The Essential Ingredient You Need to Start an Online Estate or Letting Agency
You may be familiar with Sarah Beeny’s How To Sell Your Home, which premiered on Channel 4 last month. If you haven’t watched the show the concept is essentially in the title; a group of homeowners attempt to sell their properties online rather than through a traditional estate agency.
The show has sparked some criticism, with some people regarding it as a sneaky attempt at self-promotion for Beeny’s online agency, Tepilo.
What’s more important than its publicity is the show’s relevance to the current state of the property industry, especially with the growing number of online estate and letting agencies.
If you did watch the show, and it got you thinking about starting your own online agency, AgentPro has the tools available to help you get on your feet and become a successful enterprise.
The 7 Key Features of a Good Website
For starters, you need a fully-functioning website. This advice may seem blindingly obvious, but people don’t seem to realise the power of a good website. In fact, they’re unsure of what a decent one looks like. Here are 7 things that make a good website…
- Unique design – in such a competitive industry, it’s hard to get your head seen above the rest. And since 71% of property searches are now carried out online, your website needs to stand out
- Adaptability – if your website isn’t responsive, meaning that it doesn’t resize to fit onto the screens of mobiles and tablets, you could be missing out on a ton of sales. If your customers struggle to use your site on mobile devices they’ll lose interest and search elsewhere
- Client logins – this function allows your customers to log in to your website 24/7. This means you can essentially operate a 24 hour shop
- Ecommerce functionality – this is fundamental for any online agent. Make your customers’ buying path as simple as possible, and don’t hide your checkout icon on a single page. You should make it easy to find, that way it’s easier to gain a customer or make a sale
- Simple and clear navigation – your website needs to load efficiently and should be easy to use. If it has a confusing layout or takes forever to load, potential customers will simply leave and use one of your competitors instead
- Search engine optimisation – if your website isn’t effectively optimised it will struggle to rank well in search engine results. If no one can find your site, then you’ll struggle to make money online
- Plenty of information – since you won’t own a physical premises where customers can pop in to chat with your staff, your website is your best salesman. Make sure it’s loaded with all the relevant and interesting information necessary to make a sale. Don’t leave anything out, or assume that people already know what you do
But a good website isn’t the only thing you need to succeed.
Estate and letting agent software is a must have for any successful agent. Why? Simply because it makes your day-to-day working life so much easier. And the best thing is it integrates with your website, which means that you can manage everything under one roof. Just take a look at this previous post we wrote on the subject:
“Why Estate Agent Software is Essential For Any Successful Agency”
And if you’d like to know more about starting your own agency and how we can help, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
