I built a customized home builder's web site for a model home builder - Gentry Homes, in Oregon City, Oregon - back in the late spring of 2003. They already had their own web site, but they decided to look into having another one built. Why? Uh...well...the more brain cells you have, the better you function, right?
Same for web sites. The more good ones you have online, the more business you'll get.
I put up a customized lead-generating web site for Tom Gentry, within a week of the precise date that he and I finalized our initial agreement.
The process involved here, when a new site is placed online, involves a serious waiting game. Despite what various grinning snake-oil salesmen will have you believe, instant gratification is NOT going to happen on the Internet (not when it comes to realizing serious production levels with a new web site). As I tell all my clients, when I first sign them up, it's going to take five or six months before we'll see ANY significant traffic to our new web site. I told Tom that, he understood it (which a lot of my clients DON'T), and after I put the site online, I went up to Canada to do some marketing work up there, and we both went about our business and waited...
The new site I put up for Gentry Homes hit Google first - it took about three months. (Google wasn't the dominant force in the search engine game back then.) Our new site got some good rankings right out of the gate, and we started getting decent traffic. I wrote Tom an email and told him about our high rankings at Google, and asked him how things were going down in Oregon. "Getting about two leads a week now from the new site," he wrote back. A nice start. (It sure beat a sharp stick in the eye.)
A couple months later our new site got into MSN (which has since been renamed, Bing). Again, we got a boatload of high rankings, and we got even more traffic to the site. The snowball was starting to gather momentum as it rolled downhill. I emailed Tom again - "How's business?" He replied quickly with the same answer - "Still getting about two leads a week."
Now, originally, Tom and I had animatedly discussed how the new web site should be designed. Being a home builder, he thought he should have a say in how it should be constructed. Being a world-class web designer and Internet marketing specialist, I disagreed. I didn't tell him how to build houses, and what I did was outside the scope of his knowledge. Tom wanted me to put a very large, and really PRETTY photograph, of one of his model homes, on the home page of the new site. I knew that doing this would greatly compromise the amount of time it took for his home page to load, and I also knew it would turn his online customers off if they had to wait. But, since he was paying the tab, I gave up, and did it his way. I knew that I would have to show him, down the road, that it was a big mistake, and make him think it was his idea to change it (and do it my way).
A couple of weeks after our new site started showing up in MSN, we hit the search engine Yahoo! (It takes time for search engines to index, and display, new web sites. This is especially true these days. So patience is the key.) Our rankings in Yahoo! were again sky high, so I emailed Tom Gentry again and asked him how business was going. "Still getting two to three leads a week," he wrote back.
On Thanksgiving day, of 2002, after our site had appeared in Google, MSN and Yahoo! (the Big Three engines), I took the pretty picture off the site, the one of the model home, that Tom had so adamantly insisted I put on the home page of the new web site - and I waited.
I knew that our traffic was really good (I could log in and look at the stats, which I did), and I also knew that large PHOTO of the model home, was slowing down the amount of time that it took for our home page to load - which was turning off our customers. They were leaving before the page could load. (What do YOU do when a web page takes a long time to load...I rest my case.)
So...about two weeks later, after I had taken that pretty, slow-loading home photo off the home page, Tom Gentry emailed me back. "What did you do to our web site?" he asked pointedly.
I immediately emailed him back and said naively, "Why do you ask?"
He shot back a reply - "We've gotten five to seven QUALITY email leads, each of the past two weeks, from the new site."
I wrote him back - "Remember that pretty photo of the model home that you insisted I put on your home page? I took it OFF."
He wrote back right away using big, bold, capital letters: "WHATEVER YOU DO - LEAVE IT OFF!!!!"
My point here, is, I know my business. You know yours. Leave me alone, and don't give me web design tips, and I promise I won't give you tips about how to structure real estate transactions - wink.
The Internet is not a magazine. Pages take time to load. The more crap you have on your home page, the faster you will turn off your customers. The entire world is going wireless. Wireless connections to the Internet are notoriously lousy. And speed is either our ally or our enemy. People don't like WAITING for home pages to load. Especially on a REAL ESTATE web site. They will be GLAD to wait, if they click a link on the home page that reads, " VIEW HOMES HERE". They will EXPECT to wait, at that point. But cramming photos, and graphics, and videos and logos, and every single "pretty" gizmo on your home page (most especially on your home page) will KILL your web site traffic.
Also, putting a pretty FLASH intro on your home page is pretty much the dumbest thing you can do. Again, the world is going wireless and wireless connections are spotty at best. The spottier the connection, the longer a web page will take to load. Flash intros take a long time to load, even with a great connection. So do the math there. You want pretty? Get a magazine ad. You want effectiveness? Call me up and I'll get you what you need, instead of what you think you want.
People don't want to be forced to watch anything on a web site. And flash takes a long time to load. And most home pages that have flash intros, don't have an easily accessible menu in place, either. People want to see an easily accessible MENU of options when they first come to a web site. And those people have as little time to waste as you and I have to waste. Flash intros and pretty photos and logos and dazzling graphics are really effective - at sabotaging your home page's ability to give your customers what they want. You might think it's really "classy" to have a stunning array of pretty images on your home page, but that's because you don't know anything about world-class web development. Hopefully this is clearing it up for you - but if it isn't, you need to find out the difference between a "web site builder" and a "web developer" - and you can do that right here. (There are a bazillion other factors that go into designing a top-notch web site, and you can find out about the four most critical factors involved in designing a world-class web site right here.)
***By the way, just to show you that it does take time before the deals start to come together for my new clients, here is an actual email that Tom Gentry sent to me, on Dec. 30th, 2002, which notified me of the very first home sale I generated for him with the site that I originally put online for him in early June of that same year: Notice that it took about six to seven months to get the first deal from the site -
Today we sold our first house from the internet. A
woman and her mom are moving here from California.
They found your site, called, flew up and bought a house.
Great!
Thanks,
Tom Gentry
Call me today for more information. Be glad to meet with you too. I'm currently in Austin, Texas - where I have relocated permanently. But I can do an online presentation right over the Internet for anybody, anywhere in the world - as long as they have an Internet connection and a telephone.
My name is Chris Ullman, I am an expert at marketing real estate on the Internet, and my mobile number is 512-450-8836. Call me today and I'll shoot straight with you about how I can help you make money.
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I've been in this business for 10 years now. And I truly believe that I create the best web sites for real estate agents in the world today. Which is another way of saying that I produce the best Internet leads for real estate agents, the best Internet leads for Realtors, the best Internet leads for real estate brokers, and the best Internet leads for real estate agencies. I have personally generated over $200 million in online real estate sales. And that's why I am so good at Internet lead generation for real estate agents, Internet lead generation for Realtors, Internet lead generation for real estate brokers, and Internet lead generation for real estate agencies.
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The only thing you stand to lose is one heck of a lot more business...
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