5 things you should do to generate more leads on your real estate website

My journey in real estate as a product developer began over a decade ago when I was hired by a local real estate team to build them a website. In addition to building the website, I was also responsible for SEO. Having ran an e-commerce shop for eleven years, I picked up a fair bit of knowledge about SEO and was eager to apply my experience. Back then the industry wasn’t as competitive as it is today, at least in a digital sense, and I was able to quickly generate a respectable amount of traffic. Along the way I experimented with different ways to improve conversions and generate more leads and thought it would be good to share some of my favourite hacks.

First off, here’s what you shouldn’t do.

Don’t force your website visitors to register in order to use your website. I’ve seen this far too many times — you visit a website and after you’ve spent a certain amount of time on it or you’ve visited a certain amount of pages, the website blocks you from using it further until you’ve provided your information.

This is a short-sighted tactic in my opinion. In most cases your visitors will bounce and it’ll leave them with a distaste — they’ll probably never use your website again and will assume that you’re interested in spamming them once they have your information.

Instead, whenever you ask a visitor for their information it should be in exchange for a feature that you can’t provide without their information. The visitor will feel as though they’re receiving a fair exchange of value. It goes without saying that you should also have a privacy policy available for your visitors so they’ll understand how the information you collect from them will be used.

1. Add sold listings and property history to your website

Many real estate boards offer virtual office website (VOW) feeds that agents can use to display sold listings on their websites. Sold listings are really valuable for visitors, it’s equally interesting as a visitor who’s shopping for a new place to live to see properties that are for sale as well as properties that have sold. Real estate websites are not permitted to display sold listings publicly, most real estate boards require that the visitor registers to view sold listings. This is a great opportunity to collect information about your visitors, since you’re required to. Your website should explain to the visitor that real estate board rules require that they register to view sold listings so that they understand why you’re asking them for their information.

The first time we added sold listings to a real estate website we saw a 70% increase in registrations.

2. Add Google Sign-In to your website

These days most people have a @gmail.com address, or they’re using google email for work which allows them to sign-in using google with their work email. In fact, approximately 30% of email users have a gmail account.

Google released a sign-in widget that your web developer could easily install on your website. Providing this option makes it really easy for your visitor to login to your website and saves them time, I’d recommend you install it on your website. Documentation you can share with your web developer can be found here: https://developers.google.com/identity/gsi/web/guides/overview

We added the Google Sign-In widget to a realtor’s website and saw a 30% increase in registrations.

3. Let your visitors save their searches

If your website offers its visitors a home search utility, it’s a really good idea to give them the option to save their search. When they save their search, they’ll receive alerts via email and/or text message when new properties hit the market that match their filters, as well as when properties are sold or have price changes. This is a great feature to generate leads and if done well, will keep your visitors coming back to your website. Save search isn’t the easiest feature to build, it’s actually quite complicated. Fortunately there are services like Repliers that can help with this.

We’ve seen websites that offer save search achieve a returning visitor rate of 30% — websites that don’t, typically have a returning visitor rate of less than 5%.

4. Add a home value estimator to your website

Providing home owners with the value of their home and allowing them to track the value of their home over time is a powerful feature that you should consider adding to your website. Brokerages like Properly (https://www.properly.ca/instant-estimate/) and Wahi (https://wahi.com/ca/en/home-estimation/what-is-my-home-worth) have built excellent instant estimate experiences. The home owner will receive a monthly report via email detailing the current value of their home, a fair trade for their email and home address. I think it’s highly unlikely they’d ever unsubscribe from this type of information, meaning they’d revisit your website at least once per month.

5. Allow your visitors to chat with you

Live chat offers a convenient way for your prospects to reach out to you. If you’re not offering a live chat option on your website, you’re missing out on a lot of potential conversations with new prospects. I’ve been using live chat since 2003 and I can say with certainty that it will be a difference maker for your business, however, it’s important that if you offer live chat that you respond right away — your visitors will expect it and if you’re not able to, you may as well not offer it at all. Chat bots are great to help qualify leads and get certain questions out of the way, but you’ll want to make sure that you can connect with a visitor quickly if the nature of their interest is serious.

Live chat has become the leading digital contact method for online customers, as a staggering 46% of customers prefer live chat compared to just 29% for email, and 16% for social media.

I hope you enjoyed this article and that it’ll help you grow your real estate business. I share my experiences and knowledge on Medium in an effort to grow my own business. If you’re a realtor and would like to chat, I’m always open to new opportunities in the space. You can schedule a meeting with me here.