting first impression.
- Builds clients’ credibility and trust in you
- The foundation of your marketing strategy
- Aids in SEO visibility
- It works 24/7 all year round
Here are the five essential components your website
A functional design
Having a functional design is the basis for any website in any industry. It covers an array of factors chief among them being;
- Having a responsive design which can load seamlessly on any screen size and have mobile phone friendly navigation.
- It should have comprehensive browser compatibility to cover all browser versions your customers are likely to be using.
- It should have fast load times to avoid a high bounce rate since a large portion of users will not wait around for a page that takes more than five seconds to load. Use the Google Page Insights to test your load time. It should have a minimum score of 80 as proof of fats load time on every device.
- The website should be optimized for search indexing so that you know when your content gets indexed and when you need to submit new content.
- All content on the site should be easily accessible with three or fewer clicks. Content that is buried deep insight will be lost to your prospective clients leading to poor conversion rates.
Use professional images
Professional images are an integral part of advertising your properties. The images have to accurately communicate to the user the building’s feel and look, showing all elements of space, lighting, and design. The main image has to be of a high resolution and attention-grabbing. 3D photography is excellent at serving this purpose and where necessary aerial photography can be used too. You have to balance the use of high-resolution images, so it helps to use compression tools like Kraken.io, which reduces the heaviness on your image without affecting the quality.
Have 3D virtual tours
Several of your potential clients may not be able to visit the property in person, and even high-quality images may not correctly capture the site’s nuances. Even those who can get to the location may need extra persuasion, which a virtual tour provides. You can work with several real estate virtual tour solutions and expand your reach to remote clients, which helps sell your properties to a broader audience.
Use excellent property descriptions.
With all the imagery, it is easy to forget the power of words; you should not. Instead, let the imagery build on your description. Prospective clients still want to be told the selling point of the property and who it is for. Your descriptions should be brief, but, at the same time, provide solutions and answer potential questions form the clients.
Provide downloadable floor plans
A floor plan is essential since it helps prospective clients understand the layout better, and when it downloadable, it can be used offline, too, and makes the comparison easier for clients.
Other elements your commercial site will need include a blog proving useful information for clients and resources like maps and amenities information around your property’s location. Remember, the website is there to represent your brand and help grow your business, so do it professionally.