Letting agency website design
A great letting agency website design is a must for any letting agency wishing to capture leads from landlords or vendors searching locally for the right company or individual to rent or sell their property. I would go as far as to say that this is pivotal for your letting agency because in some instances, it is the first time your potential client will have come across your services, team, testimonials, listings and story.
40% of clients accessing your letting agency website will be from a mobile.
Since the launch of the iPhone 3 in 2007, accessing the internet from a Smartphone has become more and more popular. Our mobile internet usage statistics on letting agents or estate agents state that 40% of users will access your website via a mobile or smartphone. This is a significant amount of users searching for your letting agency or landing on your website checking out your services.
Mobile sales have already overtaken desktop sales and mobile internet usage is predicted to overtake desktop usage by 2014 – meaning mobile searches will soon overtake desktop searches. This is why it is so important that your website is responsive and fits to every screen.
If you have a letting agency website which was designed over 3 years ago, then your website is most likely not designed for mobile access. This move to mobile has happened rapidly.
So what is responsive website design?
Responsive web design is a web design approach aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices. In plain English, it makes it possible for your website to be viewed easily on any device. See the full Wiki on responsive web design here.
Since the world and its mother are now connected to their smartphones or tablets, it makes sense to design your website using a responsive design. Twitter bootstrap is a free front-end framework given to the web development community to use when developing a responsive design. See the history of twitter bootstrap here.
When developing a letting agency website it is important that you develop a responsive design to cater for access from other devices. A stat compiled by Hubspot states 46% of visitors are unlikely to return to a mobile site if it didn’t work properly during the last visit.
Google Search Engine
Google dominate the search engine market with over 60 per cent share in the market. Google states that responsive web design is its recommended mobile configuration. They unsurprisingly refer to responsive web design as industry best practice. When developing a well-structured letting agency website it is good to keep Google local search and Google Places for business in mind. For more on these see here.
Simple minimalistic design is best
Although we now have access to more information than ever before, we seem to have less time to absorb information as our lives have also become busier. It is easy to believe that our attention span is getting so short it will be like a fish soon! Current statistics state that visitors to your website will spend an average of just 1 minute scanning your web pages for content and headline text which they are looking for.
Your website should act as your spanking clean virtual office with all the relevant things in place for when a landlord or vendor walks in enquiring about your services. Imagine a landlord walking into your high street office and the floors are dirty, desk untidy with disorganised staff unable to deal with a query.
Now imagine a landlord or vendor coming into your website and getting the same impression because there is too much content to shift through, too many clicks, no specific calls to actions and no visible testimonials endorsing your service or team.
Social Proof your website – positivity is infectious!
Your website should convey a positive vibrant message throughout. The best way to convey this message is not from the agency itself, but from other Landlords and Tenants who have used your service. The new landlord/tenant will identify with these people who have endorsed your Letting Agency and will develop a confidence in your service before even using it. You can convey the positive feedback from your Landlords/Tenants by:
- Displaying recent testimonials
- Displaying happy tweets from happy customers
- Displaying reviews on Google + from smiling landlords
Simply by showcasing your recent testimonials, reviews or tweets from landlords and vendors will influence new clients to enquire further about your services.
Localised search for local services
Since Google updated its Penguin 2.1 search algorithm they have played a heavy focus on local search. Landlords searching online will be looking locally for the right letting agency to rent or sell their property. A great way to get your website ranked locally is to add your office to google places.
Some points about visitors to your website
– Of the world’s 4 billion mobile phones in use, 1.08 billion are smartphones
– Users will scan your website for relevant content
– Average user will spend 30 seconds on a page
– Strong call to actions are required
It is clear that good letting agency website design will stand to you and your business. If you are interested in our letting agency website design, click here.
