Comments on: Real estate home page breakdown: Longandfoster.com

By: Fasten your seatbelts, you’re in for a bumpy ride. | 1000Watt Consulting

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:33:35 +0000

[...] our home page breakdowns continue to illustrate, there is in real estate, like on AA.com, a tendency to visually vomit every [...]

By: Brian Boero

Brian Boero — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 04:47:38 +0000

Elizabeth,

Are you looking at this from an industry perspective, or are you a buyer or seller? Our work looking at click patterns and working with consumers in focus groups suggests strongly that office search is not of primary importance.

By: Elizabeth Bolton

Elizabeth Bolton — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 15:41:21 +0000

I would strongly disagree with the idea that nobody searches for an office location. That’s simply not so and it’s one of the most important buttons for an agency website to have front and center. Whatever type of company I’m looking at online the store or office location link is more often than not just what I’m trying to find. Long and Foster is of little use to me unless they have an office in the location I’m interested in.

By: Real estate home page breakdown: surterreproperties.com | 1000Watt Consulting

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 18:21:17 +0000

[...] week we move from big to boutique. Surterre Properties is a small brokerage located in the most upscale areas of Orange [...]

By: Carmen Brodeur

Carmen Brodeur — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 18:17:27 +0000

I agree with Jody above. When a website has a link to an outside source of foreclosures rather than a simple listing of what is on the mls, it makes me cringe. I think you gave some good constructive ideas on how to make the site stickier.

By: Jody

Jody — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 04:15:08 +0000

Great post! In addition, they (and every other brokerage) should do away with the link to RealtyTrac “foreclosure” listings (“Foreclosure Search”, on the L and F website). Foreclosures that can be purchased by the average buyer are listing in the MLS with a standard agent just like every other listing. From my experience, this just serves to put money in RealtyTrac’s pockets, and doesn’t help an average person looking to buy a home.

I have no problem with RealtyTrac, and its usefulness to investors, possibly, but the issue is just being confused in my opinion.

@Brad, yes the placement of different elements on the website is critical to good design strategy, and this is determined in part by researching who your visitors are and their main goals. Good placement of elements on a page will substantially increase click-through and conversion, or otherwise affect the desired outcome of any web page in a positive way.

In reality, the overwhelming majority of people using a brokerage’s website just want to search for a home. They really don’t care about the company or the agent at that point, which is why the newest Keller Williams redesign is strong – with the largest call-to-action right where it’s supposed to be, and with no other main distractions.

By: brad

brad — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 21:12:17 +0000

I hate sticking up for brokerage companies, because I think most of them are terrible at what the do but, it does it really matter where on the page some of things are? To me what makes the page so bad is that it it doesn’t tell me why L&F is such a great company and wny I should want to use them to buy or sell a home. This is all the same garbage that everyone else puts on their site. When you open the hood on any of these sites you find nothing of value about the home. Last time I checked, aren’t we in the biz of selling homes?

Better to tear apart the listings. All this other stuff is secondary to what should be provided about the home…but no one does it.

By: Hyderabad real estate

Hyderabad real estate — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 07:41:03 +0000

Very well written and adjudged. Hope the guys at Long and Foster implement your suggestions.

By: Fred A

Fred A — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 11:09:54 +0000

Brian – one of my partners forwarded your email to me. As a Realtor I welcome your constructive criticism. Doug is correct as I have now discovered website designs are constantly changing and if we do not keep updated we shall be left behind. Our National Realtor Association states that nearly 75-80% of all first time buyers visits a real estate website as opposed to the print media. We are going through the process of updating our own site and have discovered some missed opportunities. We are also one of those agencies that have utilized the services of a webdesign company that initially had no experience with real estate website designs. Its been an expensive learning curve.

By: Scott Pierce

Scott Pierce — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 23:34:40 +0000

Great job on this. All the points are spot on.

If they lose the elements that distract the consumer and allow for unsupervised thinking, they will have a lot more room for ‘things that matter’ to consumers. Like Specific Area Property Searches.

Let consumers get to the property information they want with 1-click from the homepage. They should know the top 10-20 property searches performed on the site, why not have them right on the homepage?! Reduce the bounce rate, improve click rates, improve conversion.

And is it my screen, my eyes or is the logo at about 40 dpi?